Sometimes the road just forks

 Changing jobs is a tricky thing. On the one hand, as you lead up to that decision, you are probably getting tired of what you are doing, and the idea of a change starts seeping into your thoughts. On the other, there’s the idea that a promotion or new opportunity is just around the corner if you stay.

So you go back and forth: stay where you know the territory? Or move on and start something newer and potentially better? Both are complete unknowns.

A change decision is pretty easy when you are single. Anything you decide is something only you have to deal with. Get married and have a family, the decisions loom much more impactful to not only you, but the other important people in your life.

Deciding to get out of the Active Duty Air Force was a pretty epic decision. It happened as a few things all came together at the same time. One thing was work. I had just had a really great year as probably one of the top Radar Navigators (Bombardier) in our unit: I had gone to Bomb Comp, then been selected to participate in two Strategic Air Command Bombing/Navigation competitions, and we had brought back trophies from both. I was on Stan/Eval, and things were good. Then we had an inspection team come to town, and on the closed book Bold Face test, they switched the order of a couple questions, and I put the responses out of order, and I failed. As an Evaluator. I was devastated.

At the same time I was getting pretty close to finishing my Masters in Business Administration. So in the back of my mind, I had a pretty high confidence in my salability in the outside world. Great education, proven record of success as a junior military officer, etc.

I had been at Griffiss for 3+ years and it was time to think about what came next. As an evaluator and instructor, the path forward for a mid-level Captain was pretty clear: Castle AFB, CA to be a training unit instructor for newbies, or to Offutt AFB, Nebraska to go work in the vault as a planner. Neither job appealed to me after being at the tip of the spear (so to speak) for the past 6 years. Plus, after being an Evaluator and on all the bombing competitions, I felt I had pretty much done everything that really mattered as a B-52 Navigator. (I think I had a pretty narrow viewpoint back then, but I was 29…)

I also had a family to think about. Laura had managed to get assigned to Griffiss a year after I got there, but the opportunities for the two of us being assigned together were quickly dwindling as she moved up in the weather world, and I moved around in the flying world. She had an opportunity to run a weather Detachment in Colorado Springs, but when I tried to get assigned nearby at the Academy as an Instructor, all the logical slots were already filled with guys in my year group who moved there after their first assignment. No openings.

By this time we knew that Jill was on the way, so the search for “what comes next” became more poignant. I didn’t want to commute to see my family, and Laura didn’t want to be an “Air Force Wife,” following her husband around. The timing wasn’t optimum, but it seemed pretty obvious, the time to pull the ejection trigger ring had come. So I put my papers in at the end of November, 1989; Laura followed suit (after I told her); and we left the Air Force together on the 1st of May, 1990.

As it turned out, once we moved to Pittsburgh, I caught on at Cooper Power Systems in Cannonsburg, fairly quickly. I didn’t like the Quality Engineer job at first, but it grew on me the more things I got involved with and the more people I met. Unfortunately, after about a year and a half, the workers went on strike and I got laid off (Not Quality Control needed if they aren’t making anything). So I went “full-time” back to flying with the Reserves, and loved it. When, after more than a year, the strike was settled and they called me back to work, I decided not to go back. I don’t think that was very popular with Laura - we had two kids by then, and had had a couple of healthcare scares. I just had a feeling that the company wouldn’t last, and it turned out they didn’t. About three years later, Corporate closed the place.

At the Reserves, the flying was great… Hurricane relief missions (Hurricane Andrew), Gulf War clean-up, Bosnia twice, lots of South American counter drug missions, Red Flag, Maple Flag in Canada, OREs/ORIs (Readiness Inspections) kept me really busy. Then one day they announced the good times were over and I quickly realized I needed a real job. I looked at several things, including selling lighting with Pat, selling investments/stocks with Merrill Lynch, etc. but I really wanted to do something I could see made a difference.

I found a part-time job that worked into full-time with a guy in Cranberry who was a Naval Architect and wanted to build stuff along the rivers. I ran the administration side of the business and worked as a projected manager. Lots of interesting projects until  we hit a dry spot and I was basically working for free, still flying for food. About that same time I found a job at US Airways as a ground school instructor, and it felt like a no-brainer: go with the reliability of a major corporation. Working for an airline sounded cool, and it was!

