of Jerry C Russell
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The Early Years
Updated 11/15/2007
The first of the Russell family in the new country was John Russell who came from England
about 1710. John had a son Edward, who was active in the rebellion against the King. He
was a leader in the early days of the activities that resisted taxation, and threatened
rebellion. Edward signed the Association Test which was a document questioning whether
to rebel or not. He was a delegate to the convention that wrote the Articles of
Confederation. Edward lived in Merrimac County New Hampshire. He was a minister of the
Church of Christ
Edward had at least six offspring. One son Samuel became a prominent Protestant minister.
Samuel was born Sept 24 1798, graduated from Dartmouth College in 1821, and Andover
Theological Seminary in 1824. He was pastor of Churches in Boulton Mass. and Huntington
Mass. Another son was Jeremiah who was also a minister and lived in Concord New
Hampshire. Not much is known about Jeremiah now.
Jeremiad had a son Peter Twiss Russell, who was to become the patriarch of the Russell
family in the Midwest and my Great Grandfather. Peter was born April 13,1808 in Concord
New Hampshire. He graduated from Philips Academy in Exeter New Hampshire and
became a Methodist Minister. His first church was in Wayne County New York. While in
New York he met Adelgirtha Shurter. They were married and had a son William in March of
1844. William was to become my Grandfather. Peter changed to become a Disciples of
Christ minister and moved west to Indiana. They then had a son George in 1850 who
became a prominent lawyer and Married Florence Ankeny. Florence was a member of a
very prominent family in Iowa that had founded the town of Ankeny. George died young
and left a son Fletcher. Fletcher was a source of much of the genealogical data in this
document as he left a box in the archives of the State Historical society. There is much more
information in that box and it can be seen by going to the Iowa State Historical Society
Archives identifying yourself and asking for the box for Fletcher Russell.
Peter and his family moved west again to Des Moines Iowa around 1853. Both Peter and
Adelgirtha became prominent in Des Moines Society. Peter served in the Iowa legislature
for ten years and wrote many articles and a book called “ Materialism Against Itself”.
Adelgirtha wrote many articles for the Des Moines Register and became a editor of the
paper. When the Civil war started Peter volunteered and even though he was over 50 years
old he was accepted and became a chaplain for the 39th Iowa Infantry. William also
volunteered and joined the 26th Iowa infantry although he was only eighteen years old.
Both the 39th and 26th Iowa were assigned to General George Sherman. They saw action at
Vicksburg, Lookout Mountain and all of the battles that Sherman had during his march to
the sea in the later part of the war. Sherman used Peter as his chaplain and William was a
drummer boy as he was so young. Peter kept a journal that describes life in the camps,
preparation for battle, battle and the actions of the armies in regards to civilian property.
He complains a lot about troops looting and the destruction associated with Shermans
tactics. Although he also takes issue with the civilian population who hid confederate
deserters and who in many cases were actually combatants posing as civilians. These
journals are in the Iowa State Historical Building listed as property of Fletcher Russell. If
you want more detail about the Russell’s in the Civil war, go get the box of material and
spend the day. Both Peter and Adelgirtha had portraits that hung in the Historical building
for many years. They are in the archives now, although there are copies in the Flecher
Russell box.
After the war both Peter and William returned to Iowa. William followed his fathers
footsteps and became a minister. He also served in the Iowa legislature. William met a
woman named Ada, and they married. They had three children Ward ,Burton and Katie.
The family lived in Adel, Iowa. However the marriage was not a happy one. Ada finally
decided she did not want to be married, so they divorced. William met a young vivacious
divorcee by the name of Elisabeth Palmer who was to become my grandmother. Elisabeth
had two children from her previous marriage. William continued to be active in the church
and was very religious but never preached again. In 1884 they had a son Irving ,my uncle,
who farmed near Perry all his life. A daughter Lucille was born in 1892. She married and
moved to Wisconsin. Harrison (Dick) Russell my father was born in 1893. In 1900 another
daughter Emma was born.. Their final child was Pearl. William died around 1920. Elizabeth
lived until around 1938, and stayed with us for a while when I was born, although I can’t
remember her. Those who knew her described her as ‘hell on wheels”. She was very
aggressive, competent and confident. She married twice after William died and outlived all
her husbands.
Dick grew up on the farm in Perry. He told me about working hard on the farm from dawn
to dusk every day except Sunday. On Sunday they spent the morning in church and William
then gave a private service. I think dad kind of rebelled at this rigorous approach to
religion. He never was a very active church member in later life. As he grew older he began
to rebel against the strict rules imposed on the family by William. He told me a story of one
night when he was eight or ten he walked into town and didn’t start back until after it got
dark. The route back was down the railroad track and it was very dark. He began to think
somebody was following him. He kept hearing this noise behind him. He began to run but
the noise seemed to stay with him. He then panicked and ran as hard as he could until he
was near the house and exhausted. As he stopped the noise stopped. Then he figured out
what it was. He was wearing corduroy knickers that his dad insisted on and they were
rubbing together as he walked or run and made the noise. When he got in his teens he was
disgusted with the austere life and ran away several times. Finally he got a job in a gas
station. It was with the Battle Shepard Oil Company . Eventually they offered him a job as a
salesman. He then began his career as a traveling salesman for various oil companies. He
met a woman and married in his early twenties. They had a Daughter Madeleine around
1915 and a son Jack around 1918. The marriage was not successful and They were
divorced around 1930. I don’t know much about dads life in this period.
My mother to be was Ruth Virginia Cash. The Cash family were of Irish descent and came
west through Indiana to Flora Illinois. The family had four daughters. Ada, Ethel,Nell and
Ruth. Ada married had two kids and operated a Beauty parlor in Eagle Grove Iowa for many
years. Ethel Nell and Ruth all went to nursing school at Mercy Hospital in DesMoines. Their
father died and the family moved to Eagle Grove Iowa. Mother graduated from nursing
school and became a registered nurse. Since Mercy was a catholic school , mother had to
put up with a lot of pressure to become catholic but she resisted. Ethel and Nell also
graduated and eventually opened a small hospital in Indianola Iowa. They ran this for many
years. Mother worked at the hospital in Des Moines. She met dad around 1930 after his
divorce. I don’t know much about their courtship although I have seen pictures of them
taken when they were on a automobile trip to the black hills in the late 1920’s. They had a
Model T and appeared to be having a great time. Nell was along as a chaperone.
There first child Thomas John Russell was born June 13 1932. I was born a year and a half
later. The family lived in Rock Rapids Iowa at this time. Several years later we moved to
Alta Iowa. By this time I was about four or five and can start remembering things first hand.
We had a big white bull dog as a pet. He was very protective of the two of us. We rented a
house in Alta. It was next door to a funeral home ran by Jess and Neva Wilkerson. They
became friends of the family for many rears. We also had next door neighbors in Alta who
had two kids the same age as Tom and I. They were Jackie and Chuckie Christenson and
they were our best friends for several years before they moved to Springfield Missouri and
we never heard from them again. I did try to contact them 50 years later. Dad used to settle
us down around Christmas by “hearing” slaybells and Santa Claus outside, who was
supposedly looking in to see if we were being good. He would say “I think I hear the old
bastard now”. One Sunday we went to a outdoor park where a Santa Claus was coming.
There was a large crowd and dad had me on his shoulders. When I saw him, according to
dad, I yelled out “There he is dad, there is the old bastard”. It caused quite a commotion
with the men laughing and mother hiding behind dad. Dad had a 1929 four door Chevy at
this time. I had seen dad open the door and slam it ( the front door) while we were moving
so I tried it with the back door. Since I was in the back seat, the wind caught the door
slammed it back and through me out. We were going over 50 miles an hour. I remember
sailing in the air before hitting the ditch bouncing and rolling. It skinned me up pretty bad
but nothing was broken. We started school while we still lived in the rented house.
Around 1940 we bought a acreage on the north edge of town. It was about ten acres. Dad
decided to get into the chicken business. He had a large chicken house built and we began
raising chickens in large quantities. We had a barn and kept several milk cows and pigs,
geese etc. As we got older we got assigned more and more of the farm chores. At first we
mainly took care of the chicken. They had to be fed, the manure cleaned out , and the eggs
collected. We sold eggs and feeder chickens. Mother had to ring there necks though, we
weren’t up to that yet. As we got older we had to feed and milk the cows. During the winter,
we fed them hay that was in bails bound with wire. Using wire cutters to open the bales, we
tore off sections of the bail to give to each animal. During this time dad was still traveling
for an oil company in Waterloo called Wolfs head. Therefore most of the management and
work of the farm was up to mother with us helping. When we were around ten or twelve
dad bought a Shetland pony for us. We rode that pony for several years. It was generally
with one or the other of us all the time. We had it trained to buck if you did not sit in just
the right place. Most of the other kids that we played with in town would not get on it
because it would throw them off. Dad used to love watching somebody who did not know
this getting thrown off. It would buck off grown men who could hardly sit on it without
their feet touching the ground. The darn animal would also chase the cows just for meanest.
As we got older dad bought larger and larger ponies until he finally got a registered
Kentucky racehorse we called Sandy. I don’t know why he did this because the animal was
expensive, high strung, and more horse than we were ready for. However we bought a nice
saddle and Tom and I got pretty good with the horse. He was always skittish though and if a
pheasant would fly up as you were going along he would run for several miles before you
could get him stopped. There was a steam train that came through town several times a day
and blew it’s whistle. If you happened to be on Sandy when that happened It was a wild
ride for a few miles. Several times we went right down main street of town with that horse
flat out. People kind of got used to it. Since it was the only race horse in the area we could
enter it in the races at the county fair, and expect to win. The competition were normal
saddle horses and so we never lost a race. Finally dad figured out this was a more
expensive horse than we needed so he sold Sandy at mothers request. During the early
forties, times were tough, dad worked as a traveling salesman and collected bulk milk from
the farmers in the area and delivered it to the creamery in town. Dad bought a new 1940
truck for this. Tom and I went with him a lot and helped load and unload the milk cans.
Mother ran the farm and also became the school nurse. This was not an advantage for Tom
and I to have mother at school socializing with the teachers. In those days the house did not
have a bath tub or hot water. We had to heat the water over the stove and take a bath in a
tub.
We had a lot of fun living on the farm. The neighboring kids such as the Sierce’s,
Katsenbergs, Lichtenbergs and Johnsons were often there riding the horses, hiking out to a
small river to fish, flattening pennies on the rails when the steam trains went by, and
hunting rabbits and pheasants. We sometimes would have flocks of 30 or 40 pheasants in
our corn field. For most of this time, we ate the pheasants instead of our chickens. One
Sunday afternoon (Dec 7 1941) we got word the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor. There
was lots of concern that finally died away. During the early years of the war we collected tin
cans and milk weed for the war effort. The milk weed was used to make life jackets.
Gasoline and tires were rationed but because of dads job we had a A card and could get
more than most families. Our livelihood depended on the car and truck.
