b'IN MEMORYCelebrating Ted ClearTheodoreTedE.Clearpassedactuallysetevery-away peacefully on October 1, 2019.thingup,Schaffer In1946,hemarriedhisonlyloveexplained. She said since junior high school, Mary Louisethe concrete backer (Saurber) Clear. boardallowedthe Clearsdaughter,LisaSchaffer,saidaverage homeowner to have the luxuri-Clearwasforward-thinkingfromaous bathrooms we see today. young age. Clears younger years wereMark Albonetti, PROVA Installation & duringtheGreatDepressionandtoTechnicalSpecialistandfamilyfriend, help take of his family, he raised rabbitsemphasizedwhatClearsinvention and sold them to the local restaurants.meant to the industry. It is by far the He also carried a burlap sack to schoolsingle most important thing for our tile and collected coal that had fallen fromhistory, he said. We wouldn\'t be any-railroad cars. whereclosetowherewearetodayif By the age of 14, Clear had learnedwasnt for the mass productionnot just to fly and had gained his pilots license.the inventionof backer board. The abil-In 1943, at age 17, he enlisted in theity to mass produce changed the industry ArmyAirCorps.Hewashonorablyforever. Any improvements today, such as dischargedin1946.Afterhisservice,foam boards and underlayments, would Clear returned home to run his fathersnot have even happened if it wasnt for company, Sherman T. Clear Plastering,the backer board and the process being where he worked for 28 years. invented; it just wouldnt.In 1970, Clear invented and patentedAlbonettisaidwhentheconcrete the process for concrete backer boardbacker board first became available, he and commercially produced the origi- had his doubts about the product. He nalWonderboardforModulars,Inc.thought the product was a radical con-Schaffer pointed out that the inventioncept that would never work. Albonetti of the concrete backer board came outfirst tried the new product one winter in ofnecessity.BeforeClearsinvention,order to avoid having to heat the sand residentialshowerswerereservedforthat was normally mixed with cement to the wealthy because the process to cre- make mortar. Once he saw how much atethemwasquitetime-consuming.time the product saved, sometimes sev-ComingoutofWorldWarII,thereeral days, he began to use it regularly.werealotofproductionhomes,"sheClears company became Fin-Pan, Inc. said. "You didn\'t see the bathroom youin 1975. Schaffer said her family chose see today because it was so exorbitantlythe companys name after Clear said he expensive[totile].Itwasverymuchdidnt want the company named after ahandprocess;itwastime-consum- him and made his goal for the product ing.Youweren\'tjusttalkingweeks.clear. He stated the goal as I want to Sometimes it took a couple of months tobe able to make a finished panel that 108TileLetter | December 2019'