"current photo"

From the third grade on I attended Stanford Avenue Elementary School, followed by South Gate Junior High and High School.  In October 57, fellow classmate Gale Eastman and I joined the Air Force together, where in 1961, just before the end of our 4-year enlistment, President JKF volunteered us for a fifth year of service, caused by the building of the Berlin Wall.   We both were trained as Jet Engine and Aircraft Specialists.  In December 1960, I married a Downey girl (Bonnie Scott) and my daughter was born in the Air Force hospital at Spokane, Washington in October 1961.  In 1963, I enrolled at the University of California at Long Beach and graduated in January 1967 with a BS in Mechanical Engineering.   My son was born during a final exam in January 1964, at the Lynwood Hospital.  In 1980, I passed the state engineering license exam and became a California Registered Professional Mechanical Engineer.

First professional employment was as a Project Engineer with Standard Oil of California, later to become Chevron USA.   Seven years later I began progressing with major international  engineering and construction companies, where I held positions as Chief Mechanical Engineer and Project Manager.  I mostly held Project Management positions with companies specializing in the petroleum and petrochemical industry.  Project’s involved hydrocarbon processes, facility design, engineering and construction for; offshore oil/gas production platforms, land and sub-sea pipelines for natural gas and petroleum products, refineries, chemical and natural gas processing plants, and marine shipping ports and harbor terminals for handling petroleum related products.  These projects took me all over the world and to several states west of the Mississippi, including Alaska.  I retired from Jacobs Engineering’s Project Management group the last day of March 2004.  Shortly after we sold our California properties and moved to Michigan, just east of Muskegon, where we purchased rural acreage property and built a new home.  Our home for the last 23 years before retirement was in the Eagle Hills Development in Brea and the 7-years prior was the Bell Hurst, Los Coyotes Development, Buena Park.

Recreational interest were racing and cruising four sailboats, that kept getting larger, in the offshore Southern California waters, and riding our Gold Wing motorcycle with the Christian Motorcycle Association and the Gold Wing Road Riders Chapters we belonged to.  I was also active in competition trap shooting.  I continue these same activities here in Michigan, except I’ve switched to power boating on the Great Lakes.  I am active in the Muskegon US Power Squadron, where I serve as a volunteer Certified Vessel Safety Inspector and assist the Coast Guard with safety inspections of recreational vessels.  In California I did prison evangelism with the Bill Glass Prison Ministry program and now do weekly volunteer evangelism at our local Muskegon prison.  The only thing I miss about Southern California, are my sailing trips to Catalina Island.  My professional life in California was blessed and how be it my married life has not been as successful and I find myself single at this stage of life’s Golden Years.