Jack, dads son from his first marriage came to visit us about once a year. He was in law
school at the University of Iowa. He graduated at the top of his class and was drafted. ended
up in Nomeau New Guinea fighting the Japanese and survived all right. Ethel and Nell and
Nell’s son Warren were there several times also. Warren was in the army in Germany. Tom
and I rode the Interurban train to Perry , about 50 miles several times to visit Madeleine,
dads daughter from his first marriage and her husband Johnny. Johnny was a fun guy who
worked in a steel mill there. Later he became the town policeman. He was big and tough,
but a nice guy who used to take us hunting and fishing along the Coon River. We went out
at night and set long multiple hook lines across the river , camped and then cleared the
lines several times during the night. A great adventure. The town of Alta was five miles
from Storm Lake Iowa, and mother took us fishing in small bays that were near Alta. At first
we went with mother and some of the teachers, then we began to ride our bikes and go
ourselves. We were catching bullheads and it began a lifetime of enjoying fishing.
Sometimes on weekends we would go to Island Lake, about thirty miles with mother and
dad. The highlight of our week was when we could go to the movies in Storm Lake on
Sunday night. Eventually a theater opened in Alta and we could go to a matinee for a dime.
Every Saturday evening dad would park the car on main street as did almost everybody
else in town. This was the time to socialize. We kids would run around occasionally go to
the movies and some times have a nickel to spend. Most of the time we just fooled around
with the other kids while the parents socialized. Dad used to occasionally take us to Charlie
Miller’s restaurant for a milkshake. Dad hung around with a couple of guys from town
while he was in the milk hauling business, Charlie Miller who ran a restaurant and Ivor
Johnson who ran a gas station. They went out drinking sometimes and mother would we
waiting for him with fire in her eye. I can remember some fights about this but it never got
too bad as mother was very firm and dad never went too far. Charlie Miller got to investing
in the stock market and ended up losing his restaurant. Ivor Johnson got one of mothers
teacher friends Selma Munzel pregnant and she had as abortion, the town scandal in 1943.
Mother kept in touch with Selma and several other teachers and we got a card and flowers
from Selma when she died in 1989.
There were 50 children in my school class and I still remember most of them. Memorable
ones include the Zesiger twins, who were boys that were as ornery and mean as any kids
I’ve ever seen. They were bullies and always in trouble. I never had any trouble with them
as they always wanted to come to the farm and ride horses. Then there was Screwy
Obanion. Screwy was a little kid that had a bad leg and limped. Bu when Screwy got mad he
was a terror. The Sesiger twins went after Screwy one day and it was a sight to behold.
They got the best of him for a while but he wouldn’t give up and it was no holds barred.
Ended up he was chasing both twins down the street with everybody bloody. Nobody was
seriously hurt but they never bothered Screwy again. Lowell Lichtenberg was a kid who
was a kind of leader and supposed to be tough. Lowell and I had several fights with no clear
winner. I could easily get him down and hold him but he would end up with a scissors hold
around my waist and it would eventually be a draw. They were basically wrestling matches
and no blood was drawn. We eventually became friends. After we moved from Alta in 1948,
I never saw or heard of any of these kids again, made a. brief stop in Alta in 1990 but didn’t
see any of them.
Dad sold the farm and we rented a house in town a year or so before we moved from Alta.
By this time I was in seventh grade and was being bothered by girls, who I still wasn’t much
interested in. Joined the football team and played in several games in Junior high just
before we moved. We got used to get a bunch of kids together (most of them older than us)
and do all kinds of bad things on Halloween. In addition to dumping outhouses (of which
there were lots), we would move heavy things like telephone poles and put them on
teachers front porches. We got in a rivalry with the small town of Aurelia nearby and
traded vandalism. One of the kids got a tractor with a manure spreader and ran down the
main street of Aurelia around three o’clock in the morning spreading manure. They had to
spread lye and fumigate the whole area to clean it up. This caused a big uproar and a lot of
us kids were in big trouble for a while.
HIGH SCHOOL in INDIANOLA IOWA
In 1948 the family moved to Indianola Ia. This was where mothers sisters Ethel and Nell ,
who were also nurses, ran a hospital. We bought a small farm about two miles east of town.
We now had a bathroom, hot water etc. We kept two or three cows some pigs, geese,
chickens and a Welsh pony for us kids to ride. Lake Auquabie was five miles south of town
and we went bass fishing there many times in the morning. Tom made fishing lures and
really got into fishing. There was also a good swimming beach there and we learned to
swim and dive. The farm had a wooded creek running through it which we used for all sorts
of fun activities. We camped out back there, hunted with BB guns and once dammed up the
creek to make a swimming hole. We had forty eight acres that we planted in corn, oats and
alfalfa hay in varying amounts of each. We picked and shucked corn by hand most of the
time using a small hook strapped to your right hand to shuck the ear and then throwing it
into the wagon. Later we hired a guy with a corn picker on a percentage basis. We hired a
guy with a bailer for the hay but we had to pick up the bales, load them on a wagon and into
the barn. We used a bailing hook to grab the bails. One day a guy dad had hired to help hit
dad in the leg with his bailing hook, and it went straight in. It bleed like a stuck hog but he
was OK. Getting started in the new school was hard at first, we now had about 80 in each
grade. We soon had made new friends, lots of the kids from town liked to come out and ride
horses. Dad brought home a cocker spaniel puppy one day and we named here Judy. This
was the first of three cocker spaniels I would have for most of my life. She became a great
dog and would kill rats from around the corn crib by throwing them left and right. We had a
large garden and raised most of our own vegetables and hoeing the garden was a common
and much reviled job for us. To avoid thieves we put our water melon patch in the center of
the corn field to hide it. However, this did not work for long and we began to get raided at
night. Tom and I had worked long hours on that water melon patch so we were not about to
let it get torn up. We spent many nights hiding out in the corn field guarding that patch
with only marginal luck. One night we did run two kids down. Broke rotten water melons
on them and had a good time harassing them. It did slow the thieves down but we never
did stop them and finally had to abandon the water melon patch before somebody got hurt.
Two kids got shot in a nearby town during a water melon raid when the farmer used his
shot gun. About two miles south of the farm was the South River. It was not very big, when
it was dry barely a creek, but it was a lot of fun for us. We fished for catfish, swam and just
explored along the river. There were bayous where we fished and ice skated. Dad decided
to breed our Welsh pony to a full size stallion to try to raise a larger horse as we were
getting to big for the pony. The stallion was from a nearby farm and when the guy brought
him over he was very large and rambunctious. The pony kept kicking him as he tried to
mount her and he couldn’t get it in her because he was too high. The owner of the stallion
wanted to give up because he was afraid the pony would hurt the stallion. Since I had been
around horses a lot, and was fast, dad let me try to help. I ran in and grabbed the stallion
and shoved it in at the right time and he got the job done. This story was told over and over
so I got a reputation.
When I was in 10th grade I got a job in a Lumber yard. The Green Bay Lumber yard and the
boss was Harry (POO) Taggart. Started work each day at seven o’clock and worked until
nine, went to school and worked after until six, and on weekends. Started off cleaning the
office etc. then got to work in the yard unloading railroad cars, stacking wood etc. Used to
have to unload cars loaded with cement bags, which is a lot of work and also coal cars.
Finally got to saw wood to fit for customers and get what they wanted. The worst was
when we had to haul stoker coal to houses and fill their coal bins. Poo insisted we got the
maximum amount in each bin. This required me to crawl around on the coal in the bin and
shove it back to the back. I was covered with black and then would have to get cleaned up
as best I could to go to school. Soon I had enough money to buy a motor-bicycle called a
“Whizzer”. This was a motorized bicycle that could go maybe 20 MPH. It was used and
needed lots of work. I took the engine apart many times before a got it running right.
Mother used to complain about taking me to Des Moines so I could get parts for it. I always
wanted a Larger motorcycle but never did get one, maybe I will yet. Tom was now old
enough to get a driving permit and this started changing everything. Tom got to take the
car out at night, and we would go to town in the evening. The first two years I would have
to wait for him to take me home. Finally I got my license and we would have a continual
battle over who gets the car. At the time we had a 1938 Ford coupe, that we bought while
we were in Alta, and a 1940 Chevy that dad used for his work. Dad was still a traveling
salesman for the Wolves head Oil company. When Tom was a senior in high school he was
out with a bunch of guys on Halloween burning corn fields. He was driving the Chevy with
the lights out going from a fire they lit and run into the ditch and rolled the car over. The
farmer , the police and everybody else got involved. Nobody was hurt but Tom was out of
business driving for a while which was fine with me as I now had much more access to the
car and Tom had to wait for me to get a ride home. Dad bought a 1948 Chevy coupe to
replace the other one and this was the car I drove in high school and the first three years of
college, when I could get it. After two years at the Lumber yard I quit to work with a
construction company that was blacktopping the city streets. It paid better but was the
most uncomfortable work I ever did. I was working with hot oil , spreading it on up in the
corners where the truck distributor couldn’t get to. Near the end of the summer the
foreman told me to put a bucket under the big hose at the end of the truck, before I could
get away he turned the hot oil on. It hit the bottom of the bucket and splashed all over me.
My hands and face were burned with second degree burns. They paid my medical bills but
that was all. Nobody had workman’s compensation then.
We used to listen to the radio every Sunday night, the shows we wouldn’t miss were, Jack
Armstrong, the Green Lantern, Mystery Theater, Jack Benny, Amos and Andy, and Burns
and Allen. When I was a freshman in high school I saw my first television. A rich kid in town
(Roger Hughes) got one and we used to go over and watch it . The first shows were, Sid
Caesar, wrestling, groucho Marx, and Steve Allen. Finally when I was a senior in high school
we got a RCA television. We never got a color television until after I was married, around
the mid sixties.
As I got into high school we started to run around with girls. My first girl friend was Pat
Burd. We went together for two years and developed a group of guys and girls, about eight
that we hung out with. I was usually the driver as nobody else had access to a car. We had a
great time the last few years of high school. We would have ice skating parties in the winter
at the lake. I was a good ice skater and could jump picnic tables both forwards and
backwards. I recently went to a 45 year high school class reunion and met most of the old
gang, although Pat wasn’t there and nobody knows what happened to her. Played golf with
my old ice skating girl friend ILA Moans. I dated five or six other girls during these years. I
was above average in school however in science and math I was great. Our science teacher
was “Doc” Shelgren who became everybody liked and we became good friends. He
managed the beach at the lake in the summers and I helped him out sometimes. When I
graduated I got the Bausch and Laum science scholarship to go to MIT. However I had
already decided to go to Iowa State University where Tom was going.
During our senior year in high school we discovered beer. We were to young to buy it but
we could usually find somebody to do it for us. We had some really wild parties and drove
the car very dangerously. There was not the publicity or severe penalties for drunken
driving in those days fortunately. I drove that 48 Chevy through peoples yards, around the
track at the football field for Simpson college, and lost the police several times by roaring
through the lumber yard area where I worked. We would climb up on top of buildings
around the down town square and throw tires over the street light poles, of course half the
time we would miss and break the big globes. We climbed the flagpole on top of the lumber
yard and tied a toilet bowl to it. Probably the worst was when we released the brakes and
used jacks to start a railroad car moving at the lumber yard. Since the track had a slope to it
the car rolled right through the steel gate of the yard, through town and apparently ended
up about ten miles outside of town. It was luck we never got caught in any of these capers
or we would have been in real trouble. We started hanging out at “Pizza House” on east
14th in Des Moines where they would sell us beer. (I went there in 1997 and it’s very much
the same).
