George Rappleyea
George Washington Rappleyea (July 4, 1894 – August 29, 1966) was an American metallurgical engineer and the manager of the Cumberland Coal and Iron Company in Dayton, Tennessee.
During a meeting at Robinson's Drug Store, it was Rappleyea who convinced a group of Dayton businessmen to sponsor a test case of the Butler Act, which prohibited the teaching of evolution in the state's schools.
George Washington Rappleyea was noted for his part in the Scopes Evolution Trial, his work as a Vice President of the Higgins Boat Company, which made landing craft for use in WWII, his scientific patents, and his part in weapons procurement for a raid on Cuba.
[2] In early 1925, the Tennessee Legislature passed the Butler Act forbidding the teaching of the theory of evolution in public schools.
On May 4, 1925, an article in the Chattanooga Times reported that the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) was interested in challenging the law.
[4] The second possible reason may have involved a situation where he had attended a funeral for a 6-year-old boy, the son of one of his workers, who died in a railroad accident.
[2] On May 5, 1925 Rappleyea met with Walter White, the superintendent of the Rhea County schools, and a young lawyer named Sue K. Hicks, at Robinson's Drug Store in Dayton, Tennessee, and proposed his idea of challenging the law.
[2] When the word got out about the case, William Jennings Bryan, a fundamentalist leader who had not tried a lawsuit in 25 years, volunteered to help prosecute Scopes; however he died in Dayton five days after the trial and never delivered his anticipated speech.
[7] Rappleyea went to New York City to discuss the situation with the ACLU and get their financial assistance for a defending lawyer.
The defense had wanted to appeal the decision to higher courts in order to make a challenge to the basis of the law itself, but this was rebuffed.
In January 1937 he attended a meeting in New York City to form the American Association of Boat Builders and Repairers.
On April 21, 1946, he attended two boat shows in New York City as a Higgins retiree with an exhibit for marine plasticized bonded wood.
One of the leaders of the company was Claude Eatherly a pilot who claimed to be instrumental in dropping the atomic bomb on Japan.
On March 2, 1947, Rappleyea was arrested in New Orleans with others for conspiracy to violate the National Firearms Act as Secretary Treasurer of Marsallis Construction Company.
On March 31, 1948, he pleaded guilty in Biloxi, Mississippi Federal Court to conspiracy to ship arms and ammunition to British Honduras.
In September 1951, he was living at Southport, North Carolina, as Director of the "Tropical Agricultural Research Laboratory, Inc." He had an invention which was featured in an article in "Popular Mechanics" magazine about a building material made from molasses, plastic, and sand called "Plasmofalt".
In July 1962, he lived in Miami, Florida, and wrote an article in the Professional Engineering Magazine about his invention of "Plasmofalt" as a stabilizing agent in adobe construction.
[1] On June 21, 1963, he wrote a letter to Dr. Bainbridge Bunting, Associate Professor of Art & Architecture at the University of New Mexico about how he got the idea to invent "Plasmofalt".
