Rauf al Hamayal

ACS friends, I have to thank Steve Furman for introducing me to Rauf. Steve is famous for being the first boy child to come to ARAMCO. That was Dhahran in 1945. Steve's dad worked for ARAMCO before WWII and when things got bad, they closed the field and sent everyone home. When hostilities were on the wane, the Furman family was back. Steve's dad's badge number was 134.

My dad came to ARAMCO in May of 1944 (badge 159). My dad's badge was a reissue. Still, he was an old timer. He was a machinist and I used to hang around the shops and play in the carpenter shop (1949). On slow days they would build us toys (stilts, etc).

The admin building was at one end of King's Road. It was a big stone structure, two floors. East and west wings were added, making it u-shaped, as oil workers poured into Dhahran and portables were added as departments began to overflow from the admin building. This is where Rauf al Hamayal began offices services. He had a small staff of laborers and they did everything imaginable to support the needs of office space. They had a bubbler in the main room of their portable and it was one of my stops on a hot day. I do not remember Rauf then; I remember someone talking on the phone and giving orders but that is all. The portable had one beat up desk, a few chairs, and a telephone (meager beginnings).

Leap ahead to 1981 when I was hired by ARAMCO (badge 193014) to work for Offices Services as a planning and programs analyst. Rauf signed my field hire request after Steve Furman's introduction. Offices Services now had 1,500 employees, a planning staff of 35, and several million square feet of office space to assign and maintain. It was a very political department because the amount of office space an organization had depended on each workers grade code. Departments got the most and clerks got the least. Our job was to make sure people got what they deserved not what they thought they deserved.

Rauf was intense. I never saw him lean on anything or stand around with his hands in his pockets. He was always working and he expected the same of us. His English was outstanding. His wife, Freedah, was the first Saudi to attend the Dhahran Senior staff school. She was about my sisters age, seven years my junior, and I am told she went to school in Beirut, a women's college. Rauf was graduated from AUB. I suppose he was in the PD Program, or its precursor.

He was a strong leader. He would give you a decision before the words were hardly out of your mouth and he could develop alternatives faster than a hood-hood could flex its crest. He was the only department head Offices Services ever had I'm told. I bloomed under his guidance. Work was very busy but Steve Furman was a supervisor and Myles Jones, another classmate, was our boss. Myles was the lead engineer on the University of Petroleum and Minerals job before moving across the fence to ARAMCO, and Steve had been everywhere before, South America, the Ivory Coast, and Iran. He had also been a Marine major.

The Dhahran metroplex had changed from that one admin building. Its new name was South Admin, and now there were East Admin, North Admin, the Tower, the EXPEC, and the Engineering buildings. There were over 8,000 office workers in this clustered complex! It was a wonderful place to work, modern, cool, and shaded. There were marble panels, modern art on the walls, and the most up to date office equipment money could buy. And Rauf had been a big contributor to the process.

Then one day Rauf was reassigned to the Storehouse as department head. I don't know the details but it must have been hard on him to see all that he had built restructured by others. Petroleum is a dymanic business and ARAMCO was changing almost monthly. The metroplex became an enclave with its own fence and security.

The last time I saw Rauf, he was leaving the Storehouse area. He was walking tall and briskly, as he always did. It was one week before I left ARAMCO in January 1985. Wherever you are Rauf, I wish you and your family the best. You were a great boss and you left ARAMCO with a great legacy.

Rolf A. Christophersen