The year I graduated from high school (1952) both Tom and I got a job at Pittsburgh Des
Moines Steel company in Des Moines for the summer. This turned out to be a tough job
even though we made 1$ and hour. We cleaned welds on the inside of water tanks before
they could be painted. Dirty noisy work. Older jokers would hit the side of the tank with
sledgehammers that just about deafened us. We worked for the painters who sprayed red
lead based paint. They worked without masks or any protection. I noticed that all the
painters looked like they were 60 years old but found out they were in their 20’s and 30’s.
That red lead was killing them fast. The guy I worked for got hit on the leg with a large plate
of steel they were turning over and lost his leg. It probably saved his like as he was not
going to live very long spraying that point. We were glad to get out of there at the end of the
summer.
Before I went to college, Larry Starr , a buddy of mine, and I decided to go to California. The
plan was to drive a new car out there since at that time you could contract to take a car to
California and you got the car free as they sold higher out there and the company saved
shipping costs. We would then hitchhike back and be back in time to start college. We
picked up a new Cadillac in Des Moines and took off for California. Since we didn’t have
much money, we slept in the car. The gas was paid for with a voucher system. We basically
drove straight through to Las Vegas. We then hang around the casinos for the sights and
the free drinks. The scheme was to tell the girls we ran into that we were rich and had our
dads car but were out of cash temporarily. We had a hell of a good time for about a week
before we decided that we better get the car on out to California before they started to look
for us. We drove on out to San Bernardino and turned the car in. Our plan now was to
hitchhike up to the resort area of Big Bear Lake to see Audrey, my cousin, who was there.
She was a good looking girl about five years older than I who went to California when she
was young to try to get in the movies. She did play some bit parts but ended up marrying a
rich air craft company executive who set her up in Big Bear and came up periodically to see
her. She spent most of her time partying. Larry and I walked from San Bernardino through
Azusa and Cucamonga ending up in a peach orchard. We had stopped at a liquor store and
bought a six pack of beer. I asked for the strongest beer they had, not realizing what that
meant. We ended up very drunk throwing peaches at cars that wouldn’t stop for us. The
next thing either of us remembered was waking up in a hotel in Cucamonga. We snuck out
since we didn’t want to pay the bill and hitchhiked to Big Bear.
We called Audrey and she met us. For the next week we partied as was Audrey’s lifestyle at
the time. She had a girl friend who went with Larry and I to all the many bars at the resort
area of Big Bear. Everybody knew Audrey and they all bought us drinks so we never had to
buy. We partied from about six o’clock until four o’clock in the morning for five days. I
finally got a recurrence of my Hepatitis that I had earlier in the year and had to stop. Finally
we decided we better start hitchhiking back as we were not sure how long it would take.
When we got to the main highway back, route 66, we split up since we figured we would
need to in order to get people to stop. When the first car stopped I talked the driver in to
picking up Larry, who was about a mile sown the road. I asked the driver where he was
going and he said Kansas City, so we had struck it rich. The guy was driving a near new
Kaiser /Frazier and it turned out he was with a finance company. The car had been bought
in Kansas city, driven to California and the loan defaulted so he was driving it back. The
problem was this guy drove like a maniac, and never stopped except for gas. We went
straight through the mountains at 80 MPH. He wouldn’t let us drive at first. After about 15
hours we finally blew a tire near Albuquerque New Mexico. Fortunately it happened in a
desert area and we just went off the road and spun around. Finally he let us drive and we
drove straight through to Kansas City. There we caught a ride with a trucker to up near
Omaha, and from there on home. We came home in about 36 hours in three rides.
COLLEGE YEARS
Tom started the year before I did at Iowa State College (University now). Iowa State is a
very tough engineering school and we were warned that we probably wouldn’t make it
based on our high school grades. Since I had never studied in high school, I decided I better
study. The first few years at ISC were tedious and not a pleasant experience. There was a
lot of pressure, and they warned us that about half of us wouldn’t make it. When we started
freshman chemistry they said about one third would flunk, the same with physics and T @
AM. There were three of us from high school there, Paul Leverington, Aubrey Reed (my
best friend) and myself. Paul and I did fine, but Aubrey had trouble and finally dropped out
after the sophomore year. We made our arrangements too late to get in the dorm, so we got
a room just off campus. Hitchhiked home most weekends. The college was in Ames, 30
miles north of Des Moines and 50 miles north of Indianola. Hitchhiking was pretty easy
then, if you carried a suitcase with a Iowa State sticker. The first summer I got a job
working on the construction company putting in a new highway between Indianola and
Des Moines. The second summer Paul and I both got jobs with Iowa Power and Light as
engineering trainees. We were finally out of the manual labor status and it was great. The
Korean war was on and in order to deep from being drafted, I had to join the Reserve
Officers Training Corps ROTC. The summer before graduation we had to go to boot camp at
Camp Gordon Georgia, near Augusta. We drove a friends old Studebaker down there. Boot
camp was a difficult experience, as they treated us like shit since we were soon to be
officers and they wanted to get their licks in while they could. We were constantly
threatened with being washed out and sent to Korea as enlisted men. Most of the guys I
new made it however. After about six weeks there we finally got a weekend pass and drove
to Greenburg South Carolina to get away. We had a wild time , got involved with some wild
women at a dance, got completely snorked and ended up staying with them all night in
some state park. Just got back in time to avoid being washed out.
DATING AND MARRIAGE
During my first few years at college, I dated several girls from Indianola, including Marlene
Miguire (Mars Mig), who was good looking and looking for a husband, Darlene Peterson the
daughter of the local druggist and Beverly King who died of cancer a few years later. We
then started to date girls from Des Moines. During our junior and senior years I was able to
buy a car. It was a 1952 Plymouth I got from aunt Ethel. Ethel and Nell got back from Alaska
after several years. They bought land there that turned out to have oil on it and became
very valuable. Unfortunately Ethel died soon after they got back. Since I had a car now We
could drive down to Des Moines and chase women there. I still dated Pat Burd occasionally
who was now in nurses training in Des Moines. I met a girl named Sandra Piggot and dated
her a few times. One day I had here line up a blind date for Aubrey Reed. It was this little
blond named Ann Baker. Aubrey went with her a few times but decided she was too good
for him. He was having problems about this time at school and ended up dropping out and
going in the army. Never saw much of him now for almost 50 years (more later). I called
Ann and asked for a date. We began dating regularly between my Junior and Senior years
and became steady while I was a senior. I started interviewing companies for employment
in January of my senior year. At this time engineers were in very high demand, so I was
able to fly all over the country interviewing. I also was sponsored by Iowa Power and Light
and sent to the American Power Conference in Chicago. Had a ball traveling all over on
expense account. Iowa Power expected me to come with them since I had worked there for
two years, but I had better offers. Ended up accepting with Westinghouse Electric
Corporation to be a field engineer in the midwest area. I would be based in Des Moines
which was great with me and Toots. Started working for 402$/month, which was a lot of
money then. When I graduated (1956) I was commissioned as a second Lieutenant in the
Army signal corps. I would have to go on active duty within a year. In the spring I proposed
to Toots and she accepted. Her dad was sick for a long time with emphysema and was in
the hospital at this time. We went there one day to see him and after the others left I stayed
to talk to him and ask for his daughters hand. He said fine and I could have the rest of her
too. It turned out I was the last to see him alive because he died that night. I started work as
a field engineer in May, and we were married in October. On our honeymoon we went
fishing on Cass Lake in Minnesota, a place where we went when I was a kid. An indian
family ran the resort, it was on a reservation, and Aunt Nell got close to the family and built
a vacation cabin on there property. Forty years later I stopped by there and they still
remembered us.
We lived in an apartment on Cottage Grove ave in Des Moines for the first year until I went
into the army. Toots worked for the school as a secretary. One day when I was traveling she
was driving our 52 mercury that we got from her dad when she pulled out from a stop sign
and got hit by a bus. It demolished the car and although she was dazed she told the bus
driver she was all right, so he left. Art (her brother in-law) came and got her and had the
car towed to a junk yard. When I got home I was so mad at the bus driver for leaving the
scene that I went to the bus company and raised hell, they got a lawyer involved and
became pretty concerned, since she was pregnant. It ended up they paid for her to have a
physical (she was OK), and they reprimanded the driver. Most of this time I was working on
a large supervisory control and power line carrier installation Westinghouse had sold to a
utility up in South Dakota. I traveled most of the time and was only home on weekends. In
fact I was gone the week before the wedding and almost didn’t make it home because of a
snow storm. I had stored some expensive instruments in the trunk of Toot’s car, and they
were damaged but I managed to repair them. I got to know the area around Aberdeen and
Huron South Dakota very well and made many friends up there, and also became
somewhat a expert on Visicode supervisory control which was a complicated relay
encoding and remote control scheme. Later on they sent me all over to work on this
equipment.
ARMY CAREER
In the spring of 1957 I reported for duty as a second lieutenant in the signal corps at Fort
Monmouth New Jersey. I drove our 52 Plymouth out there. The first eight weeks was
officers basic training so I had to live in a barracks on post. We went through normal OCS
basic training which was pretty rough and had to qualify on most of the weapons used by
the army including the M1 and M30 carbines, 45 caliber pistol, machine gun and anti- tank
bazooka. After basic was over we were full fledged officers and would go to school there for
the next three months. I rented a small house off base, near the Monmouth Park race track
and Toots and her mother flew out. I drove up to Newark airport to meet them only to find
the airplane had been re-routed to La Guardia due to weather. I had to drive through New
York in rush hour traffic in a rush to meet the plane. I got there in time. Toots was sick
when she got off the plane, so we went to her uncle Bullets house in New York to stay
overnight.
The house in Monmouth Park was interesting, it had been built by a retired sea captain
who died and I rented it from his widow. The upstairs was locked up, and we were curious
about what was up there. When we started to get ants coming under the upstairs door, I
removed the door and we went up. The place was just as he left it, with food and clothes
laying around. Fortunately he was not there. Toots made me remove a old maggoty moose
head from over the fireplace because the eyes bugged her. Toots got along fine with the
pregnancy and so we went to the beach with members of my section from the army. Some
were rich and rented a large beach home. We were supposed to study since we were going
to school on the base and there were test given every two weeks or so. Nobody studied
much because copies of the test were passed around the section that had been obtained
from previous sections. I hedged my bets by studying some anyway, which paid off on the
last test because they changed it. Everybody else got bad grades on this test ,and I did OK,
so I ended up graduating number one in the section. In addition to a plaque I got to choose
my next assignment. The closest place to Iowa was Fort Riley Kansas, so that was where we
would head next.
I was on post in class when I got a call that Toots was being taken to the hospital. She had
started to have pains and so her mother had called a cab and they went to the hospital in
Long Branch. By the time I got there the doctor came out and said “we had a future soldier”.
The doctor was a Russian immigrant and didn’t speak English very well. Every thing went
well, except he had colic and didn’t sleep much for a month or so. He also developed a large
lump on his head after a few days, I took him to the nutty doctor and he said it was OK just
a bruise caused by the clamps they pulled him out with.
When Steve was about a month old we started out in the old Plymouth for Kansas. We
stayed a few days in Des moines and Indianola to visit everybody and to drop Toots mother
off and headed for Fort Riley. We got an officers apartment on the base that was nice and
had fun neighbors who were all in similar circumstances to us. To record Steve’s early days
we got a 8 millimeter movie camera and took lots of pictures. We still have them today but
don’t have anything to show them on.
