About the Author

Born to a father from Richmond, Virginia and a mother; recently orphaned, from Bingham Canyon, Utah, I somehow survived to tell this tale. Mom was living in Tempe, Arizona with her younger sister when she met and soon married my father, eight years her senior. When she became pregnant with my older brother, my mother, getting no support from her new husband, found it necessary to move to Ely, Nevada expecting aid and comfort from her mother's family. Father must have tagged along because within three years there were three of us vying for the food supply. With me in the middle, I probably felt a little left out, but was lucky enough not to remember the hardships as Dear Old Dad still provided no support. He did however, manage a new truck to service a Trash Collecting Contract though he tried to operate it from the comfort of his bed.

Mom wrote that she had a Quarter (25 cents) to feed five mouths because I can‟t imagine her worrying about how well father ate. There is a story never told in there somewhere, but Mom would never tell her three cubs what it was. Something Drastic happened just after her younger sister graduated from high school, to drive Mom to seek help away from Ely. The need for that help must have been dire as she picked up her brood of three along with her sister and headed for Arlington, Virginia to gain solace from Dad's family. The only thing good that came out of that was the availability of jobs as the country got deeper into the “Great Depression.” Mom had been in that “Great Depression” since early 1927, the country was just slow catching on.

I know this seems to be a lot about a time I don't remember, but I just wanted to show tenacity on the one hand and the inability to provide on the other. Over the years Mom had been the one that kept in touch with both sides of the family. In the earlier years when her sisters were alive, Mom managed to visit them from time to time. I think she saw more of them at their homes on the west coast than she did with that younger one that lived in the same town. She even visited a sister-in-law who lived in South America where she gathered data which would launch me into the world of Genealogy. It now seems funny that I know more about my father's side of the family than about my mother‟s, whom I lived with during those formative years. Sometimes I think to raise us meant to raze us, but Mom did the best she could while Finding her own way in a man's world.

In the meantime I seemed to be a sport oriented person who couldn't seem to convince the high school coaches that I really could play their games. I was a Senior before I managed a place on the track team and even at that I had to beat their best milers in practice, but all it got me was the Jr. Varsity. Maybe it was because I was not taking a college prep curriculum. The schools advice was to take shops 2 webautobio

so I had a profession by the time I graduated. I took those shop courses, did well in; Auto Mechanics, Drafting, Metal Shop and Wood Shop while trying to get Math and Science courses as electives, including a course in Electricity, and Radio at a state vocational school one summer which was over 30 miles from home on antiquated school busses and rough country roads. I was miffed for a while when I contemplated night school at a local college extension without any of the prerequisite courses I should have had in high school.

I had already been working for the Army, making Military maps for over four years and shortly after completing courses in college Algebra and English with an "A" and a “B,” my “Friends and Neighbors” decided I would enjoy a paid vacation with Uncle Sam. Had the Korean fiasco been a war and not a “Police Action,” I would have stayed at the Map Service turning out maps, not seeing what I could do for the Army. I was slated to go to Ft. Ord, California when my training was finished, but with a fortuitous call from a major trying to reinstate a Cartographic Unit I headed for an unknown area in Germany. In the Army all troop movements are Secret or Confidential, which obviously accounts for the picture on the company bulletin board showing several GI's holding up a big banner welcoming us to Heidelberg, Germany. Now that was good duty, our company of 95 souls was authorized 45 sergeants and within a year of being Drafted, I was one of those chosen few. Meals on china plates, served by paid locals (though, in truth, some would have worked for the many scraps of food left on the Americans plates), all the comforts of home, well, almost.

It was excellent experience for my expected return to the folds of the Army Map Service as I learned all facets not just the Drafting Room. My old job wasn't there anymore so I became a Negative Engraver and within a year was teaching the process to our division in Providence, Rhode Island. Then I returned to the Academic world, continuing night classes at UV. It was during that period that I started watching newspaper ads for some type of Engineering job so I could be getting experience in the field I was taking at school. There was an ad for a Tool Design Trainee with a Major Military Aircraft Company in Dallas, Texas, so I answered the ad, took a test and after the interview was told that I would hear from them. It was two weeks later that the offer came, giving particulars of salary, terms of Employment and Relocation conditions. It took a lot of soul searching and a major decision to move so far with a wife and two small children. A buddy at work had been an aircraft tool designer and tried to warn me off, but I accepted anyway and off we went, leaving many friends and family behind.

