What do I wanna be when I grow up?

That's a question I have asked all of my life... "What do I wanna be when I grow up". Of course that follows a basic assumption that I reall do "wanna grow up". Truth is... I really don't! At least not if I must shed the wonderment of youth, where some things are just bigger than life itself. It's a time to recognize and appreciate toys. If I must loose that...forget it! I'm never going to grow up! I wanted to be a cowboy...just like Hopalong Cassidy. That way I could keep our neighborhood safe! Airplane pilot...that'd be cool!! Fireman, policeman, etc, etc. Just like every other kid on the block!

Growing up on Chicago's NW side, my earliest memories involve sidewalks, streets and vacant lots. I was born in September 1941, just a few months before the start of WW2. I roller skated, played baseball down at the end of our block in a small group of vacant lots, walked 8 blocks back and forth to the grammer school that my cousins and sister graduated from. They were the "good" students.... I remember the milk man when the dairy wagon was drawn by a horse as was the junkmans wagon. The difference was that the milk man came down the street in the front of the house. The junkman came down the alley behind the house. The fuller brush man knocked on the front door to sell his wares as did the coffee man. I still have a red stool that my Mom bought from the coffee man. It has been my workbench stool ever since I can remember.

It was Christmas of 1949, and I'm guessing that my folks did a bit more for my sister who was 6 years older than I.... This particular Christmas I was 8 years old. Regardless of how it came about, a few days after Christmas my Dad took me Newark Radio at 223 W. Madison St in downtown Chicago. He bought me a Hallicrafters S-38C short wave radio. We left there and went straight to Allied Radio and bought a Knight 10-in-1 lab kit. From there, we went directly home. Little did either of us know then, but that day changed my life forever. It wasn't long until I knew that I wanted to work with electronics for the rest of my life.

In a few years an amateur radio license followed as did an after school job at Bob's Radio and TV Service. I was hot stuff...at 14 I had a real job in a TV shop. Well, a job anyway. I swept floors, cleaned the counter glass, stocked tubes, emptied ash trays and occasionally Bob gave me a radio or phonograph to work on. At home, I built lots of different circuits found in the monthly ARRL magazine "QST". Sometimes the circuits worked, sometimes they didn't. I lacked the basic knowledge of the component parts, so when something didn't work I really had a problem. I still have the office chair that came from my Dads office in the Field Building on LaSalle St back in the mid 50's. It was the chair I used as my "operating position" for my radio's.

There was a ham on the next block. He was an older guy (perhaps 50), married but no kids. He worked full time as an audio engineer for CBS-TV in Chicago. He was my mentor. I drag my bucket of parts to his basement, and he would figure it out, set me straight and I'd be on my way home with the same bucket, but this time the parts actually did something.

I still get the QST magazine today! And, a half a century later I can look back at that S-38 and Bob's TV realizing that I accomplished a most unusual goal. With the exception of an 18 month diversion to the chemical storage industry (had to feed the family) I worked my entire career doing exactly what I wanted to do when I was 8 years old. And, along the way I did pretty well as did my employers. I recently saw a product advertized that I had designed in the early 1970s. Talk about product life cycle! And, the industry I wound up in was emergency lighting. These are products classified as Life Safety equipment. There is a "feel good" to designing that kind of equipment. It helped people get out of a building under the worst of conditions.

Amateur Radio played a huge part of my early years. I was first licensed in 1954, and by the time I was in 8th grade, I spent most of free time in a basement workshop that my Dad and I built into one corner of the concrete wall and floor subterranian structure. The basement! On the positive side, the worshop space was my area. On the negative side, my sisters bedroom was directly above the "Hamshack", and she being 6 years older than I never shared the wonderment of radio operating or building things with hammer and saw.

Amateur radio played a major role in qualifying for my Navy Schooling and work. It was always the interest that drove the thirst for knowledge. That was the key to staying employed in an electronics environment, and the force that provided raises and promotions. That was the income that provided the means for a marriage, a home and a family.