I was assigned to the 267th Signal Construction company, 121st Signal Battalion, of the
First Infantry Division (the big red one). The first division had just got back from Korea
where they had been shot up pretty good. This construction unit is where they put the
goof-offs and troublemakers in the signal corps. I had to take over a platoon and sign for all
the material. This was a problem since it required I inventory everything in order to sign
for it or the other officer couldn’t leave. He assured me there was no problem, but I spent a
week trying to inventory it. A lot of the hand tools and personal type equipment was
impossible to find. Finally I had to sign off on a reduced list, I’m not sure if the leaving
officer had to pay or not. This was a rough bunch of soldiers, almost one third of them were
in the brig at any one time. One Sunday, when I was officer of the day, there was a
commotion in the enlisted mans day room which is a sort of recreation hall with pool tables
etc. When I walked into the room there was a big black guy, with a knife in his hand, and
another black guy bleeding from his head with his ear laying on the floor. The guy with the
knife looked wild. I tried to get my 45 caliber pistol out of it’s holster but it was strapped in,
so I yelled “hand me the knife” and thank god he did. There was a lot of this kind of trouble
in that unit. About this time the army was trying to reduce the number of permanent rank
officers so they reverted most officers that were not regular army i.e. West Point graduates,
to their permanent enlisted rank. Therefore many officers up to colonel became master
sergeants. The battalion commander was reverted and all his staff. Since I was in my first
enlistment I couldn’t get reverted. However there were now very few officers and so I
ended up executive officer for the battalion. This is a important position and I didn’t have
the foggiest idea what I was supposed to do. The previous executive officer was now a
master sergeant and was not about to help me. Fortunately there was a master sergeant
who had been there under the previous officer who helped me. I was in charge of all the
signal schools for the division. The commanding general Matthew Ridgeway decided to
come and inspect the school. There was supposed to be a soldier at the rear of each class
monitoring the class and he was supposed to see the inspector and yell “attention” and
present the lesson plan. Needless to say this didn’t happen and I got chewed out by the
general. Next he ordered a parade for Saturday with the 267 Battalion in charge. As
battalion executive officer I was to make up the parade orders etc. I didn’t have the foggiest
what to do. The sergeant helped some and I got a parade order out but didn’t know you had
to order out the band. Saturday morning it was discovered, and it was too late cause most
of the band were on weekend passes. The sergeant and I rushed over to the store room and
got a record player and a dozen large speakers. The parade went off to John Phillip Sousa
playing on the record. I never heard a word about it, although I thought I would get court
martialed. Finally my time was up and I got a discharge from active duty but was supposed
to be in the active reserves for seven years. Back in Des Moines I filed for a special
deferment from the reserves on the basis that I was traveling and couldn’t attend reserve
meetings. Actually I should have had to go to summer camp each year, but I got a dumb
sergeant who gave me a transfer to the inactive reserves. Then when we moved several
times over the next few years they lost me. Never heard until ten years later when they
found me in Pennsylvania and since on there records I had been in the active reserve for
ten years, they promoted me to a First Lt. and tried to assign me to a unit. I filed for a
discharge based on my long service and got it, so that was the end of my army career.
A Field Engineer in Iowa
I went back to work as a Field Engineer for Westinghouse when we got back to Iowa. For
the next seven years I traveled Iowa ,North and South Dakota and Nebraska working on all
types of electrical apparatus, mostly with electric utilities but some industrial. We made a
down payment on a new house in Indianola, that we had built. It was a three bedroom
rambler on West Boston. Toots and I put in the yard, planted trees, put up curtains and it
was very nice for a first home (15K$). I bought a used 56 Chevy from the leasing company
that leases cars to Westinghouse salesmen. I got involved in Amateur radio and both Toots
and I got a novice license. We had to take a code test from a friend of mine who worked at
the water works, where I had installed a large motor. Our licenses were KNOSHY and
KNOSHX. Later I got my general class license and became active with both a home station,
and a mobile in my car (which was very unusual in those days). I developed friends with
hams all over the world, some of which I ran across in later years.
I still specialized in electronics and supervisory control, but worked on all types of
apparatus that Westinghouse sold to electric utilities. There was a lot of travel since I
covered the three states of Iowa , Nebraska and South Dakota. Since I was the expert in
Visicode supervisory control, I would sometimes be sent other places in the country also.
Once I spent a week in the control tower of the O’Hara Airport in Chicago rewiring Visicode
that had caught on fire. I was literally under the feet of the controllers, and it was very
interesting. During these six years I installed transformers, circuit breakers, switchgear,
large motors, did generator inspections and worked on many other types of electrical
equipment. On one of the large transformer installations the was a strike of the IBEW
workers and as we were closing up the transformer there was a bolt missing from one of
the access covers. These transformers are as big as a house and have a steel case, filled with
oil, surrounding the steel and wire core assembly. It is necessary to be very sure nothing
conducting gets inside, otherwise the unit may blow up when it’s energized. Therefore
when installing and working inside all tool and cover bolts are counted to be sure they are
not inside. In this case I was pretty sure somebody on strike had taken the bolt to cause
trouble, but couldn’t prove it. We sifted the rocks around the site and looked for the bolt for
several days without success. I finally had the oil drained and several of the radiators taken
off. My boss had warned me about getting to far inside the unit as it could be dangerous.
However I was determined to be sure the bolt was not inside, before we energized. So I had
a rope tied to my ankles and I went in alongside the core and had them move me around so
I could look all around and below the core. As I was hanging upside down inside I looked
out through a radiator hole and there was my boss who was visiting the job site. He yelled
“get the hell out of there” and so I had to give up, fill the unit with oil and prepare to
energize. I thought I was in trouble, but found out later he was bragging to people about
how determined and resourceful I was. We energized the unit with 161000 volts and as
usual I went up to the tank and listened. All I heard was the normal snapping of small air
bubbles in the oil, and the transformer is probably still in service today.
Once I was sent to a farm to determine why a new motor had failed. It was applied on a silo
unloader. I didn’t know what that was until I saw it. It is a conveyor type machine that runs
inside a silo, with an auger that moves the silage to the center and then a blower blows it
through a channel that goes to the unloading shout in the silo. The unloader runs around in
circles riding on top of the silage, and the channel stays in place running from the center of
the unloader to the silo unloading shout. The motor is mounted on the center of the
unloader. I had to climb up an into the silo in order to put my instruments on the motor,
and read them as the unloader was running. The silo was over 50 feet tall and so I was
quite a distance from the switch where you turn the unloader on. The farmer stayed down
on the ground to turn the unloader on or off when I yelled. I yelled “turn her on” and all hell
broke loose. The auger started to go around in the silage and I was in danger of getting run
over so I had to move ahead of the auger. The problem was the silage was soft and I
couldn’t walk or run in it very well. I yelled “turn her off” but there was so much noise the
farmer couldn’t hear me. I was running around in front of the auger as best I could but was
losing ground in the soft silage. I was up to my crotch in silage. Finally I reached up and
grabbed the channel, lifted myself up and the auger went under of me. This save me for the
time being but I still had to stay ahead of the auger. All this time I was yelling for the farmer
to turn it off but he never heard me. Finally he shut it down to see what was happening. I
was exhausted and pissed. I took my instruments out of the silo and checked the voltage on
the circuit coming in. With the silo running it was about 2/3 of what it should have been,
which was why the dam motor failed. I told the farmer to call the power company and got
out of there.
I enjoyed the work but it was dangerous. We were around extremely high voltage much of
the time and you couldn’t be careless. I lost several friends. One of my best friends and I
were working a high voltage circuit breaker in a steel mill when he got severely injured.
Since time is so important at a steel mill we were working around the clock. He was alone
in the motor room one night and reached across a railing to adjust something on the switch.
He thought it was off, but it had been turned on, and it jumped to his arm and came out
through the railing he was leaning over. He managed to get away but his arm was mangled
and he had to hold his insides in with his other hand. He had to walk 200 yards down the
motor room floor to get help. He survived but his arm was useless from then on. The steel
company hired him and he later became a top manager at the company.
One day I was working on high voltage switchgear , and we had several cubicles open, some
energized. I had been working in a dead cubicle when the boss came by and we talked for a
half hour or so. Not realizing it we moved down in front of a live cubicle. When he left I
turned around and started to grad a stress cone on the entry cable but I felt high voltage
flux(very unusual) and jerked back in time.
We were installing a high voltage portable substation at the Maytag plant in Newton Iowa.
The station was connected to a line that ran for about five miles under a 500KV line. The
line had grounds on that I verified so we were testing out the substation with test
equipment. Unknown to me they removed the grounds with out telling us. I reached up to a
bushing on the circuit breaker to connect my tester and a arc jumped out six inches or so to
my hand. It knocked me down and stunned me for an instant and I thought I was dead as
the line must have been energized. In a few minutes I came around however and was not
injured. The line wasn’t energized but with the grounds off it had picked up a static charge
from the EHV line overhead. It had lots of voltage but not enough capacity to kill me.
In this job you had to be resourceful, one time we had to dry a large transformer which
involved building a house around this unit which was as big as a house. We then pumped
hot air into it to raise the ambient temperature. The next trick was to pump the oil out heat
it and eventually pump it back in. I tried to get a clean gasoline transport to put the oil in,
but they were all way to dirty inside even after they were steam cleaned. I finally found a
guy who had a transport that hauled milk. We steam cleaned the inside of it and it worked.
When we got it back to him he was supposed to steam clean the oil out before he used it to
haul milk again, but I’m pretty sure he didn’t. I didn’t drink milk in the area for a month or
so.
The last six months I had this job I spent in Gary Indiana working on installing a computer
controlled steel rolling mill. It was the first computer controlled mill. The computer was
very large and not very reliable, so we had a lot of trouble, all under tremendous pressure
from the mill officials. It was in the winter and the motor rooms were not heated. We had to
work seven days a week twelve hours a day and it was months in-between short visits
home. When I got through I told the boss I had had it with this job. It was interesting but I
was tired of being gone all the time. He was good about it and recommended me for several
jobs in Pittsburgh working in the new field of computers. I accepted a job working in a new
unit that was starting to apply computers in electric utility dispatching applications. This
turned out to be my specialty for the rest of my career.
While in Iowa, Mark was born in 1958 at Methodist hospital in Des Moines. I took Toots in
and told them to get ready because she has them fast. They pooh-poohed us , put us in a
preparation room to wait, and left us alone. Her contractions kept coming faster and faster
so I finally went out and told them to get their ass in there much to there irritation. When
they got in there they got excited and she had him before they could get her in the delivery
room.
Occasionally we would borrow my parents Air Stream Trailer and I would take the family
with me when I was working on a job that would be in one place for a week or so. We
worked at ALCOA in Davenport Iowa where Mark fell and had to have stitches, it almost
wore the doctor out trying to put them in a screaming kid. He swore never again. Also when
I was installing generators on the Gavins Point dam in South Dakota, they came and we
done some fishing. Went fishing on lake of the woods at the Randals resort several times,
once camping with aunt Nell on an island that turned out to be a night mare, the camp
stove caught on fire, the wind came up at night and swamped the boat, and the mosquitoes
fed on us. Toots has never liked camping since.