I was amazed at how easy the training course was. One of the major components was a Workbook of Descriptive Geometry that had to be completed and passed before I could become an apprentice mechanical tool designer. I was apprehensive at first because my friends in high school had 3 webautobio always complained about their Geometry classes, but I found the workbook easy to complete, in fact mine was used to check all the others at class end. I was apprenticed to the most senior Tool Designer, doing his simple details for an Automatic Rivet station for their newest fighter aircraft. Then I was off on my own designing the work stand, completing it in short order and back to details again. All of a sudden I got a request from the Company to move to the Electrical Tool Design section. Another big decision, whether to take a position I had no training for, or to stay where I knew what I was doing. I took the offering and became an Electrical Tool Designer. I had been there a little over two years, but was lucky enough to be working the two jobs that got cancelled by the Government. As a result of that down-sizing it made me unemployed, mainly because of the GI Bill and night school.

Two and a half years later, with a Bachelors degree in Electrical Engineering, I hired back in to that same aircraft company, but in the Missile Division, instead of the Aircraft side. It seemed to always be a new job, past experience was just that, past. So now I designed Electrical Ground Support Equipment. That turned out to be a 32 year job as I moved around from project to project finally getting to Manager of Sub-Contract Procurement. The jobs within jobs turned out to have many facets of engineering, from designing a cover door for missile battery compartment, to missile test equipment, to missile integration of missile armament to fighter aircraft. In fact the variety of jobs was almost endless, even including a Parachute Recovery System, very satisfying.

I hadn't thought of it until now, but my Retirement and Layoff were for the same reason, to save a job for someone, though the first was involuntary while the second was voluntary. The Retirement was earlier that I had hoped, but you can't always pick and choose. If the incentive is right it seems hard to pass up, in my case it was a 6 month bonus, meant six months pay without working the time. Besides Ed had a new 55Thousand Dollar Corvette to support so my new job was easier than his.

At first I thought I would have a lot of time on my hands, giving me that “Never had enough time to,” expression to disappear, well almost. My oldest son was in Germany when I retired and to keep from ruffling too many feathers by being home so much, my wife of many years, myself and others traveled to Europe, Hawaii and many states. As usual there were the ups and downs all travelers seem to accumulate.

My daughter and her Boy-friend had a Photo Studio in Cleburne and I spent a lot of time there along with going back and forth to Irving, North Hills, Ft. Worth, Arlington, etc. to pick up supplies and finished pictures that had to be finished off-site. A blight called “For the benefit of the owner,” eventually drove them out of business drying up my taxi service and my Assistant Photographer job along with it. I had started looking at old letters and papers that Mom left when she passed away, some of 4 webautobio

which I remembered and some I didn't. In that data was a copy of the family pages of a Bible given to my Great Grandmother by her Grandfather upon her marriage to my Great Grandfather. It turns out that my Great Great Great Grandfather was a noted Clergy in Virginia and descendent of a very noted family in early Virginia History. I copied the data from the Family Bible, donating it to the State Library of Virginia, whose Curator of Genealogy was a member of that noted family. It turned out that his Grandmother and my Grandmother 6 generations back were sisters, small world. This new found relative was more than happy to get the data as he had been searching for it for some time, one of his missing family links. Much time was spent in the Federal Archives and local libraries with Genealogy Sections scanning thousands of books to find or verify data. There came a time when new data got slimmer and much of the data in places like the Mormon files were feeding me back my own data.

One day my daughter offered an idea for a book and gave me a writer's software package, which I tried, but couldn't work to that format and just wrote until I reached the conclusion. That effort resulted in “The Little Red Schoolhouse.” I am presently working on sequels to this book and a Biography or two, including my own which was at the suggestion of my Granddaughter. That prodigious undertaking is broken into four volumes with many pictures from past and present, even the ones from space are from my collection or are of items that are in my possession. All of the writings have taken several years, even this book was written in 2005, but I finally decided to get it published, which has turned out to be more work than I thought. I hope the public likes the story an imaginative mind can think up. As far as the Autobiography goes, I can only portray what has happened with time providing the final chapter.