Then 9/11 happened in 2001. After a few false starts, my unit got activated on 3 December, 2003, and I shipped off to the desert on a  year’s worth of orders a week or so later.

In the meantime, US Airways consolidated operations, started furloughing instructors and moved the training center to Charlotte.

While I was activated, I fell back in love with military flying operations, and really enjoyed being a full-time aviator. As my orders expired, the Operations Group had an opening for a full-time GS Air Reserve Technician (ART) Navigator, and they offered it to me. I jumped at it. The pay was virtually the same, if not better, and I didn’t have to move or commute. That was an easy decision.

In all, I (we) faced the job change decision several times, and for me it always came down to what was the best thing to do for our family as a whole. Not always simple choices, but in the end they were fairly straight forward ones I never regretted. (It helped that I got to do everything I ever wanted, work-wise.)

One of my Bomb Run timing/radar aiming forms.

Who’s the best first boss?

 Being in the military all my life, it’s challenging to come up with a definitive “First Boss” figure. I had two jobs in High School, an after-school janitor at Woolworths in North Las Vegas, and a bus boy at some restaurant called “the Bull,” or something like that, in Glendale, AZ. It was just outside the base, so it was pretty busy, but nothing fancy. I have no recollection of having a “boss.” at either of those places. I went to work, knew the job, did it, and went home.

In the Air Force, I didn’t really have a “Boss” until I was put on my first crew at Ellsworth AFB. So I went through college with a lot of “guidance” in an academic situation. That carried over to my training assignments at Mather and Castle AFBs in California. We were in “flights” with a Captain as our Flight Commander, but really we just showed up for class and worked our way through the curriculum. Unless you had issues, you didn’t really talk to them much. I wasn’t the biggest Nerd in the class, and a long way from the worst, so I pretty much just waded my way through the material: Log procedures, general navigation, Day Celestial, Night Celestial, and finally Low level. Then it was a month of Advanced Navigation which was basically how to navigate overwater, using things like dead reckoning, air plotting, air pressure and celestial. Then to Nav/Bomb Training (NBT) or “how I learned to love the Bomb.” Everything B-52 for Navigators. You basically learned to be a Bombardier and Navigator, with the goal that you could show up at your unit as a really basic Navigator.

That was the only place I had much trouble. I didn’t get the way the test questions were written so you could go through the secret documents in sequential order to find the answers. Totally tubed the first and only test I failed. Had to go see the Lt Col for counseling, but once he figured out why I was so lost, he gave me the gouge, and from there on I was fine. It was a test that was meant to get us in the books, so I was like one of the very few guys who had failed it. For over thinking it. Just one of those things. A real head-shaker.

After that it was to Castle AFB where we finally got to fly our selected (I won’t say “chosen.”) aircraft. Then you were put on a training crew with your Radar Navigator (Nav upgrading to Bombardier), new co-pilot, upgrading aircraft commander, and new gunner. We all had dedicated instructors, so there was a Captain Instructor Nav who flew with us, but he was so laid back ~ I did learn a lot from him, but his job was to get us through our check-ride and out the door to our first base.

When I got to Ellsworth, I was just pointed in a direction and told to see the next important person in my life: The Squadron Commander, the Life Support folks, the Admin office, the Travel/finance office, the housing office, the training office, etc. As all the administrative stuff gets taken care of, your life centers on the training office and the tactics office (Bomb/Nav), down in the vault. Sitting Nuclear Alert in a Strategic Air Command B-52 involved a LOT of study and practice. So you show up to work everyday in your blues and go through the secret books learning where the targets were, how to get there, when/where to get gas, when to fire missiles, what to do if you are late, where to go when you are done dropping bombs and you want to come home. etc. Basically you become a walking encyclopedia of preplanned armageddon. THEN you stand up in front of the Wing Commander and all his loyal minions, brief the mission you are about to assume, and stand there taking questions from all the staff officers, grilling you on various aspects of your job. It’s pretty daunting. But in the end, you are a certified Strategic Air Command aircrew member, and you are assigned to your first crew.

