Old Pueblo Section History

According to our Section Operating Agreement(SOA), TOPS was chartered on March 23, 1955. During this time, the Tucson group, which had been meeting since the spring of 1953, formally requested an affiliation with the then named American Society for Quality Control(ASQC).

According to our Section Operating Agreement(SOA), TOPS was chartered on March 23, 1955. During this time, the Tucson group, which had been meeting since the spring of 1953, formally requested an affiliation with the then named American Society for Quality Control(ASQC).

The ASQC executive committee conditionally accepted this petition that same month. In July 1955, the affiliation of the Tucson group with ASQC was officially approved as a full fledged section. ASQC would change its name to American Society for Quality(ASQ) in 1997. The name was altered, “to better reflect the Society’s goal of providing valuable products and services to all interested in quality.” According to the ASQ Archives, TOPS is one year older than Phoenix 0704.

TOPS’ first chair was D. Hawks, Jr from 1955-56. Mr. Hawks was chief of Quality Standards and Analysis for Hughes Aircraft Company. In March 1953, Hawks sent a letter to Edward B. Hayden, executive secretary of ASQC, indicating an interest in forming a Tucson section. Hawks wrote: “A recent survey has indicated that about fifty engineers and supervisors at this Plant (Hughes Aircraft) would be interested in forming a Tucson chapter of the American Society for Quality Control.” Hawks went on to explain why this was desired: “…our problem at Tucson is that we are more or less isolated from contacts with other engineers and several of our staff have rightly requested that steps be taken to keep them in contact with the engineering progress of other industries in the Nation. Phoenix is a bit too far for us to go for an evening meeting and this chapter of the ASQC does not appear to be very active in any event.”

The section number has changed various times; during 1961-62 it was listed as Section 1608, from 1962-67 the number was listed as Section 0609, 1968-71 it was listed as Section 0705, and was finally designated as Section 0707 in 1971. Both sections 1608 and 609 are not listed in the ASQ handbooks up to 1981. Unfortunately, during the late 60’s, TOPS was dissolved and would became a subsection of Phoenix. It would take TOPS three years to recover from this incident and reestablish itself as a full-fledged section. This event would be mentioned in Quality Progress on December 1971(Vol.IV No.12 p.35). TOPS would return this designation to the Ambos Nogales Section 0714. They were approved as a section at the November 9, 2006 meeting of the ASQ Board of Directors.