<p>
At the time of his death Colonel James Brownrigg Dillard was general superintendent of the Cleveland Twist Drill Company of Cleveland, Ohio, a position he had occupied since 1923. He had resigned from the Army in 1920 to join the Cleveland company. For the last ten years of his life he was a member of its board of directors.</p>
<p>
Colonel Dillard was born at Norfolk, VA., April 22, 1882, the eldest of nine children of Dr. James Hardy Dillard, educator. His mother, Mary Harmanson Dillard, died when he was a boy. The family has been resident in Virginia since its ancestor, James Dillard, came to the colony from Dillard, Ireland, prior to 1640.</p>
<p>
Dr. Dillard was principal of an academy in Norfolk at the time of his son’s birth. In 1891, following a short residence in St. Louis, the family moved to New Orleans, La., where Prof. Dillard joined the faculty of Tulane University and a few years later was made dean of its academic colleges. Subsequently the senior Dillard became nationally prominent in the education work of the South. In 1937 he was awarded the Roosevelt medal for his activity in behalf of Negro education.</p>
<p>
<em>James Brownrigg Dillard</em> attended the public schools of New Orleans and at the age of 15 registered in the classical course of the College of Arts and Sciences of Tulane University. He remained in college at New Orleans until June, 1900. He was then appointed to the Military Academy, from Louisiana, and became a cadet at West Point August 1, 1900. He was graduated June 15, 1904 and promoted to second lieutenant of artillery.</p>
<p>
He commenced his service with the 25th battery, Field Artillery, at Fort Riley, Kan., and was a student in the cavalry and field artillery school there. In 1906 he was detailed to the Ordnance Department at Sandy Hook Proving Ground, New Jersey, and promoted to first lieutenant. Soon after the separation of the Coast Artillery Corps from the Field Artillery in 1907 he became a captain in the Ordnance Department, and a few months later was sent to the Watertown Arsenal for a year.</p>
<p>
In July, 1908, he was detailed to the office of Chief of Ordnance in Washington, D.C. and remained there two years. His work in designing heavy gun emplacements in the islands at the entrance of Manila Bay took place during the years 1909-1910. A year of service with the coast artillery followed at Fort Adams, Rhode Island. In 1911 he was detailed again to the Ordnance Department at Newport News, VA., he was promoted to Major of Ordnance in 1915 and remained at Newport News, until January 1916. Soon afterward he spent three months at Sandy Hook again. In August, 1916, he returned to the office of Chief of Ordnance in Washington. On January 16, 1918, he was commissioned colonel of Ordnance.</p>
<p>
Colonel Dillard remained with the Office of Chief of Ordnance throughout the war and held several executive positions. In the language of the citation for the distinguished service medal which he received in 1918, his was “specialy meritorious and conspicuous service as chief of the Heavy Artillery Section of the Carriage Division of the Office of Chief of Ordnance, in which capacity he was charged with the design and development of all railway and other heavy artillery; and later as chief of the Engineering Division of the Office of the Chief of Ordnance, in which capacity he was charged with the design and development of all articles of ordnance supplied to the United States Army.”</p>
<p>
In December 1918, shortly after the Armistice, he was named as a member of the “Caliber Board” and went to France, Italy, and other places in Europe, making a special study of artillery types, calibers, armament, and methods of transportation. He resigned in Washington April 2, 1920.</p>
<p>
His work at the Watertown Arsenal had brought him into contact with metallurgical research and machine design, interests which continued with him to the end of his life. There, or in Washington, he is said to have had an important part in the design of the heavy gun emplacements and electrical controls for Corregidor Island, Manila Bay, P. I. Colonel Dillard is known too as being one of the first persons to design a caterpillar tractor gun carriage. <em>Who’s Who In Engineering</em> states that he designed many types of guns and gun carriages used by the United States Army and installed on seacoast defenses.</p>
<p>
His acquaintance with Cleveland Twist Drill dated from his meeting Colonel E. C. Peck, general superintendent of the company, in Washington during the war. On joining that company in 1920 he became associated writh a notable group of men of similar interest in engineering, metallurgy and tool design who had been brought together by the two Jacob Dolson Coxes, father and son. The younger Mr. Cox, who was president of the company throughout Colonel Dillard’s connection with it, recently wrote of him:</p>
<p>