My first real boss was a guy named Major Christopher Moore. Chris was a very interesting guy. Most other aircraft commanders were upgrading young Captains, who had been co-pilots for a few years, or maybe had been FAIPs (First Assignment Instructor Pilots). Chris had been at one or two bases previously, but then had been a Staff officer somewhere, gone to Air Command & Staff College in residence, and was back in the cockpit for a year or two then onto the staff track somewhere. The uniqueness about that background was he knew what it was like to run a crew, but also know what all the Ops organizations were looking for when they thought about “success.” If two opportunities came up for the crew, he would choose the one that gave his crew the greatest exposure. The fun part was he had total trust that we could perform any tasking.

It was a great crew: At the beginning it was Chris as the Aircraft Commander (AC), Capt Tom Griffiths (CP), Maj Jim Veazey (RN -Bombardier), Me as the Nav, so the weak link); 1Lt Dave Bucknall (EW) and SSgt Lynn White (Gunner). If there were VIPs on base who wanted to fly, we were the crew: Chris was born Staff officer, so made sure we had briefs prepared and everyone could give a tour of the plane or their flight stations. He put us in for awards, not caring if we won or not. It was getting his people’s names and stories out in front of leadership. He volunteered us for things like Academy cadet visit liaisons… Additional duties that seemed like a pain at the time, but paid off when the two-star sent a letter of appreciation to your Wing Commander with your name on it as an outstanding performer.

He spent a lot of effort making sure our performance reports sparkled. He made us write our own Performance Reports. When I protested, his logic was simple: You know better than anyone what you did. If you write it well, the worst you can have at the end is what you put in it, so write it well. If your rater is lazy, he’ll hand in what you wrote. If he cares, he’ll make it better. It was also great practice for when you were put in a leadership position and had to write reports on your staff. That came in extremely handy later in life. I’ve written dozens of performance reviews since then.

He also did a great job looking out for the guys on his crews. Tom Griffith went on to upgrade to aircraft commander, lead a Bomb Comp crew and became a Squadron Commander at Barksdale. Jim Veazey left our crew, when to Training Flight for a bit then out to Edwards to work on the B-2. Dave Bucknall became an instructor, flew Bomb Comp with Tom and went to Minot, then got involved in the whole nuclear reduction monitoring program. It allowed him to stay in the Dakotas till he retired.

Me? I’m convinced he helped me move from the crew to Training Flight, where I flew with all the young guys and got set up for an early upgrade to Bombardier on my way to my next assignment at Griffiss. What a blessing that was. I didn’t show up and immediately get put at the bottom of the Nav upgrade list. Taking care of your people has huge pay-offs.

Besides running a good crew, Chris Moore taught me about how the Air Force works, how to focus your personal career for success, and the importance of taking care of your people. They will  remember your efforts, be better employees and teammates; and return the favor in spades. It has proven sound advice many times.

They weren’t just jobs, they were adventures!

 My first job was during the summer after 7th grade. I was basically a farm worker: I picked strawberries in the fields around Mount Vernon, Washington. Five days a week a bus would swing by early in the morning, just like for school, pick a bunch of kids up, and head over to the Mount Vernon area where we would get out, grab a crate with about 12 cartons, and start down a row, on our knees, pulling strawberries, taking off the stems and loading up the cartons. We’d get paid by the carton. In was pretty miserable work. Wet and sticky in the morning, hot and sticky in the afternoon. I think I made $76 dollars that whole summer.

My next “job” was probably 9th grade, teaching little kids swim lessons at the Nellis base pool. I had passed Junior Lifesaving, and they needed someone to teach the really littles the basics of water safety, so I would take them in the water and get them to not be afraid of going underwater, how to push for the top, and some basic strokes to move towards the edge if they fell in. I wasn’t paid, but it was a fun way to spend a summer!

