Gregory Switek:
CLASS OF 1968
Godwin Heights High SchoolClass of 1968
Wyoming, MI
Catholic Central High SchoolClass of 1968
Grand rapids, MI
Gregory's Story
I call myself a yooper though many would still say I am a troll. Counting college, I have lived in the Upper Peninsula forty-four years with thirty of them in Ironwood. If you look at the picture posted today, this house that I bought in 1993 is still not finished.
I was married to the mother of my children for twenty years and my current wife for twenty-one now. I have a daughter who is a chemist working for Boeing in Seattle. Her two children, a girl twelve, and boy eight, are into soccer. Her husband is an engineer who also works for Boeing. I get out there about once per year, but COVID kept us apart for almost three years. Then when I did make the trip, we all came down with it.
My son was a high school dropout who later got a GED and a bachelor's degree. I have not seen nor heard from him in over twenty-one years. For a reason I have never been able to find out, he walked away and refused to contact me again.
My mother still lives in the house on Ariebill Street and is the last of the original owners still in their places. I've done a lot of work on that house over the years too. I'd always have tools with me when I visited. Never everything I needed though.
I also have a stepson with a five year old daughter and a step daughter with nine and six year old sons. They live here and we see them several times per week, sometimes over night.
I often compare the kind of education I got to that of my grandchildren and wonder how much better I would be as a student now. I never liked school until I transferred into the BS degree program in Mechanical Engineering Technology at Lake Superior State from Mechanical Engineering at Michigan Tech. It took me a couple of years to learn to be a student and I take pride in going from academic probation to earning my degree with High Honors. Unfortunately, a BSMET was not well recognized at the time of graduation and jobs were very hard to find. When the one interview I was able to get resulted in an offer, I figured that I had better take it. Less...Expand for more
that a year later an economic downturn and an oil embargo had me looking for a new job.
The U.P. became home when I became a lubrication specialist at one of the iron mines and processing plants in Marquette County. That ended with a massive layoff after building my first house and producing two kids.
We got to Big Rapids two years later where I worked in an automotive electronics manufacturing plant doing what my education taught me. I worked at the design and fine tuning of some automated production equipment. A cancellation of one of General Motors programs led to another layoff only six months after starting. We all have them now in our cars and the technology is much more refined in the touch screens in the dash. I hate them, but love the buttons in the steering wheel.
Ionia, where I ran into Jim Blum from time to time, was the next stop and General Motors had a hand in the end of that job too. Our company produced fiberglass reinforced auto body parts and the GM mini-van was developed at our plant but a new facility in Indiana was erected for production. By then I was in Maintenance with a title of Planner and Scheduler. GM never produced as many of those vans as they projected.
Maintenance Director at the community college in Ironwood was what brought me here as a now single guy who could only watch as his department dwindled over the years due to attrition. My retirees were not replaced, and in 2005 my job was eliminated. I chose early retirement and spend much of my time working on the two houses we own, had four at one time, and keep the household running. My wife is a registered nurse who works at home which has me limited in the amount of noise I can make with my projects. Retirement is way better than employment and retirement was always my career goal.
It is snowing as I write this and up to a foot is predicted. My John Deere which now has a heated cab, and I work together at several places just for fun. That's better than the shoveling I did for a buck or two in the 1960's.
Register for Free to view all details!
Yearbooks
Register for Free to view all yearbooks!
Reunions
Register for Free to view all events!
Photos
