Mark Shellans:  

In our senior year, I decided that money was the key to freedom – the latter being my primary concern - and found that chemical engineers were making tons of money. I went to Carnegie Tech as a Chem E, but mostly hung out with hippies from the Fine Arts department. My life’s goal was modified to: “living my life in such a way such that on its very last day I could say, "Gee, that was fun - I wouldn't mind doing it again." My Sophomore Identity Crisis followed soon thereafter and I hitch-hiked through England and Europe for a semester (Went to Istanbul with the idea of doing a Lord Byron and swimming the Hellespont - water was too freakin' cold). Returned to school and finished my degree. I was then overcome with patriotic fervor when I received a "Greetings!" letter from the US Army, and joined the Air Force instead. My first assignment was to Foreign Technology Division in Dayton, OH. After a brief marriage (no acrimony, just a tragic mis-match), I married Margaret, my current bride, in 1969. Early the following year, I was assingned to the USNS Vandenberg collecting technical intelligence on Soviet missiles in the mid-Pacific. I discovered I enjoyed technical intelligence work far more than chemical engineering (recall my life’s goal), and decided to stay with it for a while. Spent a fascinating five years living in Japan while collecting “Human Intelligence” throughout the Far East. Returned stateside in ’75 to the AF Space and Missile Systems Organization in Los Angeles. Interesting, but not as much fun. In ’80 I received an offer to do ...Expand for more