David Oyler:  

I attended Burnt Hills - Ballston Lake High School in Burnt Hills, New York through my junior year before moving to "paradise" in Napa, California with my family. I graduated in 1968 from Napa High School having made some wonderful friends and pretty much lived the California "American Graffiti" experience! I then attended UT Knoxville for 2 years which was also a great experience. In 1970 I went to work for GE Plastics where I traded my last 2 years of college for 10 years of apprenticeships becoming both a Journeyman Maintenance Electrician and a Journeyman Process Control Technician licensed through the US Department Of Labor. While working for GE, I also trained and took a reserve sheriff's deputy position for 9 years until the birth of my daughter. When Stephanie came along my priorities changed and it was time to leave law enforcement behind - I had a long term family commitment! After 35 years with General Electric I accepted an early retirement offer in November 2005 at the age of 55. My wife retired with me and she was successful but I failed "retirement" having gone stir crazy in less than 2 months! I couldn't stay busy enough at home, was offered a "dream job" with an engineering company and went back to work in January 2006. I worked with them as a Senior Project Manager. The engineering and construction company was acquired a few years ago by Skanska. My second career was most enjoyable providing me challenging projects everywhere from my home in Indiana to Kentucky, South Dakota, Pennsylvania, and as far away as China, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Japan. My wife and I live in South Western Indiana, and have been happily married since 1972, spending about 85% of our time laughing at each other. The other 15% of the time she is trying to "put the brakes on me"! Our daughter Stephanie graduated college, is now married for 10 years, and she and her husband have given us two very active grand daughters. The second one (Rosie) will soon be 3 years old. Kayleigh just turned 8 and keeps Grandma quite busy when she is with us. Fortunately our "kids" live only 5 miles away from us so we see them frequently. I love tools and a we built a large shop on the back of our property complete with two automotive lifts for my car and truck projects. I enjoy being creative with my hands, and I've played with high performance cars since I was sixteen and first able to drive. My wife and I enjoy attending car shows, showing as many as four of ours when we can find enough drivers to get them there. We especially enjoy meeting new people and making new friends. I don't think I would change much about my life, I've done just about everything I ever wanted to, and my friends and especially my family have been my greatest blessing. UPDATE - As of July 2016, I am trying to slip into retirement again by cutting my work to 1-2 days a week. I'm trying to figure out if I can keep busy enough outside of corporate projects to make it work this time. The big challenge will be when cold weather hits. We might need to start traveling and visiting old friends. 2017 UPDATE - now fully retired! Unfortunately my left foot failed me in November, so I retired in late December. I found one of 24 US based specialized podiatry surgeons that could rebuild the failed bone structure in that foot and he operated on me the end of January 2018. I am now on the mend! Expected recovery is 20+ weeks, but I seem to be on schedule if not a bit ahead of schedule. I exp...Expand for more