Charles A. Williamson:
CLASS OF 1950
Franklin High SchoolClass of 1950
Los angeles, CA
Charles A.'s Story
After graduation I entered Los Angles Trade Technical Junior College to study radio. I attended with Randolph Miller, also of our class, who was to study to be an electrician. My goal was to be a broadcast radio technician. After two years of study, I discovered that I would have to start in some small town as an announcer/technician at starvation wages. I quickly changed my mind, picked up some radar training and graduated.
I thought that I was the greatest radioman alive and charged out in to the world to seek my fame and fortune. I found out that there were hundreds of military veterans with, can you believe, something called experience that were not finding work! After six long weeks of pounding the pavement, I found work as a TRAINEEE, radio/radar technician at Lockheed.
They sent me to Van Nuys to the F94/T33 jet line. After about six weeks the world opened up for me, I bough a used Pontiac and got transferred to Burbank to work on the P2V Neptune, a big, big twin engine airplane. After 18 months I hit the top of the pay scale and only a lead man job paid more, what a kid of 21 leading combat experienced veterans, no way, so I was looking for something better.
I had become an amateur radio operator and met the Marketing Manager for an electronic company who was seeking a field service engineer (glorified technician). They called us engineers as everyone except ME had at least a four-year engineering degree. I started traveling round the country installing and servicing the products of this company and in 1956 ended up at White Sands Missile Range in charge of maintenance of the equipment at the data reduction center.
I met and married Mary A...Expand for more
nn in October 1959 and almost immediately moved to Mountain View, California to work for Ampex Corporation. Our son, Travis, was born in the next August. Yes, he was 10 months in the making; we got our birth control information from a Catholic doctor in Alamogordo, New Mexico.
I worked in various capacities of Ampex for ten years, and along the way we had our second son, Randolph (named for Randolph Miller, my closest friend from Franklin), we lived in Mountain View, San Jose, Los Angles (Playa del Rey).
While at Ampex, I self trained in computer programming and afterwards worked for various companies in Silicon Valley, California. In 1980 I stuck out on my own, forming my own corporation and consulted, programmed and designed financial, marketing, personnel and manufacturing system, retiring in December, 1999.
My Wife, Mary Ann, and I retired to Las Vegas, Nevada living there for five years. We had a small home on a big lot and the up keep became too much for me. We sold and moved to Burleson, Texas in 2005. We have a son, the Lawyer, living in Austin and another son the Plumber, living in California.
Update 2016
Other than a few health issues, and who doesn’t at 85, life here and been very pleasant. Mary Ann is busy with her Bata Sigma Pi and Eumathian Club and we have both plug-in to the local historical society and museum. I work on our two interurban rail cars that are pretty much local icons for Burleson. I am on the Board of Directors and have been very much involved in the relocation of one of the cars. We are docent’s at the museum once a month.
A foot note, I was very happy to donate my 1949 year book, perhaps you signed it.
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