If you are one of the 100 million Americans with smart phones, chances are you are holding the work of a fellow Oswego alumnus.

Peter Bocko ’75, chief technology officer for Corning Glass Technologies, a business within Corning Inc., driving new glass opportunities, has spent his career developing and bringing to market glass used in cutting-edge high-tech devices like these. His latest project is Corning Gorilla Glass, a super-tough, ultra-thin product used in some of the hottest electronic devices on the planet.

You can feel its cool touch as it protects your new high-tech phone from scratches and bumps. Soon you can hang it on your wall and marvel at its sleek beauty: At this January’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, SONY announced that it would be using the durable material in select models of its Bravia line of LCD televisions.

Other fruits of Bocko’s labor are less obvious. He and the display technology team are developing a flexible glass that will someday be used in the design of new e-readers and other emerging technologies. It provides advantages over current materials, and will help make e-books easier and more fun to read. And an earlier product of theirs — an environmentally friendly LCD glass with no added heavy metals — was especially important to one of Bocko’s Japanese clients, whose factory sits alongside a river.

Much of the Corning team’s work has been to produce thinner glass, and that, too, saves the environment. “You melt glass by the pound, sell it by the square foot,” Bocko explains. A 19-inch traditional TV — where the picture comes from a cathode ray tube or CRT display — uses 40 pounds of glass. A modern LCD set uses much less, in a sheet only 0.7 mm thick.

Bocko is passionate about glass. After 32 years at the world’s leader in specialty glass and ceramics and 22 years helping to make them a key player in LCD technology, this self-proclaimed “glass guy” can still get rhapsodic about the virtues of Corning’s newest achievement and the possibilities for the future.

Dressed in a sport jacket rather than a traditional lab coat, Bocko walks — and talks — fast. Leading a visitor through the maze of Corning’s research facility at Sullivan Park, his staccato delivery of facts, figures and anecdotes is dizzying. His mind is moving at a million miles a minute, too — always looking ahead to the next big thing.

That’s a habit rooted in the Corning way of doing business, he admits. “We work with key customers to give more value so they can’t do without us,” he says. “When they have product A, we are working on product B, proactively obsoleting our own product.”

People are key

In an irony not lost on the thoughtful scientist, Bocko says he was hired with the profits Corning earned from TV’s cathode ray tubes, then spent most of his career making CRT sets obsolete in favor of more efficient, environment-friendly and beautiful LCD TVs.

But if product is important to Bocko, people are more so. Relationships are valuable to him, and that is key to his success in the Asian market. “When you say something you have to mean it,” he says. “In Asia, you cannot treat business relationships casually.”

Case in point: His interview with Oswego magazine was postponed by a week, because he had to interrupt his Christmas vacation to make a last minute trip back to Japan. There was news that Bocko could not let a key customer hear from anyone else.

“They knew I flew 12,000 miles to be there for one two-hour meeting,” he says. But that courtesy showed them that he really valued their relationship. “They know they can trust me.”

Corning’s business is built “on the basis of relationship and trust — we give more value,” he will tell you. For 20 years he has worked almost exclusively with the LCD end of the business, helping corporate customers and their designers find uses for Corning’s products. “Orienting R&D not on what you think is a good idea but collaborating with the customer,” Bocko explains.

In his role as chief technology officer for Corning Glass Technologies, the relationships have to run in both directions. While he is working with customers to help design new uses for Corning technology, he also must interface with a team back in New York state’s Southern Tier to make the magic happen. That’s a juggling act that comes naturally for Bocko, since he led the team stateside — as a scientist himself — before his transition to Asia in 2007.

People skills are something he learned along with good science in Oswego, working with mentors like Distinguished Teaching Professors Emeriti Augustine Silveira and Ken Hyde. He admits to picking up style cues from Silveira, who had a unique classroom technique.

“The way he managed the classroom — he would value participation,” Bocko says. “He could make people feel he was really interested in them and valued their ideas.”