The First Pittsburgh years
I wasn’t looking forward to moving to Pittsburgh and went there alone for the first few
months to get settled and find a house to rent for the family. I used my ham radio to keep in
touch with some hams in Indianola and they would patch me in to Toots. I found a house to
rent in Monroeville, a suburb and Toots came out with the kids after two or three months.
This was in 1961.
I was working as a design engineer in a group formed to build and sell analog control
systems to automatically dispatch electric power systems. The systems continuously
adjusted the governors of the generators scattered around the country to keep frequency at
60 cycles, time correct and have a scheduled interchange with neighboring power systems.
As it turned out, this was to be my field for the next forty years. We evolved from analog
systems to the first of the digital computers as they became available. The Division we
formed was small and just beginning, with mostly young people. Morale was very high and
we had a great time. They started a golf league and since we were all basically beginners we
enjoyed playing every Friday night. I became the project manager on two large systems we
were building for utilities in Spain. I also helped out other engineers as I was just about the
only one who knew much about utility apparatus. My six years as a field engineer turned
out to be very valuable and in fact was for the next forty as most of the people working in
this field were computer people who did not know much about the equipment we were
controlling.
We built a nice big five bedroom two story house in Monroeville. It was a beautiful place on
a wooded lot. We paid 26K for the place which was a lot at the time. One evening when I
took the boys to get a Pizza and was coming home, the sky was lighted up red in the area
around the house. When I got home we saw that the woods was on fire in the hill behind
the house. It had been very dry and there was a forest fire. The trees came right up to the
house so we were in danger of losing the place. We and the neighbors went into the woods
with shovels and fought the fire, eventually aided by the fire department. It finally was
brought under control but just yards from our house. The boys played in little league
baseball and went to school within walking distance. We took some fishing trips to
northern Pennsylvania but it was nothing like northern Minnesota as the largest natural
lake was like a puddle to us. I was still driving the 1956 Chevy I bought from the company
that leased cars to salesman in Iowa, so we decided we needed a new car to make the trip
back to Iowa on vacation. We bought a new 1963 Volkswagen. They were very popular at
this time and you had to wait to get them. The price was 1712$ and not negotiable. We kept
this car for ten years and had over 130K miles on it. Our closest friends were Carl and Jane
Weis who lived close to our first rental house. We visited them at their cottage on lake
Canandota. Mark was up in the attic and stepped on a place where there were no floor
boards. He came through the roof into the living room, which was quite a site , however he
was not hurt. I went fishing with Carl and caught a 10 pound northern who the locals all
claimed was a musky. I new that it was a northern since I had caught lots of them in
Minnesota. It sure ruined the lake’s reputation as a good musky lake because all of the
muskies they had been getting were now known to be northerns.
One of the projects I was project engineer and manager of was two systems to be installed
in northern Spain. After we got them shipped I went to Spain for several months to install
them. I rode a train from Madrid, all night to Oviedo, and arrived in the morning. At that
time northern Spain was pretty isolated and nobody spoke English, even in the hotels. I had
studied Spanish from records a few weeks before I went over, but still had a hard time. I
stayed in the Hotel Principado, where the room was 5$ and the a meal in the restaurant
was around a dollar. They warned me not to drink the water, so I drank wine which was
great and cheaper than the water. From Oviedo I went to LaCoruna, on the northwest coast.
The system I installed there was with FENOSA. The engineer they assigned to work with
me was Hyme Jouro, who had been a resistance fighter during the war and was a very
interesting guy. I had dinner and was invited to the president of the companies house. His
name was Quiroga, and he was a lieutenant of General Franco during the Spanish civil war.
I was to run across these people twenty years later. We ate in a fancy restaurant and I
ordered the same wine I had been drinking for the last month. When the waiter brought it I
said casually that it wasn’t the wine I had been drinking. Senior Quiroga became very upset
and called the owner of the restaurant over and in the commotion the waiter admitted he
had substituted since they did not have the wine I ordered. I wouldn’t have known the
difference except that was all I had been drinking for months. About a year later I had to go
to Spain again. This time Toots and I flew to London and Paris. We spent a few days at each
place as tourists, and then rented a car and drove all over southern Spain. After two weeks I
put her on a plane for home and went on up to Oviedo.
I got drawn in to helping sales by working on proposals and making trips to make technical
presentations. Scared the hell out of me at first because I had never taken a speech class
and had major stage fright. Signed up for Dale Carnegie course in public speaking. It was
held at a hotel in down town Pittsburgh. It was pretty rigorous, and required you to stand
up in front of the class and scream and yell while pounding the table with a rolled up
newspaper. However after a few months of this I was getting better and ended up doing a
lot of marketing and making presentations for the rest of my career. In fact I spent the next
few years traveling world wide making technical presentations to groups as large as 500.
I had been wanting to learn to fly and had told Toots for years that if I ever made 10000$ a
year I was going to. I got a raise so I went out to a flying club in Zelienople Pa. and signed
up. They flew Cessna 150’s and it was 15$/hr with five more for an instructor. I flew with a
old flight instructor named Pete Tauson. After eight hours of instruction and while we were
practicing landings, he said stop the airplane, he got out and said take it around a few times.
Everything went fine and I was a pilot. I flew when I had time and could afford it and built
up around thirty hours there.
We enjoyed Pittsburgh and came to the conclusion that people are pretty much the same all
over, only they operate faster and seem less friendly where the population is more dense.
Our Division was having a power struggle with a industrial division of Westinghouse to
serve the utility computer market, which we ended up losing. I decided to move on and had
the opportunity to become a District engineer someplace in the country. I could choose
New York where they wanted me to go or San Francisco. After a lot of urging I went to New
York and spent a few weeks to try it out. Finally I said no way and we moved to San Frisco
in 1967. Drove the Volkswagen out with the two kids and the dog. Enjoyed the trip, drove
up Pikes peak and all over in the Rockies. Stopped in Iowa to see everybody and I rented a
airplane and flew around the old homestead. My brother Tom who graduated from Iowa
State ahead of me, went in the army, worked for several companies and ended up at Hewlet
Packard in Palo Alto was in California by this time. My father and mother sold their place in
Iowa and bought a trailer in Sunnyvale when they heard we moving so we all ended up
together in the Bay area. Also my cousin Alden and his wife and kids lived in Orinda. We
stayed in a apartment for a few weeks and ended up having a new house built in Moraga (
about 30 miles east of SF).
THE SAN FRANCISCO YEARS
As District engineer I had a company car, although since the other engineer Hank Lightec
lived nearby, we commuted together. The route involved going through the Berkeley
tunnel, across Oakland, across the Bay Bridge and into the city to the new ALCOA building.
This took around an hour each way. Most off the time in we took a shortcut over a little
road through a redwood canyon and over the mountain on switchbacks. It was no faster
but beautiful and we were not in traffic. I had a beautiful office on the 13th floor with a
view of the bay bridge, Alcatraz, and the bay. I worked mostly on system operations
computers with Pacific Gas And Electric in SF, California Water Resources in Sacramento
and Sierra Pacific in Reno. I knew most of the people as I had worked on several systems
with PG&E when I was in Pittsburgh. While I was there we sold 13 systems to PG&E worth
over 15 million dollars.
I went to a large flying operation in Concord to continue my flying lessons and got my
license after a few hours. My check ride instructor was Warren Bogess who was a traffic
reporter on the local radio station. I then joined a flying club in Livermore that had Cessna
150’s, 182’s, Caravels and Mooneys. I flew all of them as I made a trip to Sacramento and
Reno about once a week and flew myself. As I was working with a local salesman there was
always somebody to pick me up and so I got lots of flying hours. The Reno trip was over the
Sierra Nevada mountains over Donner Pass and Lake Tahoe. It was beautiful but could get
pretty rough on the way back in the evening with a strong west wind. In the winter I had to
contend with the valley fog but never had any trouble. One thanksgiving we flew the whole
family back to Lenox Ia. to be with Pretzel and Keigh and the rest of the family. Used a 182
and had a great trip, landing at the little grass strip in Lenox.
Toots got pregnant again as soon as we got to SF and David was born in 1967 at the
hospital in Berkley. We had a real nice house in a yuppie type neighborhood in Moraga. It
was a large colonial two story with five bedrooms. We landscaped the yard and put in a
sprinkler system, had a large fenced in backyard and a basketball hoop over the large
concrete driveway. Best house we ever had, built it for 43K and sold it for 49K. Twenty
years later it was worth 500K, too bad we didn’t rent it. We enjoyed the bay area especially
the weekend trips we took up and down the coast. Our favorite place was Point Reys about
50 miles up the coast, rugged beautiful and nobody there. The two boys got involved with
little league baseball and basketball. One of my co-workers Chuck Murphy had a son Steve’s
age who also played little league and was very good. They had the all-star game at Oakland
stadium one year and we took his kid Dale and my two boys. Little did any of us realize that
Dale would end up playing in the all-star game 8 times. He grew up to be a famous baseball
star, playing most of his career in Atlanta and had the season home run hitting record for
five years. Steve got pretty good at basketball as they played it almost year around. We
went fishing at some lakes up in the Napa Valley, also Salmon fishing in the Pacific. Brother
Tom had three kids by now Laura and Michel and Bruce. When we got together with
grandma and grandpa we had quite a family in California. Also included was cousin Alden,
wife and three girls.
My job there was very easy and involved lots of flying, entertaining visitors from Pittsburgh
and customers via expense account. Got to know every nice restaurant in the bay area and
there were many. Spent most of my time working on computer systems but occasionally
worked on other apparatus. Sierra Pacific in Reno bought a new electronic circuit recloser
and installed it in Winnemucca Nev. It needed some settings that were sophisticated so I
flew one of their engineers over to Winnemucca to show him how to do it. We had such a
good time that he made sure we had to go back and readjust it about every six months. The
job was so plush and easy I got bored after a while. I didn’t have very much responsibility
or authority and no boss in California. I finally decided to accept a job back in Pittsburgh as
manager of System Development for the Computer Systems Division. So in 1968 we sold
the house and prepared to move back to Pittsburgh. This time instead of driving the
Volkswagen back we shipped it in the moving truck and we all flew back.
The Second Pittsburgh years
We rented a house in Fox Chapel Pa. for a few months while we looked for something to
buy. It was a recently built but strange house that had concrete floors. I worked nearby at
the research park. I was in charge of a development project to develop a hybrid power flow
system that we could use to get very fast power flow calculations for a large network. It
involved a digital computer and a very large analog computer. I had about ten working for
me, and it was a very interesting project. The customer was New England Power company.
I was able to come home everyday for lunch. Shortly after we got there Boomer was born
and we brought Maggie out to help with the kids while Toots recovered. There was a woods
behind the house and one day the kids found a little fawn that had been abandoned. We
took it in and fed it by bottle. It got bigger and followed Toots around the house like a dog.
It’s name was Virgil. We didn’t know what to do with it as it got bigger since the zoo didn’t
want it. However fate took over as it died one day, all of a sudden, apparently of a heart
attack The zoo said it probably had a bad heart and that was why it was abandoned. While
Maggie was still there we went out and found a nice house in Allison Park that had a big
wooded yard. It also had a big bag swing that went out over the hill. The kids were sold
immediately, so we bought it. It was on a cul-de-sac and had a big yard that we had to mow
so the maintenance was high but it was a beautiful place. I always said that if I ever made
more than ten grand a year I was going to buy a airplane. By now I was making much more
than that so I went looking. I found a 1959 Cessna 172 at a little airport in Zelienople. It was
hangered so I bought it and kept it in the hanger. We flew it a lot around Pennsylvania, and
to Washington DC. It only had a old coffee grinder radio but that was enough in those days.
