Jon Gateley:  

Life: Born in Florida in April 1936. Moved to Oceano, CA in 1946. Pretty much thrown out of high school in my junior year. Ward of the court. Troubled youth. Wound up in San Luis Obispo County Jail. Enlisted in Navy at age 16. Parents, school officials, and juvenile court judge all certified I was 17. Pressed into Navy mold that I never departed much from. Went to several Navy schools including Naval Justice School in Newport, RI. Got out. Went to Allen Hancock Jr. College in Santa Maria, UC Berkeley, then law school at Berkeley. Practiced law for five years, worked for the State of California for three years, then became a judge. Retired the first day I was eligible. Became an arch conservative despite (or because of?) Berkeley. Have four sons. NRA member, of course. Sandy and I shoot & have five loaded guns laying about at all times. We hike frequently. Only our youngest, Joe, has children. Two little girls. (They live north of Dallas, TX.) Have had same address and telephone number for 30 years. Expect to be here another 30 years. Have several websites operating now. Have only ever used Apple - "hate" Microsoft! Became a private pilot, commercial pilot, flight instructor. Had two planes and a hangar at Camarillo but all gone now. Flew a lot and "sort of" expect to do it again "someday". Still in "sort of" good health but getting achier and creakier all the time. All my immediate family (two younger brothers) long since deceased. Tons of photographs, slides and movies that I need to organize. Owned a fair amount of property here but sold almost everything off now. Still dodging my lawyer, CPA, CFP and family members who insist that I update my will, move everything into a living trust, do one of those durable powers of attorney, and make my funeral arrangements. Guess maybe I'll get around to some of that this year (2002), since they are getting louder and louder, but I would rather be flying! Will update this from time to time (maybe). Would like to do my life over again but mostly to try to do it 10 times smarter, with 10x more enthusiasm, and with 10x greater appreciation for every day. I do have other bios posted and I have started a photo album on every site of where I "have been". 10 DEC 07: I had a great life and wonderful opportunities, achieved a lot, acquired a lot, retired at 49 and have continued to enjoy life. But I still think that I greatly missed the boat and I would try things significantly differently if I had a chance to do it again. On the other hand, one of my good friends and business associates who was much smarter and worked much harder and who was destined to become a really great success in life, ran afoul of the law and spent eight prime years in California prisons. He's likely to never recover from that. There was a lot of money lost by a lot of little old lady types but I think that he, truly, had little or nothing to do with that. But he got stuck with the rap for that. So I'm grateful for what I have had and done in life but I sure didn't fully understand all that I could have and should have been doing. School Well, I'm going to write something here eventually but right now I can't decide whether to write about "grammar" school or high school or college or grad school, or all, or none, or what to write if I did write. So..... But I do have bios under "Life", "College", "Military", and "Work" and I do have photo albums posted on all of the sites "Where I've Been". College Started school there (Alan Hancock J.C., Santa Maria) in September 1956 after having been discharged from the Navy in April. Lived in Grover City so could have gone to Cuesta College in San Luis Obispo just as easily. Not sure why I chose Hancock. Maybe because they ran a bus service to Grover City and Arroyo Grande. A really nice young Japanese kid named Jim Yamaguchi drove the bus. I quickly got my bus driver's license and was his relief driver for the first year. The license also enabled me to pick up some extra work driving for the school district for other events. Jim graduated and I was the driver for my 1957-58 year. I kept the bus at my house in Grover City. The campus was really an old wreck of a place but that made it fun. It was my return to formal, institutionalized education since 1952. I had hated school in high school but really enjoyed it now. I think I could have stayed in school all my life. I graduated in 1958 and then went to UC Berkeley and then to the law school there (Boalt Hall). I never write about them because they were just "jobs" to me, something that had to be done. I enjoyed the education but never the institutions or the "college life". That was probably due to the fact that I was older and married, had children, studied, held down other jobs, never seemed to have much money left over, the schools were so much larger and impersonal, etc. We had some great teachers at AHJC who can claim credit (or bear responsibility) for what we became. I have some report cards somewhere that I will check for names but there was Leonard Porterfield, Charles Taylor, George Muro, Charles Chenoweth, Walter Word, Mr. Baciewiz (or something like that, the chemistry teacher), just to mention a few. I have other bios posted and have started photo albums on every site of where I "have been". 2-2-04: Rummaging around I have found all of my report cards from AHJC. Looks like the chemistry teacher's name was L. J. Bacjkiewicz (can't quite make out the signature). John M. Malovic, Spanish. W. W. Bertka, P.E. and History. A Harvey W. Taylor, math. O.L. Obermeyer, music. Peirino Merlo, P.E. A Wolpert for physics. Guess that's about all I remember. Workplace I just filled this in so I could explain why I really don't say much about my work. I really did work in San Francisco for the State of California from March 1969 until February of 1972. (And in Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo Counties after that, until 1985 when I r...Expand for more