Gene Allen:  

From Somerville High, I went on to Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken where I enjoyed Glee Club and got to meet Seraphine at a joint concert with St Peters in Jersey City. We married after my Bachelor of Engineering degree in Electrical Engineering and my free pass to Undergraduate Pilot Training at Williams AFB, AZ (now closed). We spent our first year in Chandler, AZ, then moved to Abilene, TX, from which I flew C-130E and H models until 1976. Marisa was born there just before we left. We returned to NJ and lived with my parents in Belle Mead until we found a house we could afford in Hopewell Borough. I worked for my father until getting a sales engineer position with The Foxboro Company while continuing to fly C-130s for the AF Reserve out of Willow Grove NAS. I was hired by American Airlines in 1978, and Katrina came along a few years later. When the girls were more grown Seraphine completed her Masters in Reading and Language Arts, working initially at the Newgrange School in Trenton and then at The Pennington School, where she taught students who were challenged with one or another learning disability. I continued with the Reserves and was activated and deployed in 1991 for Desert Shield and Storm, retiring when I returned. I pulled the plug on my AA career ...Expand for more