I flew it some on company business and took associates with me. One trip I made was to
Cincinnati Ohio and Ted Giras, my boss at the time, went with me. It was a beautiful flight
back and Ted got so enthused he started taking flying lessons. Wasn’t a very good pilot
though and it took him a long time, however several years later he was flying around in a
expensive twin, which he eventually crashed on landing, with only minor injuries. On
another trip to Charleston S. C. Jerry Wagstrum a salesman went with me. We got out of
Charleston late and it got dark as we were headed for Raleigh N. C. My cockpit lights didn’t
work and so Jerry had to light a match and hold it near the radio so I could tune it to
contact the tower. Scared the shit out of him and he never flew with me again. Jerry played
basketball for N. C. but never got into a game until the end of the season when they were
way ahead. He never expected to get in but all of a sudden the coach said to go in. He
jumped up and took off his warm up long pants, but as he was running out on the court he
realized he forgot to put on his trunks, only his jock strap. He was famous through out the
area. Once I took the boys and we flew in the winter to central Pennsylvania to get the
airplane inspected. On the way back some light rain came up and as I descended to the
small airport my windshield iced up. I couldn’t see forward at all but knew I had to get
down as ice was building on the plane. So I made a approach and landing to the small,
short, grass strip while slipping the airplane and looking out the side window, then kicking
it straight just as we hit. Learned not to fool around with ice from that.
The load flow project went well and we I got a patent for it. Went to Minneapolis to give a
technical paper on it at a IEEE conference. While their I was contacted by a personnel
manager from Control Data Corporation. They began pestering me to come to Minneapolis
and join them. Each time they called they had a better offer. My boss at Westinghouse was
Paul Lego (who later became CEO of Westinghouse) and he had been through the same
thing, so he advised me how to deal with it. Finally they offered almost twice what I was
making plus a big stock option. Paul agreed I could hardly turn it down, so I decided we
would go, and if I didn’t like it in a while I could always come back and still be ahead. So we
put the house up for sale and I went to MSP to find a place to rent. The house sold fast once
the kids of the buyers saw the swing. I flew the 172 to MSP and later drove the Volkswagen
out with the dog and cat. Toots flew via Des Moines.
THE EARLY MINNESOTA YEARS
Since the place I was to work was a old factory down on Central Avenue, and they were
going to build a new facility, we decided to rent a house until we found out where the new
plant would be. We rented a house in Columbia Heights, near the school. The division of
Control Data Corp that I was working for was called Control Corporation. It used to be a
older company that made supervisory control equipment, and had been bought out by
Control Data. There were only about 150 people and they were just getting started in
computers. They wanted me to help them get started in the Automatic Generator Control
business, since I had been working in this area at Westinghouse. They only had about 20
programmers who reported to Dennis Gibson, who would turn out to be my best friend. I
wrote the flowcharts for a set of AGC programs, and Dave Gross and I coded them in
FORTRAN. We used this code as the basis for our System Operation Computers for about
the next twenty years. I was a executive consultant reporting to the vice president, and
could do whatever I thought was most effective. I spent about one third of my time
supporting marketing, one third in product development, and one third working on
projects. In order to sell, we first had to develop a new Remote Terminal Unit, a package of
AGC programs, and a computer interface for the CDC 1700 computer we were going to use.
This took most of the first year and involved a lot of work as well as overcoming some
office politics. We had two factions on the RTU design, one led by Len Mitchel in
conjunction with Northern States Power Company, who wanted to develop a RTU using
ASCII transmission code. I and most of the development staff knew we needed a more
efficient and secure transmission code, finally won the battle and the result was the CDC
44-500 remote that we used for the next 15 years. We also redesigned the RTU
communication software, and developed the AGC package. Our first order was for a System
Operation Computer at Nebraska Public Power District. I knew the people there from my
days at Westinghouse. I configured the system and did most of the marketing
presentations. We got the order for 234k$, and it was the beginning of our domination of
the System Operation Computer business. Following this we got orders for several more
systems across the country and began a rapid growth. During the next few years the
division went from 80 people to over 400. I was making a marketing presentation in
Milwaukee to Wisconsin Electric Power Co. when I got a call that Toots went to the
hospital. By the time I got back she had delivered a baby girl. We couldn’t believe we finally
got a girl. We named her Kathleen. By this time we figured out the scheme, every time we
moved we had a new baby. So we decided we would stay in Minnesota for the duration, as
five kids seemed enough. It seemed foolish to continue renting, and the location for the
plant was still not known, so we decided to buy a small house in the school district the kids
were in and then we would sell it to buy a more expensive one later wherever the plant
was. So we bought a little house on North Upland Crest that turned out to be our home for
the next 30 (or more) years. Later when we found out the plant was in Plymouth nobody
wanted to move because the kids were all involved in the schools in Columbia Heights.
About five years later we did put a addition on the house. All five kids eventually would
graduate from Columbia Heights high school and the University of Minnesota. I had the
Cessna 172 hangered out at Lake Elmo, 20 miles east, and flew it all over, including up to
Lake of the Woods fishing with Dennis Gibson. We made the mistake of taking a rubber
boat on one trip, which was the opener of Wall eye season. The ice was not all the way out
and the wind come up and we started to get blown out on the main lake. If somebody didn’t
help us we would have been in real trouble. No more rubber boats for a few more years. I
met a man at the air port who was a aircraft mechanic and he told me of a friend of his who
was killed in a crash of an antique aircraft during a air show. He had just finished
rebuilding a Beechcraft Musketeer that had been in a minor crash before he died. On his
advise I contacted the widow and ended up buying the Beechcraft Musketeer. It was in
great shape and only had 230 hours on it. I moved the airplane to Anoka County air port,
and was to keep this air plane for over thirty years.
The office ended up out in Plymouth so I had a 30 mile commute for the next 30 years, but
nobody wanted to leave Columbia Heights. We had the opportunity to bid on a big Energy
Management System at Wisconsin Electric Power. It involved many new programs, such as
Load Flows, State Estimation and numerical modeling. The requirement called for a large
multi-computer system with both real time computers and large engineering/scientific
main frames. We decided to bid our normal 1700 computers in a Quad configuration as a
front end and dual CDC CYBER main frames as back end. We had never quoted CYBERs
before and at first the corporation wouldn’t let us unless they managed the project. They
appointed a bureaucrat as a manager, who I replaced shortly after we got started, when it
was obvious he didn’t know what was going on. It was the first large EMS order in the
industry and became the system everybody emulated. It put our division at the forefront of
the EMS business, and was the beginning of a rapid growth period. At the time it was a
great risk however as we had to develop from scratch almost everything. I was the one that
made most of the presentations during the marketing phase, and we got the order on the
basis that I would be the project Manager. Their project manager was Bill Rades who I
worked with for the next four years, and he and his family became close to us and stayed
with us many times when they were in MSP. I flew the Musketeer to Milwaukee for one of
the presentations, and the president and chief engineer of one of our subcontractors, from
California decided to fly with me from Minneapolis. It got late so when we approached the
Milwaukee area it was after dark. I was low over the city when there was a big bang up
front and a terrible racket. I pulled the power back and looked for a place to set down , the
only thing I could see was a lighted football field with a large parking lot. As I turned
toward the field I decided to try putting back on power to see if I could at least hold some
altitude. There was a terrible racket but I could get enough RPM to hold altitude, I called
the Mitchel Field tower and told them I was coming in with a engine problem. They waved
off a commercial jet and gave me a straight in approach, as soon as I had the field made I
pulled the power to try and save what was left of the engine. After I landed and was taxiing
in I figured out what must have happened, sure enough when I opened the cowling I saw a
exhaust pipe had broken off and was hanging from the wire with the exhaust temperature
probe and banging against the cowling. It made a hell of a racket , but the engine was fine,
and I had the exhaust pipe welded the next day. Afterwards I realized that during the
incident, nobody in the airplane said anything as they were scared to death. I worked with
these guys off and on over the next 20 years, but they would never fly with me again.
I worked the next two years as the project manager on the WEPCO project as well as did
marketing work and helped out on other projects. The WEPCO project was a real challenge
as we had to develop the configuration and all the basic software as well as the
applications. We had a system that had over twenty computers of five different kinds. We
did it with about twenty people, on schedule and close to budget. A year or so after WEPCO,
we sold a similar system to Southern California Edison. I again did the marketing
presentations, but they could not name me project manager, so I recommended a friend
who was then working in marketing support, Tim Kenealy. We needed to develop a set of
advanced application software and needed special talent to form a advanced software
group. I knew a guy Ralph Massiello who worked for one of our competitors who was very
good. I talked him in to coming with us and forming ad advanced software group. He
agreed if I reported to him. I went along with this and we hired a good group of about 15
top people in the industry. They reported to Ralph and he reported to me. I did not want to
stay in Management, even though at that time I was Manager of System Development. I did
not like all the administrative, and personnel work associated with management, and
decided to stay in a consultant role which was based on my technical capabilities and
industry stature. Eventually Ralph got promoted and reported direct to the Vice President..
I felt this would be much more secure, as I could go any place in the industry I wanted with
my background, but after a few years in management, you are just another manager if there
was trouble in the company or business. Also I made more money than any of the
managers, other than my boss who was the Vice President, and most of the time I made
more than him. Eventually Ralph got promoted and reported direct to the Vice President .
Later he left and became the president of one of our major competitors. They had trouble
on the SCE project and I was asked to step in to help Tim. I got it straightened out finally
although I found out much later Tim never forgave me, as he felt it put him down. He went
on up through management over the years and 20 years later I ended up working for him.
Dennis Gibson and I began to fly the Musketeer 4726J to Canada long weekend fishing trips.
At first we went to Sioux Lookout and took seaplane fly- ins to various lakes. We also flew
in to a Lake that is on an island in lake of the Woods with Northwest Flying services. On
that flight a famous old bush pilot Red Swanson picked us up in terrible foggy weather. We
had to land on several lakes and wait on the way back, and we flew just above the trees in
fog. Fifteen years later Red was flying a twin from Nestor Falls to International fog in bad
weather and hit a tower, killing all aboard including the son of the guy I would later buy the
island from. Some times we would take various people from work with us and some times
my two oldest boys and one or two of Gibson’s (little brothers) as he was in the Big Brother
program (he never married). One time we took my boys and a friend of one of his little
brothers, who had been in reform school, but who Dennis thought he could re-habilitate.
