Isobel Wayrick was born in Hamilton, Scotland in 1937.  She attended school there at the Hamilton Academy and then emigrated to the United States with her parents in 1952.  Her parents moved to Lakewood, Ohio, where she completed high school and in 1954 enrolled at Baldwin-Wallace College in Berea, Ohio.  Her career at Baldwin-Wallace was cut short, however, when Isobel met John (Jack) F. Wayrick as a classmate.  The two were married in 1956 following Jack's graduation and both moved to northern New Jersey where Jack had been raised. 

            Isobel continued in her studies, enrolling at Upsala College in East Orange, New Jersey and attending classes at night while she worked to help support the young couple during the day.  She graduated from Upsala in 1964 with a BBA (cum laude), but continued in graduate studies at Fairleigh Dickenson University.  Here she was once again a classmate of Jack's as he completed his Masters Degree at the same university. 

            With education out of the way, the couple bought their first home in Pompton Plains, New Jersey, where Isobel continues to reside. 

            While her career did not really begin in plastics, one might say that her plastics career began at the Magnus Organ Corporation in Livingston, New Jersey.  Isobel took a job there in 1957 after moving east with Jack.  Her first job at Magnus was Office Manager but she was later promoted and named Controller, where one of her responsibilities was purchasing parts, many of them plastic parts used in the now renowned organ. 

            The Magnus was a chord organ that one could learn to play by letters and numbers and by the late 1950s, sales of the organ began to escalate because it was easy to learn and music was gaining in popularity.  The increased sales necessitated a move to a larger facility in Linden, New Jersey where the company began its own molding operations. 

            "By this time, I had been named a vice president for the company," recalls Isobel, "and that's when I met George Thorne, a fellow member of the Plastics Pioneers Association (PPA) and a former President of the Society of Plastics Engineers (SPE).  We hired George to manage the injection molding part of the business, in which he had a strong background.

            "It was an exciting time of sales growth – including international sales – and manufacturing expansion.  I traveled all over the world for trade shows, setting up offices in France and the United Kingdom, and negotiating joint ventures for overseas production.

            "It was during this time that I joined the SPE and the Society of the Plastics Industry (SPI) in an effort to increase my knowledge of plastics and the industry."

            Isobel eventually became President of Magnus, but by the late 1960s the popularity of the mechanical chord organ was eclipsed by the economics and innovations made possible by the use of new electronic components that were being introduced at the time.  Eventually, Magnus was sold to an investment group and Isobel left the company to pursue what she describes as a "brief, disastrous start-up venture" of her own. 

            "It was a line of decorative items produced through a poured plastic technique.  The manufacturing was poorly conceived and the financing for the venture was inadequate.  I struggled with the venture for a year , but inevitably had to give up and go find another job."

            As it turned out, Isobel didn't have to go too far.  "The Magnus molds ended up at a custom molder in New Jersey named Graber-Rogg, Inc. (GR), and when Magnus went out of business, GR decided to continue producing the line as a proprietary product.  They brought me on board in 1970, first as Controller, then as Vice President of Sales and Marketing.  We continued to market the product line, along with custom OEM sales and then in 1980 entered a joint venture with Wurlitzer, who wanted to trade on their own well-known name and expand into lower priced electronic organs.  They believed volume sales would solve their declining market position.  That really didn't work out, and in the mid-1980s GR decided to get out of proprietary products completely and concentrate on their OEM sales. 

            "At that time, the plastics industry was experiencing the early stages of development of Computer Aided Design (CAD) and I personally found this new opportunity exciting and intriguing.  It was also a period when the tool making part of the business was being challenged by overseas competition.  I saw an opportunity to combine the CAD design services and other pre-production services, including tool making, into a niche business.  I approached the Graber-Rogg family about an arrangement where I could offer this to them for their OEM customers to help cover costs.  At the same time, I also approached a long-time friend and business associate, Charles "Buddy" Engelstein about partnering with him in the venture.  The tooling would initially come from both Portugal and the Far East where Buddy had developed a thriving electronics distribution business through many years of contacts in the Orient.  He had also developed reliable tooling sources there. 

            "He, too, was at the point in his business where he saw the advantages of adding value through offering technical services to his customers for 'one-stop shopping.'  We formed GR Technical Services, Inc. in 1986 with Buddy and I as partners. 

            "We had an unusual project that we undertook in 1994 in which we had an assignment to help design a state-of-the-art tooling facility in Bulgaria that would include heat treating of metal and mold texturing.  Once the layout was approved and the financing was obtained, which was not an easy task, we undertook the procurement of equipment, negotiations for licenses where required, and worker training that occurred both in Bulgaria and the U.S.  It was an interesting project for our company and for a couple of years, but because of the political and economic turmoil in the region, the facility never functioned after it was built.  We started the project when the "Iron Curtain" was still down, which meant we had to obtain U.S. government approval for our activities.  By the time the project was finished, the "Iron Curtain" was history, but the region remained in great turmoil."

            During this period in 1995, Isobel and her partner Buddy, entered another business venture, this one called Martec Access Products, Inc.  The enterprising Buddy had been importing garage door opener components for many years, and he had some ideas on how to build a better "mouse trap" or as it would be a better garage door opener.  Using wireless and RF technology and building on GR Technical Service's already established technology, the company patented a new technology that has been very successful and continues to grow business for the company. 

            Throughout all of these years, Jack was a willing supporter and the couple traveled internationally to places like Antartica, New Zealand, South America, Portugal, Spain, Iceland, Midway, Norway and even above the Arctic Circle.  It's difficult to know if this travel itinerary sparked a new interest in Isobel, but during this period she became a nature photographer.  Her photography, of birds, in particular, which have been taken from her own backyard to exotic habitats, have gained national notoriety.  Her photographs are displayed in Audubon Centers, at a local library and even her Town Hall.