Tommy Williams:  

Well, here is the 05 revision. Just a few updates. We put things on here for others to read about our lives since high school but how many actually go back and revise or update them? Life does go on. After high school I attended the University of South Alabama. I didn’t have a clue as to what I wanted to do. I started out in Civil Engineering, tried Marine Biology, and was into Geology by my senior year. In 1970 I quit school and went to work as a deckhand on the Mississippi River for a year. This was hard, dangerous, and dirty work. So I went to work at Ingalls Shipbuilding in 1971. I began in the electrical department and eventually made my way into Production Control. I worked there for 41 years retiring as a project manager. During that time they put me through school at South Alabama. Thank you very much! In those early days there were over 25,000 workers there and job competition was fierce. I found my nitch as an expert during sea trials. Though I never served in the military, (for those who did, THANK YOU!), I spent more than 2 years at sea riding various navy ships from Israeli corvettes to BB61, the battleship USS Iowa. There were times that I would come in from a trial on one class of ship and immediately transfer my gear to another ship of another class to go out again. I also rode these ships during times of hurricane avoidance. There were nearly 200 trips in all. One of the last ships was one of the new generation Coast Guard Security Cutters. They are awesome ships with some really neat features. My legacy will have to be my children. I was very fortunate to have married UP, and she kept me! Go figure. I married Sue in ’78 after she graduated from the Univ. of Mobile school of Nursing as an RN. We have three children, a boy (Thomas) and two girls (Whitney and Blakeley). My wife saw that they were in school and involved in many activities. (Read, Out of trouble). She was always pushing for their (our) best. We made the decision to not go into bankruptcy trying to send our children to college. Too many of my peers have paid for extended stays in school only to end up with nothing in return. You know, there are several ways to pay for college. You can be fortunate enough to be a talented athlete, smart enough to earn a scholarship or three, have a rich uncle, or work your way through the old fashion way. Oh yeah, you can also borrow from Uncle Sam. His rates aren’t cheap. All of my family have graduated college. As mentioned, Sue is an RN from University of Mobile and the rest of us have received at least a bachelor degree from USA. Go South! Our son wanted to be a physician. But, he wasn’t motivated to excel early. He went to Murphy and did OK. At USA, he elected to work his way through. He finished his Master’s degree owing no one and was accepted to UAB. He graduated from there in 2010 and did his internship and residency at UWV in Charleston, WV. He did a double discipline, Internal Medicine and Psychiatry. He liked West Virginia so he stayed. In September of 2018, he finally paid off his student loan of $200K. Too bad he hasn’t found that special lady yet. We are still waiting ,hoping, and praying. Whitney was/is a gifted athlete. It seems that she is good at it all. She enjoyed fast-pitch softball and loved volleyball. She attended Cottage Hill Christian Academy. She had athletic scholarships from across the country. But, she was also Valedictorian. She said she played sports to have fun but in college it would just be a job. USA gave her a full ride and she also received spending money from Ingalls Shipbuilding. She has a double degree, Political Science and Sociology. She works several jobs advocating for the abused and misused. She is here in Mobile with our four grand girls, Scarlett, Willa, Avonlea, and Evangeline, a foster girl, and her husband Matt. They have fostered quite a number of children now and moved them on to their "forever" home. This is a very big job that sure takes special people to raise these children as your own and then release them to permanent parents. She showed her mother that she was tough by choosing to have her children at home! She says, “The children were conceived in private so they will be born in private.” We never know when the birth will happen. Well, we are usually given the month. We’ll get a call telling us when to come and see the new arrival....Expand for more