Ralph Steinberg (The bald old man according to one of the "grandkids")
I swore when I was younger I was not going to follow my father in to automotive world, I did not know it then, or at least in my frontal lobe, but the real reason was because he was so huge in that world that I knew I could never be him. Funny how life turns out. I got to apprentice under one of the top techs in the field and he was a fair hand at building race cars back in the day. He was a better teacher than I was pupil and after a short, very short time, at Penn State University I came home and started what would become Cloverleaf. Around 1980 I convinced my father that he should come to work for me and he did. Since we are both a bit bull headed it could get a bit lively sometimes in the shop. One of the things he did teach me that stuck was "a car is a car, is a car" meaning if you learned the theory and the math you could pretty much figure your way out of most anything. He taught that the best friend you had was your technical manuals and that gong to school taking courses and staying up with where the industry is right now is important. Even if the car you are working on is a 1938 SS100 Jaguar, knowing of advances in brake material, cooling systems and ignition systems allows you to make some improvements to this car to make it fun to drive on today's roads. So I studied books about automotive physics, automotive math and theory (I was so glad when computers came along, punch in the numbers, push a button and an answer comes out - sure beats the pages of math I would do to figure out what size wheel cyls to install in a new project)I got my ASE certifications, actually when I took them they were called NIASE and were extremely hard to pass and I learned that I had paid more attention to my dad than either of us had thought!