Dennis Eschen:  

My life has been good since high school. Not much drama, so it does not make an exciting story. After graduation, I attended the University of Southern California. My original intent was to become an architect, but by the end of the summer before I started, I decided I did not draw well enough to succeed as an architect. So I changed major eventually finding City Planning as a mix of my interests in design, history and government. I commuted from home my first year at USC, often with Les Watson, and I joined the Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity as a sophomore and lived in the fraternity house the rest of my undergraduate years. After graduating, I pursued a master degree, again at USC, then the basic criteria for City Planning jobs. However, my student deferment was over and I received a bad number in the first draft lottery, so I got on every Army Reserve and National Guard waiting list I could find, and got into the Reserves the day before my draft physical. I spent the next six years with monthly reserve training and two week summer camps. Even with the Army, I only got out of California once on one of the summer camps. Army basic training at Ft. Ord in Monterey County, occupied the summer between my first and second years of graduate school and carried over into the fall semester, so I took three years to finish graduate school. During the third year I had an internship with the City of Pasadena. After graduating, I got a job with the City of Long Beach. I worked for Long Beach for the next 36 years, retiring in December 2008. The first 20 years were in the Planning Department, wh...Expand for more