The Waterville native chose Oswego for its excellent reputation, especially in chemistry, and the opportunity to work one-on-one with scientists. He valued the personal attention he received at Oswego and how that translated into real-life lessons.

In working with Hyde, Bocko learned the value of good, hard, incremental work. “Chip away and there was insight,” is the message he took away from days — and nights — in the lab in Snygg Hall. “Science is not a matter of pure inspiration, just good, dogged work and inspiration will come.”

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Those hours of hard work provided some laughs, though. Bocko fondly remembers the time he set his hand on fire. He was working with a flask that included ether. He held it over the flame from a Bunsen burner and it exploded, setting his hand on fire. He shook it like a match, and because the ether was so volatile, it went out almost immediately. But the laughs lingered to this day.

Then there was the time he burned his pants off. Bocko was doing some work for Hyde at 7 a.m. and dropped a half-gallon of sulphuric acid on his jeans. “Not a promising start,” he laughs. When Hyde came into the office, there was Bocko sitting in a lab coat, bare legs sticking out, waiting for his roommate to show up with spare jeans. “Pete burned off his pants,” said his lab partner. “Professor Hyde just shook his head,” remembers Bocko with a chuckle.

None of that deterred his ambition to obtain a Ph.D. and “do science that really mattered.” Bocko knew from his high school years that he wanted to be a research chemist, practicing science at a level that mattered: Not doing chores for others, but setting policy and direction.

Oswego played an important role in fulfilling that goal. The research he did — and the scientific articles he published with his Oswego professors — helped him gain admission to a prestigious doctoral program at Cornell University.

Oswego played another important role in his life — it’s where he met his wife of 35 years, Andrea Guglielmo Bocko ’73, M ’75.

They were both working at an Oswego chemistry lab one summer, Pete on copper complexes and Andrea on cobalt complexes with pyridine, which Pete calls “one of the most foul substances known to man. It smells like a sneaker worn by Bigfoot,” he says with a laugh. Andrea brought her pyridine into the lab and, well, Pete couldn’t help but notice her.

“I always liked smart girls — a girl in a lab coat,” he says, with a grin. So when he met Andrea, he made up his mind after the first date. “I’m going to marry this girl,” he told his brother.

MORE: Extraordinary Expat: Andrea Bocko ’73, M ’75 shares love of science overseas

“He said, ‘Slow it down,’” Pete remembers. “But he had it wrong.”

How Bocko became Corning’s chief technology officer in Asia has its own story.

“People underestimate the amount of resolve it takes to develop a new product,” he says. He joined Corning in 1979 as a glass researcher, and became part of an exploratory LCD team in 1982. In 1988, he became full-time head of product development for LCD development, but through budget cuts he lost his team because Corning was not sure of the market potential.

“So I spent time traveling, making relationships with the companies that would use the glass, [people in] Japan, Korea, Taiwan and, now, China.”

Put simply, he says, “We make the glass, the customer makes the LCD: We want to enable them to make their product the best it can be and as economically as possible.”

So he has spent the better part of two decades traveling back and forth between Corning and Asia, and now makes his full-time home in Tokyo, traveling back to Corning for meetings at least a dozen times a year.

Each flight is about 7,000 miles and takes 15 hours. “I’ve spent six months of my life in a 747,” he quips.

Whether up in the air or in the lab, Bocko is thinking fast, working hard and bringing new products to market that will improve peoples’ lives everywhere.

The Doors

Sly and the Family Stone

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band

The Ramones

A: All of them. And many, many more.

If you flunked that “pop” quiz, you probably didn’t go to Oswego in the 1970s.

From the late ’60s into the early ’80s, Oswego drew some of the biggest names in the music business — show after show, semester after semester. The list should impress any music fan and there’s no doubt these names entertained the many who packed Laker Hall, Hewitt ballroom, Regan’s Silver Lake and other venues.“We knew that we were in the midst of historical events — history was happening right there,” remembers Mark Allen Baker ’79, an author, historian and music fanatic. His personal archive is full of signed ticket stubs, record albums and contracts that he had the bands sign.

