Lawrence Woolley:  

We moved to St. Simons Island from Atlanta in 1955 - I was 9 then. My father was a doctor (psychiatrist) with a practice on St. Simons Island and also in Atlanta for a few years. His SSI office was in the same building/suite with Dr. Mack Simmons (the only practicing doctor on SSI). I tried out for the GA football team several years, but never made it. After my father had his first stroke in 1957, we wound up living in Milledgeville at the State Hospital where he was clinical director. I came back to SSI in 1961 for 2 years - went to Emory-at-Oxford College in Oxford, GA for the 1963 to 1964 school year (instead of graduating from Glynn Academy) - came back to SSI and attended Brunswick Jr. College for the 1964 to 1965 school year because Ga. Tech would not accept any of my Emory credits - then went to Atlanta to Ga. Tech in 1965. I left SSI for good in 1967 - went to Atlanta & Ga. Tech - stayed there until 1975. Moved to Macon, GA for about 6 years - got married, had 2 children, Jason & Marla. Then I went to work for BE&K, Inc. (competitor of Kellogg-Brown & Root or Flour-Daniel) - they kept me on the road until 1987. That's when I relocated to their Mobile office. I divorced my first wife in 1986, and married my second wife, Mary Lou, in 1989 - we have been together continuously since May 28, 1987. Most of my working career was as an electrical & instrumentation engineer specializing in Pulp and Paper Mills. During the last 2 years before I retired, I got quite a bit of experience in the pharmaceutical industry doing contract engineering for Hoffmann-La Roche Pharmaceuticals. In the fall of 1991 I worked directly for Gilman Paper Company in St. Marys, GA. That didn't last quite a year - I had been there about 30 days when the Engineering Manager (who hired me) threatened to fire me because I would not lie to plant management and tell them what he wanted them to hear. So, in November of 1992 I went to work for Jefferson Smurfit Corp. as Plant Engineer at their Middletown, OH mill. The mill's general manager made the plant engineer I was replacing take a promotion to open up a slot for me - then he made him my direct supervisor! For the 2-1/2 years I was there, he tried to make my life miserable, and it made him mad when that didn't work! When they downsized in 1994, I was the one my supervisor chose to terminate. Since then though, he was demoted from Production Manager through several intermediate stops all the way back to Maintenance E&I Crew Foreman. In December 1994 I went to work for Kimberly Clark Corporation at their Spotswood, NJ cigarette paper mill as a Special Project Engineer. My supervisor and I were hired there to design and install one specific material handling project. If the project was a success, we were supposed to transfer to KCC's Roswell, GA Corporate Engineering Dept. However, after being there about 6 months, KCC decided they wanted to shed themselves of the the stigma from tobacco production and spun the company off to be its own independent business. We were told at that time we would not be able to go to KCC'...Expand for more