From Handcarts to Propulsion Systems
My grandfather and great-grandfather emigrated from Denmark in 1858, and settled in Utah. They traveled across the plains with a handcart and in a wagon train. They ran out of money in St. Louis and had to find work. They lived in a lean-to that my great-grandfather carved out of a hillside. Then later on, my great-grandmother's sister happened to come along in a wagon train with her fiancée, who was apparently wealthy. He bought them a nice wagon so they could continue. There were no roads. It's a pretty good trip across the country. And, they walked a lot of it.
I was born in Pasadena in 1930, on July 4th. When I was a late teenager, my mother always wanted my to be a doctor. So I took courses leading toward that that for a while and then found out that it wasn't for me. The only thing I was interested in was cars. I had an old jalopy and used to work on her all the time. It was a 1934 ford. Before that, I had a 1929 Model A Hi-Top Coupe. It was cool, but it was a beat up old car. I had saved my money, and spent seventy-five bucks to buy it. The engine was bout worn out, but we drove it everywhere. You could repair it with a pair of pliers and some bailing wire. It would break down everywhere we went. My friends were all handy, so we'd get out, tinker with it, and get it running again and drive it back home.
My dad never really said what he wanted me to do. I always earned my own spending money. I had a lot of odd jobs as a kid. Then the Korean War came along, and the draft started breathing down my neck. One of my best friends had gotten drafted and been in the infantry and was killed. So I enlisted in the navy and became an airplane mechanic, which started me on a road that led to my career working on antisubmarine torpedoes. All together I probably worked about twenty-seven years developing propulsion systems. Towards the end of my career I was considered the father of the Mark 50. That's what one of the guys said one of our get togethers. "Here's the father of the engine."
So my story starts with my fore parents walking across the country with all their belongings in a handcart, to me spending my life developing antisubmarine torpedo propulsion systems!