Rock and Roll Hall of Famers The Doors, Simon and Garfunkel, Sly and the Family Stone, the Four Tops, Billy Joel, B.B. King, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Seger, The Kinks and the Ramones all played Oswego, along with several other members of bands in the rock hall. Dozens of hit makers made stops here as well.

And it wasn’t just who appeared, but when. Oswego rock and pop fans reveled in some remarkably relevant acts. “The one that stuck out the most? Pat Benatar was on the cover of Rolling Stone on Wednesday and performed at Laker Hall on that Saturday,” recalls Bill Fargo ’81, a former Student Association senator. She was even wearing the same outfit.

“It’s just ridiculously great how many people they got who were taking smaller gigs like that,” says Fargo, who still keeps a poster from the 1975 Springsteen concert on his wall.

Comedian Steve Martin was getting face time on the cover of Newsweek shortly after his 1977 performance.

Peter Gabriel, then known as former member of British rock band Genesis, played his first North American tour date of 1978 at Laker Hall. In 1973, ex-Byrd David Crosby made his first continental U.S. stop here.

The Little College That Could … Rock

“We always felt proud if we got a show that Syracuse University didn’t,” remembers Ruth Wiseman ’79, who did advertising for the Program Policy Board as a student. “We were the little guys.”

But, apparently not to concert promoters. Boston-based Don Law, who remains a major force in the industry 40 years later, formed a special bond with Oswego early on and set the stage for what would arguably become the college’s golden era of entertainment.

“I was in the right place at the right time,” says Ken Kohberger ’75. He chaired PPB’s Concert Committee as a student and went on to work for Law.

“A lot of it had to do with the fact that the [music] industry was still very new,” explains Kohberger, who spent most of his career as a booking agent and concert promoter. “The concert circuit was just being established.”

If an act had a night off after shows in the still-thriving constellation of Upstate cities, they would take a date at Oswego, where music-loving Lakers were sure to pack their shows.

“It was constant — after a while you just anticipated a show coming within the next month,” says Russ D’Entrone ’72, former editor-in-chief of The Oswegonian.

He got to interview some of the acts that came through.

“There is an awe factor,” he said. “You’re talking about people that you may have their album or listen to them, and here they are sitting right in front of you, in the flesh.”

D’Entrone fondly remembers Tony Butala of the 1960s vocal group The Lettermen picking him up in his Cadillac. Butala was looking for Laker Hall, so they drove over together.

The Big Time

Oswego was building its rock reputation in the late 1960s — without really knowing it.

“We did try to find groups that would attract people … that people would talk about,” says Les Von Losberg ’69, M ’70, who co-founded the Hewitt Union Board of Managers. The predecessor to the Program Policy Board that started in 1971, HUBM was responsible for much of the entertainment, which included The Doors, Simon and Garfunkel, and Sly and the Family Stone.

MORE: A Sampling of Oswego Concerts, 1967-1982

Michael Lazar ’70 took in every show he could. He became a lifelong fan of The Association after they played Oswego in 1967. “They did two shows … They were just unbelievable,” said Lazar. “We had bands that everyone else was drooling over.”Lazar, who went on to a 40-year career working with NPR at the local and national levels, conducted many interviews for use at WRVO-FM, WSGO-AM and The Oswegonian. “I still have to catalog all my tapes. I can’t even remember half the groups
I interviewed.”But it wasn’t always easy getting them here. In the early 1970s, the newly formed PPB had some difficulty getting top acts who delivered on commitments. Then-concert chair Sally O’Herin ’73 remembers how frustrated she was when a Kinks show fell through. 

“It was not as big a business as it is today, so it was really hit-or-miss,” O’Herin says. “They’d find more money at another gig or change their tour.

“It really depended on who was touring and how much they were asking for,” she says. One of her favorite memories is chauffeuring singer-songwriter Richie Havens during his 1973 Oswego stop.