Before we took the fly-in to a remote lake, we stopped in a sporting good store for some
fishing equipment, and the boys walked around the store. After we had been on the lake
one day a Lands and Forest large plane landed and taxied to our camp. We were up the
lake, and by the time we got back we could see they were searching our camp. When we got
there they asked who owned a particular back-pack, and Dennis Said he did. They then
arrested him and split us up and took each one into the plane to interrogate us. When they
tried to do this to my boys I complained and said they couldn’t do that, and they better tell
us what this was all about. They said they found a shot-gun sight in his duffel that had been
stolen from the sporting goods store. It was in Dennis’s duffel. I knew immediately how it
had gotten there as this kid from the reform school Jeff, must have stolen it and hid it in
Dennis’s duffel. Dennis would not tell the police this however so they arrested him and flew
him out to Sioux Lookout. I told the police to send a airplane back in for us as soon as
possible. While we were waiting I looked at Jeff’s jacket and he had a hidden pocket under
the armpit where he had hidden the gunsight. I confronted him and he just laughed about
it. He knew if he admitted it he would go back to reform school and he didn’t care about
Dennis. When we got back to Sioux Lookout, I went to the jail to see Dennis. He was in a
grubby little cell with some drunken indians. They had fed him liver and onions, and taken
his shoes and his belt. I talked to the Chief of police and he said the justice of the peace had
set bail at 500$ cash. It was evening by this time and too late to get to a bank, so I went
around town to see if I could get 500$. Nobody in town, including the resort owner had
500$ in cash so I went back to the Justice of the peace. We meet at his house, and I tried to
explain the situation, but he wouldn’t have any of it until his wife listened for a while and it
turned out she had a brother who was in the Big Brothers organization, so the JP agreed to
take a check, and we got him out around eleven o’clock. The next day we went back to the
courthouse and they said since they had found the gun sight in Dennis’s duffel and we were
in a remote lake, somebody in the party was guilty, and so if somebody did not plead guilty,
they would find the whole party guilty. Also since the value of the sight was more than 50$,
the crime was a felony in Canada, so everybody would end up with a felony conviction.
Since this would be transferred to the United States, my kids would presumably end up
with a felony conviction there. This could affect many things for them later in like, so I
knew I couldn’t let that happen. We called all over the United States to determine if it would
be considered a felony in the US but nobody knew for sure. We talked to lawyers both in
the US and Canada and everybody agreed the only way out was to get Jeff to plead guilty.
Dennis tried talking to him and he just laughed at him, I threw him around the room a little
bit with no results, he was the toughest meanest kid I ever saw. We found out from the
resort owner that the Judge who would try us was due to come up from Dryden on next
Wednesday and he would stay the night before the trial at the resort. The plan was to use
the resort owner to help us and plead with the judge for some solution. Unfortunately there
was a storm and the judge didn’t come up the night before. The morning of the trial our
Canadian lawyer tried talking to Jeff and finally concluded the only way out was for Dennis
to plead guilty, and he would talk to the judge. So at the last minute Dennis plead guilty and
the judge fined us 300$. We never knew if the charge went in as a felony, but Dennis never
had any trouble later about it either in the US or Canada. A few years later I bought a old 56
ford, and we put canoe racks on the top and put it at the air port in Red Lake Canada. We
used to drive up a logging road 40 miles to the Berens river and canoe up or down the
river. I had a outboard bracket with a little three horse motor and could go about forty
miles in a day. We would have to make many portages on the way up, and come down them
a day or two later. We tried to keep track of them as we went up and run the easy ones on
the way back down. One trip with Mark and Dennis, we miss calculated, Mark and I took
the canoe to try to run the portage while Dennis walked. The portage was a big roller, when
we hit it the canoe went in to a big roller head first. The last I saw of Mark ,who was in the
front of the canoe, was a wall of water covering him. We were thrown all over and came out
the bottom with the canoe full of water, but still up-right. Our gear was floating around, but
we were able to retrieve it, and were just glad we did not hit a rock on the ride. There were
many trips up and down the Berens river and we caught lots of fish, and had many
adventures. On one trip with my boss Sheldon Tart, and Dennis the clutch linkage broke on
the car when we were way down a logging road that had a chain across it we had lifted and
went under. We were able to get the car started by pushing it in gear, so we came back
down the road in low gear, however the chain was at the top; of a hill, so the plan was to
put Tart and Gibson on the front fenders and as I approached the chain they were to jump
off, run ahead and lift the chain and I would go through as slow as I could, which was pretty
fast. Amazingly it worked although I would have loved to have moving pictures of it. I fixed
the clutch linkage that night at camp with a piece of a tree branch and some fishing line. It
stayed that way for the next year till we junked the car. We flew up to Red Lake or Sioux
Lookout until of 1977, and then because a financial consultant the company had hired for
executives advised we needed a bigger mortgage, and nobody wanted to move, we decided
to buy some recreational property. We almost bought a island on the U. S. side of Rainy
Lake but the Federal government decided they wanted the property to use for Voyagers
National Park. I contacted a realtor in Fort Frances and he showed me an island on Red Gut
Bay of Rainy Lake. We bought the island in March of 77 without ever setting foot on it.
Mark, Tom Wycor and myself, skied out to it for the first time. I financed the island for the
first year with the guy I bought it from. After a year the Canadian dollar fell twenty percent,
so I paid off the loan. This and the fact I decided to build ourselves, and apparently Kirscher
, the past owner, assumed he would be able to build for us, made him mad and he caused us
trouble later on.
During the seventies we sold fifteen or twenty more systems patterned after WEPCO. These
were all over the United States and many foreign countries. During the seventies and
eighties I traveled to almost every country in the world. I was all over South America,
Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, Japan, China, Scandinavia etc. The oldest boys, Steve and
Mark went through school in Columbia Heights. Both were in the national honor society
when they graduated from high school. Steve went to the University of Minnesota taking
economics and Mark took Electrical Engineering. Steve got restless and moved out when he
was a sophomore in college to live in various apartments with various girlfriends. Mark
moved out his senior year.
I was in Spain many times as over the years we had lots of business there. One trip ,in the
late eighties, we were selling a system to a company that had been formed to be the pool of
all utilities in Spain. We had to visit all these utilities and make a presentation. Each utility
went to special efforts to entertain us at the best restaurants and to show us the local
sights, so it was a very special trip that took three weeks. When we visited Oviedo I went
back to the hotel Principado where I had stayed twenty years ago, and when I walked into
the restaurant the waiter recognized me as he had been my friend then and spent much
time explaining the menu to me. I tipped him a dollar each day which at that time was a
days wage. When we landed in La Coruna, a executive picked us up in a Mercedes
limousine. As we were driving into town I told him I had been there twenty years ago. It
turned out this guy was Senior Quiroga’s son. Senior Quiroga was the president of the
company that I had dinner with. Senior Quiroga had died and there was a huge monument
we visited at a town the family owned near the Ballizar power plant. Also I asked about
Hyme Urou and found out he had just died of cancer. It turns out he was the top technical
guy at the utility and was much revered by everybody. The executive was much impressed
and he really treated us like royalty. We spent the night at the small village the family
owned in the mountains. There was a villa full of price-less antiques with a large cadre of
servants. They had there own hydro generating plant and the family literally owned the
whole town. When we visited the large under-ground hydro plant they took me to the
equipment room where the equipment I had installed twenty years ago was still in service.
I don’t think the people with me believed the story until I opened the cabinet and pulled the
drawings out of the instruction book. I had signed all the drawings. Senior Quiroga junior
wanted us to stay a extra week and he was going to take us sailing to the coast of Africa in
his yacht. We enjoyed very much the next few weeks being entertained across Spain.
Roberto Delariva and I went to China to give a seminar in the mid seventies. This was
before China opened up and it was a very interesting trip. There were no private cars in
Bejing, only thousands of bicycles. We caused a stir when we walked through Taineman
square as most had not seen white people before. They assigned each of us a government
guide and an interpreter. They interpreted the seminar, but unfortunately the interpreter
could not understand Roberto because of his Spanish accent, therefore I had to do the
whole week seminar. After a few days I noticed one of the people seemed to understand
everything I said so during a break I talked to him. He was a PHD from University of
Wisconsin, Dr Wu. He spoke perfect English and understood the technology. Unfortunately
this was during the cultural revolution, so he was at the bottom on the pecking order in
China. Farmers and laborers were the elite, and got the best housing etc. Finally I was able
to convince the interpreter to let Dr Wu interpret for me since he understood much better.
After the seminar they had a state dinner for us at the Forbidden City. I asked that Dr Wu
attend but they said he wasn’t allowed since he was a intellectual. Out chauffeur would be
there. I said I wouldn’t come unless Dr Wu attended, so they let him although he was so far
down the big round table I hardly saw him. They took us on a tour of the great wall, and
other sights. I was most interested in their steam trains, as I hadn’t seen one since I was a
kid.
During this period I made several trips to South Africa. This was a very long (18 hr) flight
from New York, we stopped to fuel at a island off of Africa in the middle of the night. I gave
several seminars with ESCOM the state utility there. Since I was there in the
summer,(winter there) it was always dark when I went to work and dark when I got
through, so I never saw much of South Africa. After three trips like this I told the country
manager Al Loyd that I wasn’t going to come anymore unless I got to see more of South
Africa. As a result he set up a spectacular trip for me at the end of my latest seminar. He
chartered a twin engine airplane for me and flew me around the country. We went to a
private game reserve near Kruger Park. We had to buzz the landing strip to scare the
Impala off the grass runway. The pilot waited three days for me while I was treated like a
king at the game reserve. I had a private villa made up like a grass hut, free booze, great
food and entertainment. They assigned me a private guide who drove me in a Land Rover
over the game preserve. He sat in a seat mounted high up in the air spotting game and
telling the driver where to go. We saw every kind of African animal you can think of, dozens
of different types of antelopes, deer, water buffaloes, crocodiles, lions, elephants, rhinos,
etc. It was spectacular. They teased a large rhino until he charged the land rover and chased
us a half mile or so. The same with a bull elephant. One night they took me out to a bamboo
enclosure where there were lions. We sat in this enclosure looking out where they had
killed a Impala and left it hang in a tree. The lions came up to feed, and they gradually
brought up the lights so we could watch from not more than forty feet away. We had to
wait until they were done and left before we could get out. On the way back to
Johannesburg the pilot let me fly the airplane and as we approached the airport I saw the
largest airplane I had ever saw approaching the airport. It was monstrous and appeared to
be hardly moving. It turned out this was the inaugural flight of a 747 to South Africa. I had
never seen one before. On the flight back from Johannesburg to Rome we had to land at
Nairobi Africa. They warned us not to get off the airplane, although most passengers did as
we had been on for so long. In order to get back on we had to be strip searched by black
irregular looking soldiers. One of the ladies had a fit as there was not much privacy, they
were going to arrest her but the flight crew got her out of it but she still had to strip. It was
not long after this that some Arabs high jacked a EL-AL plane and flew it to Nairobi, where
there is almost no law. The Israelis sent in a commando team to the airport and rescued the
plane and crew while shooting up many of the airport security? police.
During the next ten years I took many interesting foreign trips, to almost every country in
world. We spent quite a bit of time is Australia, and the far east and I went around the
world several times. Had a good time for a week in Perth Australia, on the west coast.
The Early Island years
During the late seventies and eighties we used the Musketeer to go to the island almost
every week end in the summer and every other in the winter.. Usually I took guys from
work for two trips or so and then Toots and the kids. We usually flew up Thursday or
Friday night and back Sunday. The weather did not stop us very often, although we did fly
with some low ceilings. I knew the route so well I could go pretty low without getting lost.
