John Sweeney:
CLASS OF 1968
Del Norte High SchoolClass of 1968
Albuquerque, NM
Fullerton Junior CollegeClass of 1971
Fullerton, CA
Mckinley Junior High SchoolClass of 1965
Albuquerque, NM
Bel - Air Elementary SchoolClass of 1962
Albuquerque, NM
Stronghurst Elementary SchoolClass of 1960
Albuquerque, NM
John's Story
School
Del Norte High School: a Great Place with Great People.
I didn't know how much fun I did have in high school until it was over. It could have been better, but that was my fault. The women were smart and beautiful, the men were mostly good guys.
Probably my favorite academic class was, oddly enough, Business Law (Mrs. Palmer I think).
Mr. Jones was one of my favorite characters at Del Norte. Whenever my friends and I would show up in the morning, we could count on Mr. Jones to shake us down. It was a lot like standing a daily guard mount in the Corps; I guess I was preconditioned. Thank you Mr. Jones, where ever you are...
One of my favorite memories of Del Norte was when that character (I don't remember his name) put out the smoking trash can in the hallway with the fire hose, and soaked half the folks there when it started whipping him around...;
Workplace
I have been working at Yuma Proving Ground Army Test Center as a contractor (TRAX Test Services) since my retirement from the Marines (1989). I am currently a section lead. I work there because Heather told me to "go get a job!" shortly after I retired; I still remember her cute little finger jabbing at the air about two inches from my nose. Anyway, we are involved in testing military equipment, primarily for the Army, but other services also use this installation.
Military
20 year career in the Marine Corps; Retired a Master Sergeant.
I went to boot camp in San Diego in January 1969 (platoon 1003) shortly after moving to California from Albuquerque, and immediately started having second thoughts about my decision; but, too late, there I was in a Quonset hut (remember Gomer Pyle? We really lived in those things). I remember there were a lot of loud people there, I remember being bald, and I remember being tired. After about 13 weeks, it was over, and much to my surprise, I was selected to go to Electronics Maintenance School.
My attitude was that I hadn't joined to go back to school (I had just withdrawn from college), but to school I went; for a year, at the same recruit depot. I was disappointed to find the Marine Corps had a rather Spartan view of how a school should be run, and there wouldn't be any Homecoming Queens or Cheerleaders, etc.., to make life bearable in this school as there was at Del Norte; not that those wonderful ladies paid any attention to me in high school, but at l...Expand for more
east I had something nice to look forward to each day.
As I am older now, and marginally wiser, I realize the Corps did me a favor. I came out of school a 2841 (Ground Radio Repairman), and later completed my second school at 29 Palms (in 1975/76) to become a 2861 (Electronics Technician); again, this second school was also devoid of the niceties.
Following my first school I was introduced to the Marine Corps tradition of assigning Marines to locations as far away from where they request to go as possible. My two best friends at the time, Smitty, Rouse, and I, in a fit of youthful bravado, volunteered for WESTPAC (SE Asia); with secondary requests for West coast duty. As a result, we all wound-up at Camp Lejeune (North Carolina). We scratched our heads, tucked away this lesson on the duty station game (not that it did any good), and went to the East coast.
Upon arrival at Camp Lejeune, I was pleased to find that the drinking age was 18 then in North Carolina, at least for beer (New Mexico and California were 21). I spent a short time at Electronic Maintenance Company and H&S Communications, Force Troops, and was then rudely transferred to Marine Barracks at Cecil Field Florida (outside of Jacksonville) on the first set of quota orders that needed to be filled. It should have occurred to me at that time that lance corporals were pretty much highly motivated cannon fodder, but I was too busy bemoaning the fact that Florida's drinking age was 21 (right back where I started). Do you see a pattern here? As with many young Marines, beer was, and still is, a priority.
Running out of Room, so bullets:
1. I prefer to believe that was in fact chicken I ate at 2am, at that restaurant/farmhouse, in Yechan, South Korea.
2. When a Spanish security guard jacks a round into the chamber of his AK-47, it has a very sobering effect.
3. There are wild pigs in Sardinia; the one I saw, in the middle of the night, was relatively peaceful. A good thing, that entrenching tool probably wouldn't have done me much good if he hadn't been.
4. I am proud to announce that after an evening of intense instruction by the Japanese owner (for those of you technically minded, he was Japanese, not Ryukyuan) of that restaurant in Okinawa; I was declared to be as proficient as a 5 year old Japanese child with chopsticks (I may have lost a year or two since then), and, yes, alcohol was involved.
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