After that, I only had a couple of real part-time jobs. Dad had a policy (for me, anyway): play sports or get a job. So… for the most part, I played sports. However, there were a couple times I didn’t play. I think the winter of my Junior year, before we moved to Litchfield Park, I got a job as a clean-up guy at Woolworths down on Freemont. I would mop floors, clean the bathrooms, do a little restock; about three hours a night after school.

My Senior year, during the winter season, I bused tables at a small restaurant right outside the Luke AFB front gate on the main drag in Glendale, AZ. I can’t remember the name, but it had “Bull” in the title. It was an okay job, but I didn’t do it more than about six weeks. As soon as baseball season started, I was gone like a shot. When that didn’t work out, it was track.

After graduation from college (2 June, 1982), it was Nav School; Advanced Nav (i.e. overwater nav); NBT - Navigator/Bombardier Training; B-52 Combat Crew Training at Castle AFB, in Merced, CA; then finally to my first assignment as a B-52 Navigator at Ellsworth AFB, SD on 23 January 1984.

I flew on a hard crew for about a year, then upgraded to Instructor Navigator, and moved to Training Flight to oversee training for all the Squadron Navigators. While I was there they announced the Squadron was converting to B-1s and we all had to move to new bases, so I convinced my bosses to send me to upgrade as a Radar Navigator (Bombardier) enroute to my next assignment at Griffiss AFB, in Rome, NY. I knew if I showed up to my next base as a Navigator, it would be a year or more before I upgraded, just because the guys there were already lined up. It didn’t make me any friends at my next base, showing up as a 1Lt Radar, but it didn’t change anyone’s life there either.

At Griffiss, I flew as a crew Radar for about 2-1/2 years, upgrading to Instructor and then Evaluator Radar Navigator. As the Radar Nav, back in the Cold War days, you and the pilot were primarily responsible for the nuclear weapons while on Alert. It was a huge responsibility, and pretty cool as a 28 year-old to sometimes have 16 nukes at your disposal. As an Evaluator, I moved up to the Wing, gave flight checks, managed all the Flight Evaluation Records, and flew on bombing competitions until we decided to get out in late 1989.

In May of 1990, I left Active Duty and moved with Laura, Kara, and a very young Jill (born in February) to Pittsburgh. I had no job, except the Reserves, but a decent education and experience as an Air Force Officer. I remember being nervous, but confident we’d figure something out.

As it turned out, I got a job in Canonsburg, PA as a Quality Control Engineer at Cooper Power Systems, an electrical transformer manufacturer. I really wanted to say I was part of creating things. It was very educational, if not very fulfilling. I think I got more out of it than I thought I was getting at the time. There was no real Quality Control program in the plant when I got there, save visual inspections. My boss and his boss both knew what they wanted to implement, and it was up to me to put it in place. So I went around the plant, talked to the guys who had been building transformers for decades, and figured out where typical problems occurred, what could be measured, and then put together recording sheets for inspectors, entered it all in spreadsheets; created line charts tracking types and locations of errors, etc. You do one or two of those, and suddenly everyone’s ears prick up. Next thing you know you are invited to production meetings, and then making recommendations. That was pretty cool.

In the summer of 1991, however, the plant went on strike, and everything closed down. I was kept around for about six months, then furloughed. Luckily, the Reserves were busy, and I “bummed” (“Will fly for food”) for the next 18 months, as we did ORIs (Operational Readiness Inspections), Bosnia support, Counter Drug missions to Central America, and a dozen other things.

All good things come to an end, however, and I think it was the summer of 1994, after the Airlift Rodeo, when the money suddenly ran out. The Director of Operations walked in one day and said the gravy train was over and the long term orders were done.

Somewhere along the way, Laura or I had met a guy named Gene Miklausic. He was the former Commander of the Port of Pittsburgh, and a Naval Architect. He had built a small, but growing business doing Department of Transportation Drug Testing for truckers and people working the rivers, but wanted to do engineering things too. Somehow we started talking and I offered to be his gofer boy/project manager/office manager for the engineering firm. So I started working part-time with him and part-time with the Reserves. I would put proposals together for projects. On the ones requiring true engineering, he’d do it or have a contact we’d hire for the job, and I would put the packages together.

