James Shearer:
CLASS OF 1965
St. Francis Xavier High SchoolClass of 1965
Petoskey, MI
North Central Michigan CollegeClass of 1966
Petoskey, MI
James's Story
Life
Bio is simple. After high school spent four years in Navy working on T-28 and F-8 aircraft, first in Florida then in Calif. Got job out of Navy in '71 at Control Engineering Company in Pellston, Michigan and worked for them for 31 years. First working at electronic repair, then design research, then as electronic controls designer. Finallhy as a Customer Services engineer doing re-design, technical manual writing and providing training classes.
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Hobbies include free lance writing (mostly poetry, golf (can actually break 90 now and then), ship models and gardening.
Life changes as time goes by and around 2004 my wife Susan, was transfered to Farmington Hills, Mi so we up and moved from Harbor Springs to Waterford, Michigan. Then I worked for about three years at RWD Technologies which provided training to maintenance workiers at Chrysler. I am working for Chrysler in Advanced Technical Training.
Now its 2007 - and I retired. I have a pension from Jervis B. Webb Company (see Control Engineering above, Jervis Webb was the parent company). My wife is still working for Jervis Webb Company, but in a couple years we are both going back to the house in Harbor Springs, Michigan.
Update for 2008, made it to 61, who would believe. RWD Technologies gave me a call, now I am supplementing my retirement developing training classes from home. Bonus here is I don't have to give the classes and I get to work at home. So far have done rotating equipment training material for petro ch...Expand for more
emical plants, pneumatics and process control for other industries such as auto plants. Still haven't sold the downstate house due to the housing market.
Military
Out of boot camp at Great Lakes, early 1967, I was assigned to AE(A) School at the Naval Air Technical Training Center, Jax Air Base, Jacksonville, Florida. There we received intense training in electonics and when done we were - "Aviation Electricians". From Nov 1967 to Nov 1969 was stationed at Whiting Field, Milton, Fla in Traron Two or VT-2. The plane used in this training squadron at the time was the T-28 Trojan. Remember sitting up late on a base watch with a small tv to watch the moon landing. Also lots of fun time at the beach at Santa Rosa Island near Pensacola.
In 1969 when I was assigned to FTRRON 124 squadron on my way to VFP-63. It was only a three month stint. The memory I have is long hours spent in the hanger at Miramar tuning the engine temp sensors since this was the area of concern as we lost several planes due to flame outs. That'd actually turned out to be a manufacturing defect in the engine as it turned out.
Assigned to VFP-63, land based Miramar contingent for all of 1970. Memories of this tour are good. We had a wonderful air show that year though the best memory is sitting at the end of the hanger line watching the Blue Angels practicing with one of them going sideways, wingtip just off the ground between hangers. The worst memory is of an F8 slamming into a neighboring hanger of F4's.
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