by Donna Jones Pelkie
On May 3, 1976, a young man from southern California named Dave Baurac began a job in Argonne’s Public Affairs Division as a professional writer and communicator.
On May 27, 2016, three weeks after his 40th anniversary with Argonne, Baurac will do what many of his colleagues thought he never would — retire. Baurac himself never envisioned spending four decades at the lab. “I thought I would spend five years here and move on. I just found a home. It was such a good fit.”
Baurac said he’s proud of the body of work he’s created. He wrote speeches, news releases, congressional testimony, white papers and position papers. He created a magazine, helped to organize and staff special events, acted as a media liaison to reporters covering the lab and was webmaster for 15 years. He is especially proud of receiving an Outstanding Service Award in 2010 and being named the 2005-2006 MVP west division in the Chicago Industrial Chess League as a player for the Argonne Rooks.
“My job always has been surprising, interesting and challenging. That’s the nature of working in communications — something pops up you’ve gotta move. When the phone rings, you cannot not pick it up — and you’re at the mercy of whoever is on the line,” he said.
“Given the breadth of his work, Dave’s knowledge of the lab and its history is essentially bottomless,” said David Jacque (CEPA), internal communications manager. “A lot of institutional memory will leave with him. I’m afraid I’m going to be the go-to guy when there’s an urgent need to know about something that happened in 1992.”
Baurac’s overall approach to his role as a communicator also made its mark. “Dave and I worked together for 16 years and did so pretty well despite our differences in personality and approach,” said Catherine Foster, former Argonne media relations manager and now associate professor, communications studies, Canisius College, Buffalo, NY. “I’m pretty impulsive and tend to leap first and think later, while Dave is a thinker and wants to examine all possibilities before he commits to a course of action.”
“Now that I’m teaching public relations, I find myself preaching the importance of thoughtful contemplation before action,” Foster continued. “I even hear myself quoting Dave to students, which I think and hope would please him to know. Maybe in retirement, he’ll be teaching a PR course or two somewhere, and the field will be better in the future if he does.”
Baurac’s passion, however, always has been and will continue to be writing. “I think Truman Capote said it, writing is thinking, it’s clarifying things,” Baurac said. “You can rewrite, but you can’t re-talk. In my first years at Argonne, no one saw anything I wrote that hadn’t been through at least three drafts. I enjoy the refining and clarifying of ideas.”
Post retirement, he plans to finally move back to southern California — within walking distance of a beach — and to pursue his lifelong dream of being a mystery novel writer. His dedication to the craft of writing has had a lasting impact on colleagues.
“I thought I was a pretty good writer when I arrived at Argonne, but under Dave’s guidance I learned to express myself with precision and economy,” Jacque said. “My old newspaper clippings make me cringe; the articles I wrote for Argonne News and Logos magazine are some of the best I’ll ever have written. To this day, I refer to Dave for questions of grammar and guidance on style.”
Baurac’s advice for today’s young writers is: “Just do it. Write, practice your skills. Take advantage of internships that help you build your resume and determine if you really like writing as much as you think you do.”
As for Baurac, he spent every day of the last 40 years loving what he did for a living, and the impending change is bittersweet. “I will miss the people and the routine of coming here every day,” he said. “After my family, working for Argonne is the best thing that ever happened to me.”