The US Coast Guard came out with a ruling that required all the oil terminals along the rivers to produce Oil Spill Containment Response plans, proving they they had a response plan and enough containment to contain any oil that might leak, before it got to the river. I could read government rules and regulations better than almost anyone (I had been in SAC!), so I put dozens of those together at $3,500-$10,000 a pop, depending on facility size.

I helped manage a project in Harmony, PA, just down the road, where we built on an addition to a generic diaper manufacturing company. Very educational. Learned about contractors and Time & Materials! Managed the design and construction of a dock for the Pittsburgh Voyager down in front of the Carnegie Science Center. We also designed and managed the replacement of a water discharge pipe from a steel plant in Homestead, PA. All cool projects.

However, in the Spring of 1998, things were slowing down and I wasn’t getting paid, so I started looking for something else. Luckily, a fellow Navigator told me US Airways was starting to ramp up it’s Training department because they were about to buy a large number of Airbus aircraft to upgrade their fleet, which meant more pilots, more flight attendants, and more training. So I put my resume’ in and interviewed. The test was to stand up and give a 10 min presentation on any subject: I taught all about the AN/APN-241 Low Power Color Radar on the c-130. They loved it, and I got hired.

I really loved that job. We taught 17-20 days a month, bidding for classes that had the most credit value but least time teaching. I started teaching Non-specific courses, which generally meant fuzzy stuff, like Crew Resource Management, Security, Aviation Weather, regulations, etc.; anything that applied to any aircraft or to any crew position (we taught both pilots and flight attendants Crew Resource management as a group).  

Eventually I gained Seniority enough to bid International, which taught overwater navigation and planning procedures to the very senior pilots. Finally, as a Nav, I had a position where I carried total credibility. it was a lot of fun, and by the deep dive into the subject I needed to teach it, it was very helpful for all the ocean crossings I was about to do after 9/11.

So 9/11 hit. I almost immediately went on Military leave and flew out to McChord AFB in Washington and sat alert for a month with a Chem DECON team in case there would be some kind of attack on the west coast. Luckily it was a one-and-done attack.

In the Spring of 2003, my Reserve Squadron was notified we probably were deploying to Turkey to prep for the invasion of Iraq. That petered out when Turkey refused to allow us basing rights on their soil. But the day after that next Thanksgiving, we were notified we’d be activated on Dec 3rd for a year, headed to Kuwait. I think we left on the 8th, landed in Kuwait on the 12th, and were flying missions into Iraq by the 15th.

In January, our 1 year orders were extended to two years. That was eye-opening…. but then someone on some staff decided we couldn’t have all these crews going without training for two full years, so they came up with a rotation plan; several months in Theater, several months, at home, repeat. For two years.

Meanwhile… US Airways decided to move the training department to Charlotte, so for me to stay teaching when I came back, I’d have to commute, or move the family to North Carolina. The family consensus was we didn’t really want to do that. At almost the same time, they instituted a furlough of instructors as the hiring surge had passed.

Concurrently, Pete Kehoe, a long time ART Navigator, retired, which opened up a full-time GS (Civil Service) slot in the unit. In January, 2006 our orders ended, and the Squadron offered me the job. So I asked US Airways to furlough me in lieu of someone junior, and I took the full-time GS Squadron Navigator job. I was able to stay on furlough and retain return rights for about 3-1/2 years until they had recalled all the junior guys back. By that time I was fully entrenched in the 758th, and had no plans to move to Charlotte, or go back to US Airways.

Buying my first cars

 The first car I bought myself was a 1974 Datsun 240Z.

It was a fun little car, six cylinders, 4 speed manual transmission, room for two, with a hatchback you could put some boxes or luggage in. Pretty much a perfect car for a single guy about to become a 2Lt in the Air Force.

Most guys were buying Trans Ams and a few Corvettes. Fort Sam Houston offered car loans to cadets, but the most they would give was $6,000. By 1981, that wouldn’t buy much, especially new. I would have liked the Mazda RX-7, but there was no way I could afford that.

