Robert Barker:
CLASS OF 1963
Paramount High SchoolClass of 1963
Paramount, CA
Robert's Story
Here¿s an update on the past forty seven years of my life since we last talked at graduation in 1963. I attended college at UCLA where I received both a BS in Engineering (Electrical) in 1968 and a MBA in 1970. As you will recall, the Viet Nam War was going on during this time so I signed up for the Air Force ROTC program. After graduating from UCLA, I was commissioned an officer and spent the next four years serving in the Air Force as a Communications-Electronics Engineer. After six months at a tech school in Mississippi, I spent the next three and a half years at a small Research and Development Base outside of Boston. I had a wide range of responsibilities in the Air Force, including, flight R&D engineer, Air Staff advisor on Air Traffic control issues, management of test lab on the Pan Am Building in New York City, and project leader on a TDMA (the basis of cell phone technology) demonstration program. As fun as all this sounds, I was happy to get out of the Air Force, engineering and the East Coast. I returned to California and settled in Northern California Bay Area. I taught accounting and business classes as a part-time instructor for two years at several junior colleges and then got a job with Lockheed as a Cost Analyst. After negotiating sub contracts with twenty or so military companies I found my true career calling, working in accounting and finance for semiconductor companies. For the next thirty two years I worked for three semiconductor companies. I spent six years at Monolithic Memories (MMI) and participated in my first IPO. There was an MMI product in every Pac Man Game and every Apple Computer in the early 1980¿s. I spent the next ten years as CFO of a start up company called WaferScale Integration (WSI). WSI had very interesting technology, got to within 60 days from an IPO and then had to pull the offering because the sales opportunities never really took off. The most consistent seller we had was a product in every SCUD Missile but the 1st Iraq war really didn¿t last long enough to generate a lot of sales. I spent the last sixteen years at Micrel, a very successful analog semiconductor company. We did an IPO six mon...Expand for more
ths after I joined in 1994 and the sales consistently grew to about $250 Million per year. That¿s enough about work, I retired this January.
I wasn¿t so lucky at love until I met Ildiko in May 1988 and got married seven months later on January 1st 1989. We have a wonderful marriage and luckily managed to have one son Alex who turned 19 on March 30th. Ildiko has run her own custom jewelry business for the past thirty years. She has a small shop about a quarter mile from our house which has given her flexibility to support all my son¿s activities, my work schedule and her parents who live about two miles from us. I don¿t know how she kept up with all the demands, but now that I am retired, I intend to help her with the administrative stuff that she hates to do. Alex is a great kid. He got much better grades in school than his dad, is an Eagle Scout and has a Black Belt in Karate. He graduated from high school last June and wants to be a Naval Officer. He applied twice unsuccessfully to the Naval Academy. This year he attended a military prep school this past fall and is now going to junior college. Next year he will attend UC Riverside as a mechanical engineering major and then hopefully transfer to UCLA or CAL so that he can join NROTC to get his Naval Commission.
I have been very fortunate to have had a great career, a wonderful marriage and a great son. Last spring my mother passed away and my dad has chosen to live alone in my parents home in Las Vegas. As long as he is able, I want to be able to support the lifestyle he wants to live. He provided me a great childhood and paid for all my education. I have traveled to Las Vegas about 30 times in the past twelve months. I try to go every two or three weeks. Ildiko and Alex usually make it every other month and we try to get my dad to spend as much time as possible with us. Retirement has allowed me to regain my sanity and still spend time with my dad, help Ildiko and hopefully get Alex his Naval Commission. I plan to attend the Reunion in Las Vegas on June 4th and 5th. If you have taken the time to read all of this we must have been friends: I hope to see you at the reunion.
Register for Free to view all details!
Yearbooks
Register for Free to view all yearbooks!
Reunions
Register for Free to view all events!