The Cooper family would like to take a moment to honor one of the great engine innovators and inventors in our company’s history. Mel Helmich, who passed away last week at the age of 96, spent 41 years with Cooper from the 1950s to the early 1990s and rose to the position of Chief Engineer. During his remarkable tenure, the company created the following products under his tutelage: W-330 engine / Z-330 engine / Quad engine / LSVB 4 cycle engine / CleanBurnᵀᴹ technology / M-Line compressors. In addition to being one of the all-time Cooper greats, Mel was also a member of the Greatest Generation and honorably served his country in combat with the 100th Engineering Division of the Army during WWII. After the war, he attained a Mechanical Engineering degree at Purdue University. Mel will be missed by his family, friends and former Cooper colleagues, but his legend inside the compression industry will live on forever.