John Hammett:
CLASS OF 1970
Wakefield High SchoolClass of 1970
Arlington, VA
St. John's River Junior CollegeClass of 1972
Palatka, FL
Ft. Hunt High SchoolClass of 1969
Alexandria, VA
John's Story
Life
Left the DC area, 2 addresses ahead of the Selective Service, but they caught up with me while I was in school in FLA. I had lost my student deferment in No. VA, because I trusted a coed in the school front office to keep my student deferment active, event though I was working a semester, then schooling a semester.
With NAM still sending home plastic bags, I ended up enlisting because I qualified for WEST POINT Prep and/or OCS. GOng to OCS got my commission, and orders for a 13 month tour in the Far East. I got out of NAM in one piece.
From there I went to Heidelberg Germany... My home town. I spent 5 years working at the 7-shot Microwave site on top of the hill above the schloss.
I rotated back to the states to the Pentagon, and was sent to Frederick, MD to work on the Autodin switch system... the pre-cursor to the Internet... Arpanet.
With the bizzate amount of clearances I had, I was "volunteered" to go the Taegu, Korea to lead a training blitz for the didgital network site there. Four monbths later, I went back to MD, had new orders to return to Germany...SCHOEN !!!... This time I was on the French/German border town of Pirmasens; again with Microwave sites and digital networking.
Around then, I met a lady from Seattle, WA, after being around teutonic blondes all that time, a short, olive-skinned Chinese/Italian gal just caught my eye.
We married, and our first child was born in Landstuhl, Germany. Right after I let the service know that I had a better offer on "the outsid...Expand for more
e", I was told baby # 2 was on the way. Must have been something in the bier (beer).
We moved to her hometown of Seattle, WA, and I was offered an IT management position with Weyerhaeuser CO.... the largest wood products company in the world. Our network covered North America, with links to Brussels, Dusseldorf, and Geneva.... Lots of travel.
Two sons, two daughters, and 12 years of marriage later,....
We divorced (no finger pointing).. I managed to retain physical custody of all 4 kids, while their mother completed her college degree.
I retired (early) from Weyerhaeuser in 2000, and took a year off.... (nice package). After a year of locating every GFuiness tap in the county, I went back to work for QWEST, the local "baby bell". I managed the Operations group that worked on the State of WA IT links. When the stock fell from 40 to 4, I bugged out at the first chance.
Now I'm with a firm doing contract work for Microsoft up in Redmond.
My two sons graduate this year:
Jason (U of WA- Tacoma)
Nicholas (Evergreen State)
Katy is in management at a Petco in Seattle.
Rachel is wrapping up her first year of internship at NOAA as one of the HAZMAT film editors. She's considering finishing school with an AA, work for a while, then maybe dive back in. She's as stubborn as me... She'll make the right choice for her.
Now... that's a long way from Wakefield High School, and I don't regret any of it. But I do miss the the EAST COAST... these LEFT coast wimps are a bit too much to take at times.
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