Tom Calihan:  

For my friends checking this out, thanks for stopping by. Not real good about keeping in touch so feel free to admonish me for that. My bad. After leaving the good memories of Campolindo and the Bay Area after graduation, headed north to Washington to attend Whitworth College (Now a University). Always was enamored with the great northwest after going through Outward Bound Mountaineering Survival School up in the Cascades for a month. Learned so much as life's classrooms don't have to be confined by four walls. Slam dunk course in Wilderness First aid. Took a guy in 23 miles by hand made stretcher into a ranger station for medivac with a fractured knee from a rockslide while climbing. Another chopped his thumb off with the blade of an ice ax during an emergency exit down ice fields during a snowstorm and whiteout. You get a whole new perspective on life when you come close to losing your life while hanging on a rope in a glacier crevasse. My instructor roped up with me after that for thinking quickly and not panicking. While going up to college on a track and field scholarship also got a chance to play varsity football for Coach Hugh Campbell who has since been inducted into the Canadian Football Hall of fame. Several of our team went on to play in the NFL. Also got to run with some former Olympians who took me under wing as the "albino" cause white kids weren't supposed to run that fast. Enjoyed my time at Whitworth with great professors, classes and elected and served as dorm president of McMillan Hall which is still a historic icon on campus. Proud to have attended and graduate from that institution. Learned more about myself during that time than I ever did out of the books I read and papers I wrote. While I trained to be a teacher, did not take it up right away as the professors and instuctors I respected were the ones that actually brought the subjects to life and not just recite out of a lesson plan. Took a couple of years being a renaissance kind of guy to see what I could do. Could have taken over my Dad's Construction and Development Corporation but I was never good about having things handed to me. Things meant more if I had to work for them. Some would think that stupid, but I will never pass up an adventure and a challenge. Worked in the financial district in SF working for Transamerica for a couple of years with my uncle as Exec VP of the corporation. I Probably could have made lots more money but I would have become an alcoholic if I stayed as a fast track manager. Business usually ended up at a bar and bar tabs weekly could run up to $300 plus per week. Wild and crazy days doing a lot of road travel for business trips. In my off time, hiking and climbing, playing in rock bands, hitting concerts and always working odd jobs. Moved back up to Spokane and put my mechanical skills to work managing a couple of auto repair and tire shops and was a good way to keep my rigs in good shape as a bonus. Took over as general contractor for a friend's parents at the time and finished building a fancy A-frame house out on Long Lake with big basalt fireplaces and removing the standard stairs and installed a circular stairway for all three floors. Quite the adventure. As my Boss man of the tire stores ran for congress and lost, he needed his old job back so the writing was on the wall that my employment was in jeopardy. Decided to make a change and walked into KXLY Television and Radio station who I had bought time from while managing the shops and ran into the owner of Apple Broadcasting. Told him I saw a empty desk and I could have my stuff moved in and start the next day. Gutsy move but it paid off as he told me I was either crazy smart or crazy stupid and he would take a chance on me. Did some on the air work but worked advertising and found out I was pretty good at it. Did a lot of on-air production and learned the operation of an ABC television affiliate. One of the other benefits of attending Whitworth was meeting my future wife on campus. Didn't know it at the time but we would meet again about two years later at a home bible study. After a couple of trips afterward to the IHOP with the group for coffee, the menu expanded as Lorraine became my adventure partner some 44 years now. It has been quite the sojourn since then. Worked for Lorraine's dad in the Tri-Cities area managing some more Goodyear tire and truck centers and some of my service calls took me out into "The Area" (spooky music in the background) Listed as the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, it was like a science fiction movie come to life. Government Security clearances, hand geometry, retinal scan, highly trained armed guards, radiation monitoring , underground tanks and vaults and protective suits. It was for years one of the country's best secrets. I was intrigued. When stopping in at Music Machine, one of the high end music stores here, I was checking out a new electronic keyboard/synthesizer and was told by the sales guy, if you don't work at "the area", you won't be able to afford this. Hmmm, Hanford site equals money...That inspired me to study up on all the info I could find on the site. As I did not have inside connections, it took me two years of pestering the employment offices of the contractors working there. Finally I got an interview and in some cases knew more information about the site activities than the interviewers did by pulling up news articles in the public library. No internet back then. I got my chance in October of 1982 hiring on with United Nuclear Corporation as an operating engineer at Hanford's historic N-Reactor. The unit provided special nuclear materials for our government as well as radioisotopes for cancer/medical treatment and research. The by-product secondary system steam was piped to the Hanford Generation Plant turbine...Expand for more