Garry Bruen:  

After St. Genevieve grade school I went on to Alemany high school where I was on the track, baseball and football teams. During my sophomore year at Alemany my uncle, who was from Spain, took my aunt and I for a visit to his family farm in Spain. We spent the summer at the farm and traveled to several other countries in Europe. After graduating from Alemany in 1962 I went to work at McDonnell Douglas Aircraft in Santa Monica but was drafted into the Army in 1965. I was sent to Germany and assigned to an armored tank unit responsible for guarding 120 miles of the East/West German border. In 1967 after my 2 year tour of duty was over I applied for an overseas discharge and traveled around Europe for about 6 months with my German girlfriend. The countries in Europe are fairly close so you could be in another country on the train in few hours. In the Army we got most weekends off and 4 weeks of vacation a year so we were always traveling. In total I had the great opportunity to visit 17 countries and the 3 sovereign city-states of the Vatican, Monaco and San Marino. In January 1968 I returned to the U.S. and went to work for Douglas Aircraft in Santa Monica working on the Apollo Program. In June 1968 I quit Douglas and went to Santa Monica College earning an AA degree in June 1970, After college I worked at O'Keefe & Merritt in Los Angeles scheduling their 8 appliance assembly lines. Tappan from Mansfield Ohio bought them out in 1974 so I applied to Rocketdyne in Canoga Park and was hired in 1974. Rocketdyne is known for building rocket engines including the Space Shuttle Main Engine and many other Aerospace products. I met x-wife there on the first day of work and we were 3 years later in 1977. During my time at Rocketdyne I went to night school at Cal State Northridge, University of Redlands and Pepperdine University earning a BS and MBA degrees, On July 1st, 2001 wife of 24 years of marriage passed away after a long illness. Six months later I met a young lady by chance...Expand for more