David Crouch:  

After graduating from Crawford in 1971, I attended the University of California, Irvine (UCI), where I earned a B.S. in Information and Computer Science in 1975 and an M.S. in Administration in 1976. In June of 1976, I began work as a Software Engineer at Hughes Aircraft Company in Fullerton California. In 1977, I married Mary, who I met at UCI, and who also began work as a Software Engineer at Hughes Aircraft Company. We soon bought a home in Brea, California. We both continued working at Hughes Aircraft Company, or one of its subsequent organizational embodiments during the consolidation of the Defense Industry during the late 1980s and the 1990’s. We both retired in June of 2011, at which time the remains of much of Hughes Aircraft Company was owned by Raytheon. After I had worked for about 2 ½ years at Hughes, I was put into a management position, where I quickly found out I enjoyed doing the actual engineering work a lot more than trying to manage people. After about 1-2 years I returned to the technical ranks until I retired. Mary, on the other hand, got into management and stayed there until she also retired. My first project was a sonar project for the U. S. Navy, where I was able to participate in sea trials held in the Bermuda Triangle. During those trials, the ship I was on was followed by one of the infamous “Russian trawlers”, trying to keep tabs on what we were doing. After that project, I was assigned to an Air Defense project for the U. S. Air Force that replaced the very first computerized Air Defense system for the U. S. The system being replaced ran on a vacuum tube based comput...Expand for more