After graduation, I joined some fellow Class of ’58 travelers, and we made the daily journey to Manhattan and then Flatbush to attend Brooklyn College.  I wasn’t diligent enough to continue beyond mid-2^nd year, and with the military draft then looming, I joined the Army in the Spring of ’60.  Basic at Dix, tech school  at Ft Devens (near Boston), and then it was 2 years at a former Luftwaffe base on a mountaintop along the East/West German border.  We were near the city of Kassel (200, 000 people), so plenty to see and do with free time in Germany and other parts of Europe.  The 2 years were interrupted by a year in Paris, which wasn’t too tough a duty station.

Back to SI in ’64 and worked for Eastern Airlines at LaGuardia (pre-Bridge) for a few months. Capitalizing on my military experiences, I applied to the US Department of Defense for work and was accepted by the National Security Agency in the Fall of ’64.

So, it was off to central Maryland (Ft Meade), where I worked for the next 38+ years.  I met my wife-to-be there (she was a Kansas City, MO native and a recent grad of the University of Kansas), and we eventually settled in Columbia, Maryland - a new, planned city with a population of 5,000 when we moved there in 1970.  Latest census has punched it up to around 100,000, but it’s still retained some woods and parkland.  We raised two daughters, both of whom ‘flew the coop’ – Stacy to the Seattle area since the mid-90’s, and Kelly to Florida (first the Keys and now Vero Beach), where she and her husband are raising our first grandchild, Beth.  We’ve enjoyed visiting both areas - the Northwest is breath-taking, and the Keys are a fantastic place to relax….just not during hurricane season!

Working for the Defense Department included lots of  trips around the country and the world, so that was certainly rewarding, plus the positions I held kept me involved in current events in ‘hot spots’ over the years.  I got to inner sanctums of the White House; briefed the VP, several cabinet Secretaries, and numerous members of Congress and other VIPs; and worked with government professionals in other agencies, departments and nations.  Contrary to media reports, there are plenty of hard-working bureaucrats.

I left the government in January, 2003 and spent all of 30 days as a retiree.  Then, I signed on with The Boeing Company, where I was a systems support analyst and consultant until this Spring.  Working in private industry was quite different, although Boeing, with its 160,000 employees, has almost as much red tape as the government!

Retirement is now a bit over four months long, and I don’t know where the time goes.  I’m volunteering some at a horse-rescue farm, doing some of the home-chores that have accumulated over the years, planning trips, and enjoying living without an alarm clock or wrestling with rush-hour traffic.