Shelby Jacobs:  

Life Currently retired, living in Oceanside, California with wife (Diane); have one daughter Shelley, one granddaughter Shelby and son Larry. Workplace Forty year career in Aerospace, worked on Apollo/Saturn thru Space Shuttle Programs, retired January 1996. Progressed thru the ranks of engineering from Design, Reliability, Project Office and spent the last 15 years as Project Manager in the Program Office. I was born in Dallas, Texas April 27, 1935 and attended first and second grade before migrating to California in 1943. My family moved to Val Verde from Santa Monica (¿44/45) primarily because my father was appointed pastor of the Macedonia Church of God In Christ which remains operational to this day. My father also thought that raising children in a smaller, less densely populated area would enhance the chances of growing up to be productive citizens by avoiding what he perceived to be the all too numerous pitfalls of urban life. My parents were very devout Christians; my father worked full time, holding various jobs over the years along with his pastoral duties and my mom worked part time as domestic in Newhall. We were a family of four, mom & dad, me & a brother who was one year younger. We were brought up with very strong moral values because of the conservative Christian philosophy of my dad¿s Church. One of my lessons of a lifetime occurred when I inadvertently took a pencil home from Church; my mom had me return it and say I had stolen it. She believed in the absolute definition that ¿stealing is depriving one of his property without specific permission¿, regardless of intention. I was crushed because I had no intention to steal; the incident was a mere oversight in my mind, I had simply forgotten to put the pencil down before I left Church. Needless to say I never forgot the embarrassment of the incident and how harsh if felt at the time, but I learned beyond a reasonable doubt what stealing was about and why it¿s included in the Ten Commandments. Looking back, I did not realize how poor we were; my parents never held more than minimum wage jobs and some folks on welfare seemed better off than us! We lived in two houses over those years; the first a very small rented two bedroom, one bath house on the corner of the only road between Val Verde and Hasley Canyon. The second house my father built, it was somewhat larger although small by today¿s standards and included a dinning room along with other minimal amenities. During the year or two required to build our new house, we lived in a one room all purpose tent with no running water and had an outhouse toilet (a two holer). At the time I did not realize the health hazard of having outhouse and water source in the same yard, but we had learned a very important safety lesson from past experience. The lesson came from an incident at a new home we had owned in Texas (early 40¿s); we had an outhouse which was relocated in the back yard, we learned that the old hole had not been buried deep enough because my brother sunk almost to his waist while playing. It took a couple of days to get him cleaned up and the lesson learned served us well in Val Verde because it took several years to afford construction of a new septic tank. We never owned a TV or telephone because of conservative Church values, combined with limited resources; evenings were spent doing chores, homework and occasionally gathering around the radio for entertainment. I recall learning how to drive at a very young age (12/13), not for fun or recreational use, but to assist my father with the transport of mom to and from work and shopping during summers, which tended to free up weekends for Church events. Naturally we could afford only one car, my father often worked second and/or third shift jobs and slept during the day, so I was the chosen one. My mom did house cleaning for at least one of my school mates¿ parents that I knew of, perhaps there were others. The fact that I was able to excel academically and athletically tended to mask the class difference between myself and many of my more privileged school mates. I¿m sure there were others who lived middle/lower-middle class, but we were so isolated in Val Verde that it appeared the whole world was better off. We were generally pretty confined in Val Verde; my only outings during summer were my chauffeuring chores, driving mom to Newhall and of course during school we got out to Newhall five days a week, wow! I became quite a proficient swimmer, taking every opportunity when not working or chauffeuring to spend time at the Olympic size pool provided at the park. I was a three sport (football, basketball & ...Expand for more