It was now time, after 6 + years, at sea, for me to rotate ashore and I received orders to Hannibal Missouri. I was assigned as the Commanding Officer of the Navy Reserve Center and this was my first exposure to the Reserve Program. Our son Mark was born there and we had bought our first house. It was a very fun time, I got to be with my family every night and all was good.

After that tour it was back too sea. We moved back to Norfolk and I relieved as Chief Engineer of a Landing Ship Dock (14,000 tons, getting bigger). LSDs are rather large ships that carry Marines and Landing craft and land them on whatever beach that seems logical. This ship was a real rust bucket, had been badly abused and not taken care of. Again, I was always gone and the tour was a nightmare. But, I kept the old girl steaming so America was safe and I survived. Today this ship is sitting on the bottom of the Atlantic somewhere off the Florida coast, having been sunk to make a man made reef for the sport diving industry.

I then went to Tulsa Oklahoma, again as the Commanding Officer of the Reserve Center. I also was the Commanding Officer of the Reserve Center in Stillwater Oklahoma. Before the end of that tour, I had to relieve as Commanding Officer of the Reserve Center in Oklahoma City. For a “GO BIG RED GUY” that was something. I was a Husker in command of all the Navy Assets in Oklahoma the home of the Huskers two big rivals. Or daughter Jennifer was born in Tulsa. We now had four children and none of them had been born in the same state.

Next, we were off to Memphis and I was assigned to a Senior Navy Reserve Area Staff and because I had all of this experience, I was now an expert and could tell the rest of the world how to do it. Right! It was a three-year tour but the Navy was running out of money and looking for people to extend in their present jobs. I graciously volunteered. By this time, I didn’t want to go back to sea, even if I could have, and only having two years left to retirement I didn’t want to jump back to the Reserve Center arena. I was making some progress in raising the combat readiness level of the units assigned to me to oversee so I was allowed to stay. I retired from the Navy in 1985.

Approaching retirement, Sheila and I had to decide where we wanted to retire to. She had enjoyed living in Florida and I had liked the weather when I visited her there. Orlando looked good because it was the home of the University of Central Florida, which had a very well respected college of engineering; also, it had a growing economy that might hold the potential of a good job for me. So Orlando it was. We bought a house there and when released from active duty we raced our moving truck to Orlando, now driving a 75 Chevrolet station wagon with 4 kids in the back and a U-Haul hooked to the bumper. We unloaded the moving truck and the next day we went to the beach and started our lives in Florida.

Two years later of around the clock schooling, I graduated, again, and was now a real engineer. I even had a job when I graduated. I lucked out and came up with an interview with one of the McDonnell Douglas engineering managers at Kennedy Space Center. He was interested in my Navy experience and just casually asked if I had seen some cranes in my time. Well, yes I had. All my ships had some kind of crane on them and being the Chief Engineer, they belonged to me. Deck Apes ran them but I took care of them. He apparently liked my answer and next thing I was hired. I didn’t know exactly what for but the tile was Design Engineer and that was my dream. Low and behold when I found out what my job really was, well, it was Crane Engineer. Once again, I was an expert with out really knowing it. I spent the next 20 years learning about cranes and when I retired from Boeing (Boeing bought McDonald Douglas) and having worked in the Shuttle program and the Boeing Delta IV program I think I might have even known something about cranes.

My job was really very exciting and much more then sitting in a cubby (instead of a room) and working math problems. Of course, I got to do that too. In my job I had to become intimate with many cranes and supervise there care and feeding. This meant that I had to get out on them and some of them were 100, 200, 300 feet in the air. I was not a stranger to heights and climbing with my experience climbing the masts of my ships, in and out of the boiler smokestacks, dry-docks and ships structure. My job also entailed a bunch of design work and each job was new and different. The standards were high and the detail had to be perfect. We didn’t have the luxury of building a proto type. It had to work and work right the first time. Also, all my jobs had to be assembled 100 feet or more in the air and that made it even more imperative that thing were right the first time. Anyway, all my designs worked and I was able to meet the challenge. It was really fun, except for the bureaucratic baloney that working for NASA entailed. Government can make taking a nap too hard to do because of the paperwork but we were able to get the job done in spite of the Bureaucracy.

Today, 2009, I am completely retired. I am trying to keep up with Sheila’s honey do list and build the perfect load for my rifles and pistols. The last few years I have gotten interested in precision shooting. Starting with competitions in three-position long distance rifle shooting to exclusively prone 600 yard competitions. Today I practice at 200 yards and manage to keep most shots in a 4-inch circle. This is from the prone position and with a sling. I haven’t gotten into bench rest shooting but I may do that someday. I really don’t know how I ever had time to work, what with Sheila’s honey do list and my hobbies and chores.

Our family is growing. The kids all have families of there own and we have 6 grand kids with one on the way. Sheila, no longer the Navy Wife is a full fledged and ever busy Grandma.

If you have gotten this far then you are probably wondering when I am going to stop. I guess about now.

My life has really been fun. In fact it as been a real adventure. In thinking of what to say here, I have remembered a lot of good sea stories that I could tell but not for now. Yeah, what a blast.