Alan Dickey:  

Wow! Where do I start? Well, I think I'll start after my graduation in '64. While not turning 18 until about 2 weeks after graduation, many of the jobs I could have applied for were already filled. I did work for PEPCO, Grinell auto fire sprinkler company, and Thomas Sommerville Co., a plumbing and heating supply distributor before being drafted into the U.S. Army in June of '66. There was a short-term marriage in between all of that, that lasted about 5 months. I remember Chuck Kline trying to talk me into joining the Army with him, on the buddy system, and going Airborne, Rangers, etc. I declined to do that because of the pending marriage. He went anyway and did make a career of the Army for 20 years. After being drafted, I took basic training at Fort Bragg, North Carolina in the summer. D.C. is always hot and nasty in the summer, but North Carolina was even worse. For those of you who do remember me, I was 6 feet tall and weighed 137 lbs. (kind of skinny). I gained 22 lbs. in basic training because of eating 3 regular meals every day and all of the exercise. After that, the Army sent me to Army Engineer School in Fort Belvoir, VA and studied conventional and precise electric power generation and distribution. I felt sure I'd be going to Viet Nam, but wound up being stationed in a tiny town in Wheeler, Indiana, on a Nike Hercules missile base for the duration of my service obligation. During my time in Indiana, I met a young lady whom I married just before being discharged. Well, that worked out for 30 years, until early 1997. It's a terrible thing when your spouse is unfaithful. I always thought marriage was supposed to be till death do you part, but she had other ideas, to put it politely. Oh well, that's just part of life. When my time in the Army was over, I went to work for Chesapeake & Potomac Telephone Co. as a cable splicer helper. They sent me to school and after 1 year, I was promoted to a full cable splicer and was given a $3 dollar raise per week. While I did enjoy working for the phone company, $3 bucks a week just wasn't going to cut it! I then applied for a job with the D.C. Fire Dept. and was hired in July of '69 at almost double the salary of the phone company. With hind sight being 20/20, I should have stayed with the phone company. I sustained a back injury in the line of duty at a fire and subsequently retired on disability on Dec. 1, 1972. The doctors told me that as I aged the injury would get worse. They were right! While a disability pension may sound good to some people, it really held me back in potential careers. It's complicated story, so I won't go into that here. After retirement from the fire dept., I moved to Baytown, Texas, which is about 35 miles outside of Houston. A part-time job at Penney's selling men's clothing sufficed while I attended school with DeVry Institute of Technology achieving an Associates Degree in Science. After graduating, I went to work for a couple of electronics service companies and almost was hired at Johnson Space Center to help build the Space Shuttle simulator. I was well qualified for the position, but the company had to abide by equal opportunity laws, and I wasn't hired because of that. You know people have always talked about discrimination, but rarely talk about reverse discrimination. Experiencing that gave me a greater understanding of how unfair any discrimination is in job selection. I took my family and moved out to San Diego, CA in 1977. ...Expand for more