Curtis Richardson:  

At 52 my story is still being written. After High School I just knew I wanted to be a teacher. I had enjoyed High School and thought teaching was going to be just like what I had experienced in our little Camelot. I made it all the way to student teaching and discovered that the world I grew up in didn't necessarily exist everywhere else. I had neither the patience to deal with 144 indifferent math students (let alone remember their names as my cooperating teacher thought I should) nor the ability to support the family I had already started on a Teacher's salary. I found myself working in industry as a draftsman, tool designer, and corporate gopher at the Pullman Trailmobile plant in Charleston, IL. I discovered that a Farm Boy from nowhere could make it in a world that I could barely have imagined a few years before. I also realized that I should have pursued a degree in Engineering if I really intended to work in that world. Trailmobile began to go through a lot of changes, they published a "Mission Statement" and started "restructuring". After about three years they started a round of layoffs that finally got to me. I found myself talking to a "Headhunter" about other jobs I would be qualified for that were near family and a College where I could pursue an Engineering degree. Six weeks after I was laid off from Trailmobile I found myself laying out a new design for a clothes dryer at the old Norge plant in Herrin, IL and signing up for Engineering classes at SIU. I managed to get all but 12 hours of a Mechanical Engineering degree at Southern before I was promoted to Engineer anyway and made so busy that I couldn't finish. I think a lot of the common sense things I learned growing up on a farm outside of "Mayberry" were pretty useful, and my boss seemed to think so too. I continued to climb...Expand for more