One Saturday morning, I took my approved car loan down to C-Springs and went car shopping. I probably went to 4 different dealerships before I stumbled across the 240Z. It was beautiful, and the test drive was fun. All engine, it just zoomed. So, very little negotiating: I had the money, and soon I had the car.

What I quickly found out was, while I loved the car, it was steel built and had probably been driven up in the north east with lots of salt on the roads. It had lots of rust problems. At Nav school, I eventually ended up taking it to an auto body shop, getting it bondo’d to hell and back, and repainted a bright red vs. the original orange. I drove that for about two years, until I was at Castle AFB, going through B-52 Crew Training.

That was when I spotted the awesome 1979 Ford Mustang that would catch Laura’s eye, and change my life forever… jk! (But only about the car.)

Comrades in arms: friends for all time

 I made lots of friends in the Air Force. How could you not? Especially in the flying game, where everytime you go up on a sortie, you put your life in your buddies’ hands. It may be subconscious. but you know it. That bond you build with these guys is strong, especially after being on a hard crew during a deployment. If you don’t particularly like them very much, you typically respect their skills and abilities to get the team home day after day…. mostly. (Some guys truly ARE just self-centered zipper-suited jagoffs).

During Nav school, I still keep in touch with a couple friends, if only through Facebook now and then. Barry Butler was in my Nav class and then my partner through Nav/Bombardier Training (NBT). He went to Fairchild AFB for a couple years, then got out, made a ton of money selling pharmaceuticals and medical equipment, and now has a distillery in Tarpon Springs, FL.

Bob Mills and Pete Wangler were two guys I hung out with a lot. Both Navs, Bob became an expert at opening up and running airfields in combat and disaster areas. He retired to NJ. Pete morphed into a Air Force Doctrine expert, taught at Air University, retired as a Colonel, and then bacame a High School Jr. ROTC Instructor in St. Louis.

At Ellsworth, my first crew really is where I made my friends. Dave Bucknall was my Electronic Warfare Officer. Jeff Bradford was my second Radar Navigator, a couple years older, but close enough in age to be friends. Jim Veazey was my first Radar Navigator, and by far the person  who mentored me the most in the Air Force. He and his  wife, Pam, lived very close to us in Rapid City, and we kept in touch over the years. He ended up going to Edwards I think, then worked on the B-2 before retiring. Unfortunately he died a few years ago. Probably the nicest person I’ve ever met.

Chris Moore, Dave East, Jim Veazey, Me, Dave Bucknall, Lynn White.

Laura made friends with Barb and Chris Kenny, who were Civil Engineers on base. They moved to Cleveland and the Washington DC area, and for a while they were both reservists doing various things. They currently live in Oregon. We need to go visit.

At Griffiss, we became really good friends with Tim & Kathy Vinoski and Jerry and Jeannie Tshondikidis. Both had two kids about the same time as we had Kara, so we had a lot in common. Tim became really good at being an Exec, and ended up at the Pentagon advising on Bomber issues, then switched to Tampa working at Special Ops Command.

Jerry went home to work with the family car dealerships. Unfortunately Jeannie, who worked for GE and was a mover and shaker, passed away several years ago.

On my Griffiss crews, I became good friends with my AC, Dave Shunk, Tim Schuetz, Bill Hecht, Dino Perez and Ralph Davino.

When I moved to Stan/Eval, Dave Re and I became friends as we flew together as a Nav team for almost two years.

Here in Pittsburgh, I made friends with a lot of Navigators and guys I served on hard crews with during deployments.

Mark Prentice.
Navs include Mark Prentice, Joe Poznik, Ron Davis, Bob Shemer, Bill Estright, John Demaye (Who I worked with at US Airways), Pat McKenna, Bill Hertrick, Chinky Kochansky and Ray Toy.

Me, Chris Constantine, Bill Estright, Chinky Kichansky, Aldo Filoni, Ray Toy, Bill Hertrick, Craig Watkins, Wes Cranmer.