“His was a mind which ranged over a very broad field. He was as much interested in international affairs, history, and economics as he was in the immediate job he had in hand. I think the finest thing he did for our company, in the 20 years he was here, was in building up an organization of younger men.”</p>
<p>
During and prior to his career in Cleveland he contributed to chemical and ordnance journals and engineering society papers on ordnance subjects, and in Cleveland was a member of the advisory board of the ordnance district. He was a member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, the Army Ordnance Association, the Society of Automotive Engineers, the Cleveland Chamber of Commerce and the Cleveland Engineering Society. He was also a member of the Army and Navy Club of Washington, the University and Union Clubs of Cleveland, and Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity.</p>
<p>
Colonel Dillard's first marriage took place at the Rock Island Arsenal while he was still with the Field Artillery at Fort Riley, Kansas. On April 26, 1905, he married Miss Elinor Webster Lusk, daughter of Lieutenant Colonel James Loring Lusk of West Point, N. Y.</p>
<p>
She died in Cleveland, July 2, 1931. following a long illness and leaving one daughter, Mary Lusk Dillard, who is now Mrs. Charles Joseph Kenny of Charlottesville, VA. Mr. Kenny is an attorney.</p>
<p>
On October 11, 1932, Colonel Dillard was married to Miss Doris Portmann of Cleveland, daughter of Odo E. Portmann, M. D., of Canton, O. Two children were born to them, Heath Portmann and David Brownrigg, who now reside with their mother at Winton Farm.</p>
<p>
Brothers and sisters of Colonel Dillard are George B. Dillard and Hardy Cross Dillard of Charlottesville, VA., Mrs. Chauncey W. Butler of Memphis, Tenn., Miss Elizabeth Dillard of Staunton, VA., Mrs. Harry D. Spratt of Washington, D.C., Mrs. Welton E. Millsaps of Mentone, Ala., Mrs. M. C. Elliott, of Charlottesville, and Mrs. Vernon Venable of Poughkeepsie, N.Y.</p>
<p>
Colonel Dillard’s dream was to retire to a farm; he strongly believed, as an economic principle, in going back to the land. During the last ten years of his life, he came to be well known in a wholly different field from any of his early experience, that, of livestock raiser. In 1929 he purchased Winton Farm, a 400-acre place on the outskirts of Clifford, Va., between Lynchburg and Charlottesville. The farm had been in the possession of the family of Patrick Henry and had been named for Henry’s grandfather, Isaac Winston. The Virginia Guide mentions Winton, its burial ground where the body of Henry’s mother rests, and “the large, white well-preserved building on landscaped grounds.”</p>
<p>
At Winton Farm Colonel Dillard specialized in the Aberdeen Angus brand of cattle and built up a notable herd. His cattle took a number of prizes in local, state and national livestock shows. Two months after his death, a bull of his own breeding was made International Grand Champion at the Chicago Live Stock Show. Colonel Dillard had been attending fairs in Virginia the week he died. His custom was to make perhaps six or eight visits to the place each year, sometimes driving from Cleveland in a single day, and he would also spend his vacations there.</p>
<p>
James Brownrigg Dillard died suddenly September 28, 1941, at Lynchburg, VA. The cause of his death was coronary thrombosis, of which he had been taken ill a few hours before, at Winton Farm, Clifford, VA. Funeral services were held on the farm and he was buried at West Point.</p>
<p>
Following his death the Cleveland Press said of him in an editorial: “Clevelanders and Virginians will miss the vigor of his personality, the breadth of his mechanical, military and historical knowledge, and his participation in the life of the two communities.</p>
<p>
“Reared in an academic family, with connections at Tulane and the University of Virginia, educated at West Point, a manufacturer and a stockman, he had a breadth of interest few men achieve. Like most manufacturers in the metal industries he had been carrying heavier responsibility in recent months. His sudden death is a loss to the nation as well as to Cleveland.”</p>
<p>
Expressions of “his young men” whom he trained at Cleveland Twist Drill, and of business and livestock and farm associates from all over the country give evidence of the stamp and quality of his character. He gave and demanded conscientious work, thoroughness and loyalty and stooped to no gesture not befitting a gentleman and leader of fairness and honor. His was the imagination of a thinker and builder and his integrity and modesty, mentioned by so many, was the key to his strength of character. It was said of him that his worldly success in his career, and national reputation in raising his beloved cattle, meant less to him than the realization to himself that he had done something well.</p>