Earle Presten:
CLASS OF 1955
Lewis & Clark High SchoolClass of 1955
Spokane, WA
Washington State UniversityClass of 1960
Pullman, WA
Oregon State University - EngineeringClass of 1960
Corvallis, OR
Earle's Story
How the hell did it get so late....I must have been unconscious as the time has flown by! Graduated along with a ton of good friends from Lewis and Clark in 1950 and headed right to WSU to study engineering. I had some great summers working for a railroad construction company that led me to the Pasco area, Idaho, and finally to Alaska for my 4th summer out of L&C. Those were great summer jobs as I was a mechanic for the construction firms...worked long hours and made a ton of money. At the finish of my Junior year at WSC, I decided that I was not happy with the direction the ME department was leading me...to much theory and not enough hands on development work. The head of the ME department was convinced that steam powered automobiles were the wave of the future and gave little thought or energy to the modern internal combustion engine.
Changing to Oregon State for my senior year made for a much better fit for my interests. We did a lot of lab work with engine testing and developing for the trucking industry in the Northwest which I really liked. I was short just a few credits to graduate at the end of my senior year and stayed on for another year taking graduate classes and working as a lab assis...Expand for more
tant. Between my senior year and graduation, I got a cool job with the Engineering department of United Air Lines and that led me to full time employment after graduation in 1960. Around this time I got married and we had two little boys in short order. I worked as an engine Development Engineer for the next 7 years and was often assigned to fly the line as an observer or Flight test Engineer. Unfortunately, around this time, my marriage went South with the two boys remaining with their mother in Fremont, CA Also around this time, I learned to fly getting a private, commercial, instrument rating along with a ground, flight, and instrument instructors ratings to build time and experience. I met my present wife in 1968 and we married a year later. Two years ago we celebrated our 45 years together! In 1966 I transferred into the United Flight Department, did some training in Denver to get a Flight Engineer Rating and went on the line as a Flight Engineer on a Boeing 727. From there my career went the standard airline pilot routine of flying larger aircraft and moving up into the copilot seat and from there to the left seat. I flew the DC-10 for many years until retiring in 1994 at the age of 57.
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