From my deployments: Tom Huzzard, Ed Tarquinio, Dan Ruediesulli. From my C-17 Conversion days, I became good friends with Sam Ewing, Chief William Andrews, Dawn Dixon, Dave Vanik, and Kyle Imbrogno.

And just from time in the Squadron, Jaime Carter, Bill Gutermuth and Diane Patton.

More school isn’t for everyone.

 School is not for everyone, and there are a ton of alternate ways to learn, gain more experience, or just plain expand your chosen skill set. I happen to enjoy the academic experience and seem to do okay. I might feel different if I hadn’t gone to the Air Force Academy, complete with a free education and guaranteed job afterwards. The life experience is much different when you are fending for yourself.

For me, getting a Masters Degree seemed the logical move to make as I progressed to an experienced rated officer with options coming up to move forward in the Air Force, or possibly leave the Air Force at some point and try to make my way in the civilian world.

In the Air Force, it was a block checked that no one could deny. The Navigator career field is one that is almost always as a 2nd tier citizen, so to be competitive for good jobs, one needs to do everything possible to deny the promotion board and career managers from pigeon-holing you onto the short track to elimination. Griffiss offered an MBA through Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Albany. Their instructors drove over from Albany to Rome to teach the courses just like in their own classrooms. It was the first time I’d had more than one or two professional educators with Ph.d’s. (The Air Force Academy was generally staffed with officers who were Captains and Majors with Masters degrees). There’s definitely a different vibe.

For the idea of getting out of the Air Force and jumping into the civilian world with a family in tow, getting an MBA seemed a must. I’m sure it helped get the job at Cooper Power Systems when I showed up as a former military officer, and a great education. Could I have gotten a better job with it? Probably, if I didn’t want to keep flying and I didn’t have as much motivation to set down roots and find stability in our lives on a very short timeline.

Has it helped at all over the last 40 years? Absolutely. I think differently than I did before I had those classes. I have used almost all the research and problem solving skills gained through my MBA at some point. Have I needed accounting? or statistics? Some, but just knowing the terms and the concepts have been handy to have in my very meandering career.

As I said at the start, I don’t recommend a Masters for everyone, but I do recommend continuing education no matter what you do. As you get older and more experienced, you get more responsibility, and you will face challenges that are unlike those at lower, more junior levels. Having an expanded background will always serve you well.

What my grandparents were like

 One of the benefits of being in a military family growing up was the opportunity to travel all over the world. The drawback of getting the chance to live in lots of different places across the globe was the lack of contact with extended family.

Because we moved home to Anacortes while my Dad was overseas in Vietnam and Korea, I actually got to know my Mom’s side of the family fairly well. Unfortunately, not so much on my Dad’s side.

My Dad’s father, Gerhard Ambrotious Branby, passed away 28 March, 1955, exactly 5 years before I was born. Born on 12 April, 1900, he was just shy of 55 when he passed. His parents were Ole Olav Olavsson Brandby, and Helga K. Strand.

From what I know, he had lived with Type I Diabetes most of his adult life. It didn’t prevent him from having and raising six strong kids, but I don’t think he worked steady jobs. My dad wrote about his father thusly:

“Dad was a diabetic and a serious one. That was one stigma that hung over the entire family as we witnessed his twice daily insulin injections, and every once in a while he would lapse into a coma and scare us all half to death. But, somehow he seemed to survive and he would be right back at it again. He was a man of ‘True Grit.’ He could have given up anytime but he was too stubborn… My Dad went to work for the WPA (Works Progress Administration - a government sponsored program that put in all the sewer systems in the town of Glenwood). I believe he made somewhere in the neighborhood of $45 a month.”

About his mother, Esther Lovina Helland (4 January, 1900 - 31 Jan 1990), he wrote:

“Mother was a truly magnificent woman. She struggled through raising six kids on a meager budget. With help from the farm: butter, eggs, meat etc. and some monthly support from “Direct Relief,” a Depression program, we all ate and subsisted fairly well.

Mom made clothes, we always had a garden, baked all our own bread and all in all never really suffered.”