By the mid-1970s, Oswego had grown a knack for grabbing premiere acts. Big and rising stars David Crosby, B.B. King, Dave Mason, The Marshall Tucker Band, Don McLean and Billy Joel (his second time here) all appeared at Oswego during the 1973-74 academic year.

“That was what I walked into. I was blown away,” Baker says. “Here I am in my freshman year and that’s what was in front of me.”

He joined PPB’s Concert Committee as soon as he could and became a part of what he considers Oswego’s platinum decade.

“After Springsteen, things really took off … that really put us on the map,” Baker says of the Boss’s 1975 performance on the heels of his seminal Born to Run album and a Time magazine cover heralding him as “Rock’s New Sensation.”

PPB had doubled the size of the stage and invested in pipe and drape, transforming Laker Hall from gymnasium into a top-notch performance venue. “That’s how we were able to get acts like Springsteen,” Baker says.

“I didn’t know who he was. My roommate said I should go and she was from Downstate and so much more informed,” says Wiseman, who keeps a tin filled with ticket stubs from her Oswego days. “I was a lifetime fan from then on.”

Shows were cheap — just a few dollars — and the bands were huge. No wonder Laker Hall and Hewitt Union ballroom were routinely filled to capacity.

Another factor at the time was the closely shared music tastes among students. “It’s a coming of age and this [rock] was the genre that was holding everything together at the time,” said D’Entrone.

MORE: Oswego’s Jazz Rep Is ‘Solid’

By 1977, the concert committee was deciding between superstars. Baker recalls the difficult choice between the chart-topping Steve Miller Band or soon-to-be-huge Billy Joel.

“We knew he was going to break big. I mean really big,” said Baker of Joel, who was already well-known.

They went with Joel, whose quintessential The Stranger was released that year. The show and the album were smash hits.

That type of foresight is what made the decade so compelling, Kohberger says. “The majority of them you turn on the radio, they’re still playing and some of them are still touring,” he notes.

Songs will often trigger Kohberger’s treasured memories of producing shows, like the time he presented Joel with a birthday cake and champagne on stage at the 1974 gig.

Baker remembers shooting hoops with Bob Seger — then a budding superstar on his Night Moves tour — before his set in Laker Hall.

“It was amazing to watch them set up for the concerts,” recalls Marcia Thompson-Young ’81, who was a PPB treasurer. Soundchecks were always a favorite for her and fellow PPBers.

It was common to have close encounters with the stars before their performances. Howard Gordon ’74, M ’78, remembers going with a group of other students to pick up soul singer Patti LaBelle and her group from the airport.

The Kids Are Alright

The completely student-fueled PPB was responsible for the streak of success. “We had a great group of people who were involved,” says Wiseman. “Everybody took their jobs very seriously.”

“From promotion to production, our team was so good at what we did — that’s why we were able to accomplish what we did,” says Baker. “We felt like we would be letting our classmates down if we didn’t put on a good show.”

PPB had earned its independent status with a sterling reputation not only for putting on a good show, but for putting it on professionally and responsibly, Fargo says. The Student Association and administrators were pretty much hands-off and entrusted the PPB, which also provided movies and other programming, with a respectable chunk of funding.

Programming contributions came from music professors and other student organizations. The Black Student Union, for instance, helped draft acts for the annual Black History Week that included The Four Tops; War; Earth ,Wind and Fire; and Patti LaBelle.

“Those were people that we were not just hoping to see, but people we were advocating for,” says Gordon, a former member of both the BSU and PPB. “These were artists, performers
and lecturers we thought everyone should see.”

The BSU’s influence also brought icons like Muhammed Ali to campus in the early 1970s, one of Gordon’s most treasured memories.

PPB thrived into the 1990s, when it was replaced by the Student Association Programming Board. The great shows continued over the decades, but the years in and around the ’70s were unique.

It was a time that ensures students from any era can proudly proclaim “Oswego rocks!”