The airplane was great during this period with little trouble. I did the inspection work
myself and had it signed by a friend who is a Aircraft Inspection license. One winter Sunday
with the temperature around 40 below, we heated the engine and took off from
International Falls, as I started to leave the airport area I noticed oil on the windshield. I
turned around but before we could get back to the field the windshield was covered. I was
able to land looking out the side window and slipping the airplane. It turned out the
crankcase vent had plugged with ice and the pressure had blown out the propeller oil seal.
Took the airplane in Einardsons hanger and replaced the seal in about two hours and still
made it home. One trip coming up with grandma and some of the kids, I heard a plane on
the radio that was lost around the Falls. Einarson was trying to help him on the radio but
didn’t know where he was. In listening to him I thought I knew where he was so we
diverted over into Canada to try to help. Before I could get in the area he ran out of gas and
went down. I began to get his emergency locator beacon on the radio, so I detuned the
radio to try to peak the signal as we went in the area. We were able to see them crashed on
the ground. The airplane was destroyed and they were laying and standing around it. I
called Einarson and we stayed over them directing the ambulance to them. Nobody was
killed but several were in the hospital for a while.
CONSTRUCTION PROJECTS
When we took our first trip to the island we went in the new red Lund boat that we had just
bought. Got it at a discount by going through Gibson’s brother who was a friend of the Lund
family, who were from Wadena MN. We took some building materials with us figuring on
starting to build a small cabin. When we got there we took a good look at the old log cabin
and decided we may be able to fix it up instead. The floor and roof were partly missing, it
was full of bat shit, and the foundation logs were rotting. However we cleaned it out rebuilt
the roof and the floor and gradually fixed it up. We used the building materials we brought
to build a outhouse, that we at first used both as a toilet and to store our tools. We brought
in a gas oven we got from John Hulen as they had replaced theirs, and propane tanks. On a
trip a few weeks later with a bunch of guys from work, we hauled in a gas refrigerator and
installed gas lights. We took the old rusted wood stove out and put in a new steel
woodstove. By the end of the summer the place was very livable. We were in there a lot the
first few years both during the summer and winter. It was cold in the winter as there was
no insulation in the log walls and the floor was not tight to the walls. The stove would heat
it all right but the temperature difference between the floor and the ceiling was extreme.
We could be roasting at eye level and there would be snow on the floor. After a few years
we decided to build a porch on the front of the cabin. We got the lumber from the sawmill
Pearson had been running up the lake. It was rough cut, but strong. We built the porch
which greatly increased the comfort of the place especially in the summer. The porch is
well built, and will probably be there long after the cabin has fell in. About five years later
the kids decided they wanted to build a big tree house. We convinced them to build a
smaller tree house, and we instead built a small outpost sleeping cabin. It is very
comfortable to sleep in during the summer as it is open on the front, just covered with
screen wire.
We bought a snowmobile to get across the lake in the winter. On one of the early trips we
were trying to go across the lake at night in a snowstorm with two of us on the snowmobile
and another guy on a sled we were towing. The snow was so heavy we got lost. Finally the
snowmobile overheated and failed a piston. Fortunately we had skies with us, but we didn’t
know exactly where we were. After a while in the dark, we could see a little bit and
recognized a shoreline. You couldn’t see any thing with the snowmobile light on. Finally I
found out if I took the sparkplug out of the failed cylinder I could still run the snowmobile
alone and I was able to direct the other two to the island. We got stuck in slush on the lake
many times. Once Gibson and I got stuck at night and worked hours trying to get out, only
to get stuck again. We weren’t sure exactly where we were and we were wet with the
temperature below zero. I finally got the snow machine out but I couldn’t find Gibson. He
didn’t answer when I yelled. I walked the whole area and finally found him laying down. He
said he was too exhausted to answer. Finally found a familiar shore and we got back to the
cabin. The problems with getting stuck in the slush prompted me to buy a all terrain vehicle
called a ARGO. I had seen it advertised. It has eight tires, tracks and floats. We went to
Hamilton Ontario to get it on a trailer. I built a cab for it and we used it for our winter trips
from now on. It would go through almost any slush and we used also in the summer to
travel over portages and even across lakes, with a outboard on the back.
We did still have lot’s of exciting things happen even crossing with the ARGO. We went
through the ice a half a dozen times. The first time was when we were crossing at night
with the cab on.. Mark and Gibson were aboard. As we approached the island, the front
dipped, and water splashed over the front. We had driven into a big crack and were
floating. We moved across with the tracks spinning, to the other side but it wouldn’t climb
out. We took the wooden cover off since it would float, and it was decided somebody had to
jump out on the ice to anchor the cable from the winch. Naturally I was elected, so I stood
on the front of the ARGO and dove/slid forward on my belly. Fortunately the ice held and I
was able to anchor the winch and get us out. Another time I was testing the ice with the
ARGO before taking off from it with the airplane. I went through with the front of the ARGO
and as it was at an angle began taking on water. I went to the back and jumped up and
down to break it through also. Finally it broke through also and the thing was level so we
stopped taking on water. However we were in a hole in the ice the size of the ARGO and it
wouldn’t come out. Gibson was on the shore about 200 yards away. On instruction he got a
took a rope and came out on the part of the ice that was solid and was able to throw it to
me. I then fastened the rope to the rear hitch of the ARGO and with him pulling on the rope
and me in the front to raise the rear, it climbed out backwards. Another time Toots and I
were coming out in April when the ice was starting to get soft. It seemed thick enough so
we started off across the bay with a load of lumber. Out about 200 yards from shore we got
stuck in slush. I got out and went around in front to try to push, but when I lifted on the
front of the ARGO my feet went through the ice, Fortunately I had a hold on the ARGO so I
could pull myself out. However the force broke the front of the ARGO through. Again I had
to force the rear through also to level the machine. We were now 200 yards off shore with a
load of lumber, Toots and the dog, Mitzi. I laid the lumber out on the ice from the ARGO and
we were able to sneak off on it and work our way to shore on foot. We then had to fight our
way back through the snow and bush to Stan’s resort. Then I had to figure out how to get
the ARGO out or it would freeze in. We went to Fort Frances and bought 300 yards of rope,
and I got my cross country skies. After working our way back to a point on shore near the
ARGO I tied the rope to a tree and walking on the skies, worked my way back out to the
ARGO. Then by fastening the rope to the end on the winch line on the ARGO, I was able to
winch the ARGO out. I had to reconnect the rope and the winch several times as we kept
breaking through the ice for the first 50 yards or so. Toots swore she would not go up again
in April, although it was only because of the unusual ice conditions that winter that caused
the problem
Adventures with the Float Plane
I had always wanted to get a float plane to keep at the island, and use to fish the various
lakes in the area. One day while I was at Einarson’s Flying service, Hans told me about a guy
who wanted to sell his Aeronca champ on floats and skies. I later followed up on this and
found out the guy had completely rebuilt the airplane and shortly afterwards had heart
problems. He then died during a heart operation. I contacted his widow a month or so later
and she said she wanted to sell the airplane. A friend of his took us out to where the
airplane was stored in the winter and we looked it over and started the engine. I fell in love
with the airplane. It was a Aeronca Champ built in 1949. It had originally been a 7CCM in
the military and was converted to civilian with wheels and skies in the fifties. It had always
been in the International Falls area and Francis Einardson knew the planes history and
watched the rebuild. He advised it was a good airplane, so I began negotiations with the
widow. As it turned out it was a good thing I had a group of guys with me when I went to
her house, because she was not the grieving widow I expected. She met us at the door in
short/shorts. While we sat at the kitchen table talking about the airplane, she sat on two
stools with her legs up in the air. It just about blew the cool of the guys with me, especially
Glen Edwards who is always hornie any way. I found out later she is a real playgirl, who
was involved with a vice president at the mill while her husband was sick. We shortly
arrived at a price of $15000 and she agreed to the sale. She wanted me to call her next
summer and take her fishing as a condition of the sale however I knew that would lead to
trouble so I never did. In the spring as soon as the ice went out Gibson and I went up to get
the Airplane. It was on the shore about 40 yards from the lake. Francis Einarson went with
us to help us get it in the water. We dragged it, both with the engine and pushing on the
struts to the water. Francis and I got in the airplane with me in the front, and he told me
what to do. I took the airplane off, flew around a little bit, made two landings and that was
that. From there I flew the plane to the island. I flew for the next few years before I had a
check pilot meet me at the landing in the Falls and I got my sea plane rating. That check
ride only took a few minutes. I made two landings, and he said you can fly this airplane.
The first year I flew in to many lakes within 30 miles or so of the island. Most had no camps
on them so we had the lake to ourselves. We put a small motor on the struts and fished out
of the airplane to try them out. Those that fished good we marked so that we could drag a
boat into them by snowmobile in the winter. The second year I bought a rubber boat
(SODIAK) that we could haul in leave for a while and fish out of. Over a period of a few
years we ended up with about five boats and motors hidden on various lakes in the area.
On weekends I would ferry whoever was with me in and we had some great fishing. Some
of these days six or seven trips to get everybody in or out. Therefore in five or six years I
got a tremendous number of take-offs and landings, even though the air time was not that
much. One trip I took John Scudder in for a days fishing. When we were shore lunching, I
lost my glasses while collecting wood. We hunted for several hours and finally gave up. As
soon as I got in the air coming out of that remote lake, I turned to John and said “you’ll have
to give me directions on how to get back because I can’t see”. I thought John was going to
have a heart attack because he didn’t have any idea which way to go. Finally I told him I
was only kidding because I could see fine at a distance, my correction was only for reading.
We flew in most weather since we were over water most of the time and rarely got more
than 500 ft in the air. One trip with Mark and Tom Wycore however we waited to long in
the evening and a heavy fog came in and trapped us on Skinny lake. We found a old
campsite that had a piece of plastic that we could put up on some poles, as it rained most of
the night. Only had two beers and no food, so we ,made a frying pan out of one of the beer
cans and fried up some walleyes for dinner. It was a long cold night, and when we woke up
in the morning the airplane was gone. We had tied it up to a old dock and during the night
the wind had pulled the board off the dock and the plane drifted away. Fortunately we had
a boat and found the airplane a little way down the lake with to damage.
New Cabin Construction
In 1961 I retired from CDC, and became a independent consultant. However CDC wanted
me to stay, so we agreed I would work half time and be paid hourly rates consistent with
consultants in this industry. My close friend Art Hoffman who owned a consulting company
advised me on the rates I should charge. I ended up making more than when I was working
full time and only worked half time. Since now we could spend much more time at the
island we began constructing a hangar for the plane, a work shop, and a new home on the
south part of the island. We bought the trusses for the hangar and hauled them across the
ice in the truck. Fortunately that was a good year on the ice. In the spring we cut the poles
for the walls from the other side of the bay, set the poles and raised the trusses. We bought
the steel from Do It Center and enclosed the building. All went smooth. although we did
drop one of the trusses as we were raising it and dam near wiped out Al Winter. The
trusses were brought in, in two pieces and we had to make a form and connect the two
pieces with gusset plates. The doors were made on site. We got the door rollers and
hardware from the Do It Center. The hangar is a large building, was roughly built but would
last over 16 year
The next building we built was the shop. It was put on cement blocks, which raise
the risk of having the building settle, although at this time it is 15 years and it is fine. We
insulated it, wired it and put in gas lights and a stove. Toots and I done most of the building
although both Dennis Gibson and Al Winter had a hand in\it.
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