Living mostly overseas, or in Washington growing up, I don’t remember meeting her too many times, though there were a couple times she came to see us, or we went to Minnesota. My cousins remember her quite fondly, and I do regret that we didn’t get to know her better. Her parents were Mikkel Eriksen Helland and Ingaborg Knutsdatter Hoverud.

Being stationed on the west coast, or actually living up in Anacortes while my Dad was in Vietnam, or stationed in Korea, we spent a lot of time with my Mom’s parents. They also came and visited us once or twice, the last being when we lived in Las Vegas; so it felt like we were regular members of the same family.

My Grandmother, Cora Jo Robeson, was born in Bogota, Tennessee, on 27 January, 1911. Her parents were Hawkins Eugene Robeson and Roberta ‘Bertie’ Lane Strachn.

By the time I remember her, after we came back from England and while my Dad was deployed in 1965-1966, she would have been about 54 or so. Looking back she seemed old, with grey hair already, and a very soft Texas drawl. They lived in Burlington in a little yellow house, and we would go visit them a lot. While she seemed very stern to me (and had no problem smacking my behind when I got out of hand), they also had this one magic drawer in the kitchen that had toys in it, just waiting for us to come visit.

She came to my college graduation, and one of my favorite pictures is the two of us after the Graduation parade.

My grandfather, Frank Henry Elder, was born on 2 May, 1906, in Cottle County, Texas. His parents were Francis Marion Elder, and Bethenia ‘Bettie’ Nance.

Not sure how or when they met, but this picture must have been taken at their 50th Anniversary.

My Aunt Jocie put together some memories of her Dad, and include the following:

“My knowledge of daddy’s (Frank Henry Elder) story began with his mother (Bettie Nance Elder) passed away. He was only five years old but he treasured the love she gave him and mentioned her frequently throughout his life. When she died, he and dad’s younger sister (Lilli Mae Elder-Ledbetter) were sent away to live with relatives until his father (Francis Marion Elder) remarried. His new wife (Rhoda Gray Bledsoe), had a son (John William Bledsoe) who was near daddy’s age. In the course of time, they had a daughter (Dorothy Rosie Lee Elder) together so dad eventually had two sisters.

Apparently, there was a lot of competition between the two boys. For whatever reason dad felt very much the step child. I only saw his step mother one time when I was about 10 years old. She seemed old, sullen and reeked with the smell of chewing tobacco.

Apparently beatings were common place because when he was a young man, his step mother went into another rage and started beating him again. Dad said that he took the stick away from her, broke it in half and ran away from home, hiding in the mountains (I don’t know what mountains, because they lived in Texas) but dad was totally alone

Time marched on and somehow dad found a way to pay for college, earning his teaching certificate as a science and math teacher (eventually earning a Masters’ Degree in Science). Dad’s first teaching positon was in Pooleville, Texas, where he met and fell in love with my mother, Cora Jo Robeson.

Dad’s ultimate educational goal was to earn his doctoral degree but while he was working to complete it, life intervened and momma had given birth to their 6th daughter. She was so terrible anemic and physically run down that he was needed at home to care and supervise the family.

Dad was a valiant man, who was dedicated to his wife and family so he gave up his career dream to take care of momma and my two little sisters and I.”

In the midst of that education, he served in WWII, station in the Aleutian Islands with the Navy. When he came home, he went to school (possible with the GI Bill?), earned another degree, then moved his family back to Texas to work as a Principal in Brock, Texas.

“Cora Jo Robeson was always Dad’s sweetheart. Every single Mother’s Day he gave her a corsage with 6 red roses in it. He said there was one red rose for each daughter she gave him.”

My biggest memories of Grampa was that he was a  quiet, gentle soul. He rarely talked much (maybe Grandma did all the talking?), but took everything in. He would sit with a milk carton full of paper towels and spit tobacco juice in it whenever we visited or he came to visit. He also smoked a pipe. You couldn’t sit on his lap because he had somehow hurt it. Maybe as the result of a stroke.

He died the summer before my Senior year in College. He was the only person I ever remember breaking down and crying over. I had just written him a letter two or three days before he died, and I was devastated he wouldn’t get it.