Rick McLay:  

After high school, I went to the University of Lowell. It took five years for me to figure out I wanted to be a Civil Engineer and graduated in the spring of 1980. I married Bonnie in August 1979. My senior year in college included semesters with 22 credits, working at an engineering firm one day a week, teaching swimming at the "Y" two nights a week, and teaching SCUBA on the weekends. (Can you spell NUTS?) Our oldest son was born in August of 1980, and I left a week later for California for training in the Navy Civil Engineer Corps. We spent the next two years at Philadelphia Naval Shipyard. Our daughter Lisa was born in August of 1982, just before we moved to Maine where I was stationed at Potsmouth Shipyard. After two more years, I was selected for graduate school and we were off again, this time to Texas A&M where I earned a Masters degree in Ocean Engineering. From there we went to Florida where I completed Navy Diving Officer training and again off to California. I was stationed at Travis Air Force Base (yes as a Naval Officer) for the next three and a half years where I was Contracting Officer for the construction of one of the largest Hyperbarice Chambers in the world. While we were in California, we were able to hop on a military flight to visit Ha...Expand for more