Dad said when he joined the Navy in 1973 that he was doing it just in case the draft was reinstated, and he wanted to determine what branch he joined, and have some influence on what he was going to do while serving. He wanted to fly jets, so he went with the United States Navy. He ended up serving as a nuclear technician, thus signing up for six years, two years of training and four years of service. He did so well in training that they asked him to serve his first two years of service as a training instructor at the training facility in Idaho. His third and fourth years of service were on a nuclear battlecruiser. He was on a deployment when I was born with several months remaining before he would return home. He told me that the day he was given word that I had been born was the day that he made up his mind that he would not have a career in the Navy.
Once he was discharged, he started going to Lamar University to attain his bachelor’s degree in industrial technology. He worked his way through college and ended up going to work for Gulf States Utilities in safety and training, at least that is my best recollection of events. He said the guy who interviewed him was also former Navy, making the process a bit easier than most.
I know that for a time, he worked in the technology department. He was telling me something about how at one point, they were scrambling to get RAM because it was available for the low price of approximately $400/MB, and they were buying all of the 4MB and 8MB sticks they could get. He brought that up the first time I showed him a phone I had with a Windows mobile on it with 2 GB of storage. This was a few years before the first iPhone came out.
He made his way back to the safety and training department when Entergy bought out GSU and he enjoyed his work there. He used to brag about getting to build computer-based training modules that were used throughout the company. It was a benefit to him and the company because he was able to continue working but benefit the company by reaching more people for a longer period of time than what he invested. He loved the fact that he had put one of my brother’s drawings in one of the CBTs about ladder safety.
He went 20 years without using a sick day and received a pen to signify that milestone. He came to the realization that those sick days that he did not use were more valuable than the company recognition. He stressed to us later in life to use the benefits provided to us rather than to buck up and push through, because our health and well-being were more important. He used to complain to Mom about my brother and I being sick all the time, and shortly after he had received that pen, he said “I was blessed with an ear infection”. He said that was the first time he ever used sick time, and it was truly a blessing that he learned from.
Entergy management decided to move the safety and training department to the Woodlands (just north of Houston), and Dad didn’t want to move to Houston or anywhere near it. They lived just west of Beaumont, where they had been located for 20 years at that point. He looked up on the Intranet at work and found there was a job opening available in vibration and leak testing, so he walked down the hall and said he was interested in the position. He finished out his career doing that, retiring as soon as he was able.
My brother brought this up during the celebration of Dad’s life and I’m glad he did. Dad had bought thousands of baseball cards over the years and had them stored under his desk at work for decades. He brought them home and put them in the storage building on his last day of work. Mom found them a few months later, when he had to come clean about buying them all back in the 90s. I saw the receipts that he had kept for them, and it added up to quite a bit of an investment on rookie cards that didn’t pan out, but apparently it was a vice that we didn’t really know about until later in life.
In 2007, I asked my boss for a raise when I was doing IT work. He replied that I had topped out my income with my skillset. I had a wife, two kids, and a desire to have more. I talked to Dad about it, and he suggested an associate’s degree in instrumentation technology, as he had seen that it was good work that paid well and seemed like an occupation that I would be successful in. He was right.
Leave a Reply