Rick Sturm:
CLASS OF 1962
Lawrence D. Bell High SchoolClass of 1962
Hurst, TX
Bordeaux Elementary SchoolClass of 1962
Nashville, TN
Benton Elementary SchoolClass of 1962
St. charles, MO
Charlotte Sidway Elementary SchoolClass of 1962
Grand island, NY
Kaegebein Elementary SchoolClass of 1962
Grand island, NY
Rick's Story
I challenge anyone else to be as candid with their life story. I wanted the actual story told. I didn't want this to be a bragging post, but it could have been.
Life
Traveled to TN and camped in NM the summer of '62. About 30 other guys and I barely escaped the wall of water that washed away our campsite; the movies have it right. Now that I think about it, I have narrowly avoided death on a number of occasions but the wall of water is what this paragraph is about.
I have a little over 200 hours as a Private Pilot, learned to snow ski when I was about 40, SCUBA dove off and on between '75 & '00, and bought a Gold Wing motorcycle in '89. I last picked the Trombone back up in the late '90's and bought a Bach 42B. I was playing for five bands at one time, but I'm again finding it hard to even practice. I also finally learned to dance in '85 and like to mostly country dance.
I have been married twice. My first to Alma Louise Boren from Irving lasted from '68 to '77 and she bore me 3 kids. I also had 2 step kids in that marriage. She died a few years ago from complications with Diabetes.
I had one girl that I dated for most of the time between wives. Her name was Doris Pearce and she had four children. I've been contacted twice now by her eldest daughter, Shanna and she really makes me feel like I did something right where she is concerned. A lack of love was definitely not the reason we failed to marry.
I met my second wife, Margaret (Peggy) Devaney from Mass. in El Paso in '87 and we married in '93 in High Point, NC. She had 4 grown kids and between the 2 of us I think we had 20 Grandkids. We were divorced in '05. By the time it was over I had no chance of regaining my career, was forced into Bankruptcy and Foreclosure, and lost almost all of my personal possessions, including computer, motorcycle, trailer, flight gear, SCUBA equipment, and the Trombone that I'd held on to since my eighth birthday. I do still have the new horn and truck, though. I also moved to OK and lived in a one-bedroom apartment over a garage. My youngest daughter rented the house and I rented the apartment. Now she lives across town. Most of my friends and relatives abandoned me at the same time; I guess they thought I was so needy that I might hit them upl. Actually I think they didn't like my politics which has swung far to the Liberal side now. People are mean when you're down and just need a little support for your ego. I just happen to think that it is wrong to still think in terms of survival of the fittest.
I'm Episcopalian and had stayed away from church for most of my adult life until about '90. I rarely missed church any more until I moved back to Texas, and I have been very active within the church by filling most lay positions. This changed after I returned to Texas from Oklahoma. I haven't found a church, yet. It's complicated.
After I was laid-off from my last Programming job, I decided to try my own business. One-by-one my business ideas fell aside for one reason or another. I had REALLY wanted to start my own Country Dance Club but my research said that even that would not make any money. I finally settled on mowing because a friend of mine talked me into it. Trouble was that his advice was bad. I could never mow a yard in less than two hours while I would have been able to do it inside of 20 minutes (my target) with a good helper and twice the investment in equipment.
I worked for a temp agency at Dell Computers during the winter selling computers and gave the mowing away in the summer of '04. The next Winter I went to work for the same agency and two others. I've now worked a number of different jobs for Dell and others. Not a single callback for a Programmer/Analyst, and where I once could command $65 an hour, my last jobs in Nashville only allowed for a subsistence of up to $12 an hour.
My favorite job only earned $6 an hour in Nashville and was part-time, but I sure miss it. I worked for the security company that handles security for events held at the Gaylord Entertainment Center in downtown Nashville and for all the events at the Titan Football Stadium. I got up close and personal with a lot of celebrities but they wouldn't let us take pictures. My favorite event was Fan Fair in '05 (the name had been changed to "CMA Music Festival" by then, I think.
Everyone kept telling me to just give up and get a job at McDonalds, so I did. My last job was earning $5.15 an hour at Mickey D's, but I quit it when I finally got to be old enough to draw SS (I doubled my income that day).
I'm now retired, and recently decided that I really need to find another job. I'm now back in Bedford and working as a security guard. I had a really nice post at HCA/NPAS in Bedford for over a year, then I was let go because they think I can't hear well enough. I now commute 50 miles round trip vs. the 3 miles I used to, and guard a gas pipeline from my truck. My hours also went from the EVE shift to the MID shift. Check me out on Webshots.(they wouldn't let me post the URL, but my ID is RickSturm there. I also have a link to it from facebook.
School
I just found where we now have different Bio's, so school, hmmm...
Unfortunately for me, I did the same thing with school that I did for the Boy Scouts and Explorers - rank or grade wasn't what was important for me, and I did everything possible to escape homework. I was only concerned with doing just enough not to have to repeat anything. The trouble was that I wasn't always successful in that regard, and I can remember some real cram sessions to save grade at the ends of some of those classes. I don't think I was dumb, but it was pure agony for me to study; I wanted to get out and interact with people, and put school out of my mind most of the time. I remember one course on Civics in particular that coach BJM. taught, and I was going to flunk it. He let me take a make-up test after I begged him. I flunked that. The tears flowed, for I could see me repeating a year, so he gave me a verbal test. I failed that. Finally, he took pity on me (guess the tears from a guy were too much for a coach), and he finally just flat gave me the grade, with the stipulation that I never take one of his classes again.
I also remember my now deceased car passenger and I getting something like 20 licks apiece from Coach G. (Assistant Principal), on the very last day of my Senior Year, just after we were let out for the last time. I came within inches of being expelled, and having to repeat the year. Ask me to tell you about it, or maybe you remember the incident that landed us in hot water. By the way, I had gone all twelve years without receiving a single lick before that. It's really a funny, (now) but long story.
I'm disappointed. I actually got to talk to the VP at a reunion in '08, but he not only claims he doesn't remember it, but said that he would never have given that many licks.
Come on Coach; it was legal back then and I sure deserved it. Besides it was always beyond the statute of limitations, ha, ha. I just think you wouldn't admit to it maybe because it wouldn't be considered proper these days. I'm actually really grateful that I only got licks and wasn't expelled and made to repeat the year.
Roy W. and I had a rumble after school one year that cost me my band letter for that year, but that was a long time ago Roy; let me know if you still play the Trombone. I would have loved to be able to have a five-year letter, but four was okay, too. I think I proved that I was no wuss just because I was in the band, when I took P.E. in place of band that year.
I really miss seeing all of my old school mates. Any of you could contact me if you wanted to. Just look around. I tried to sneak in too much info and they caught me,l. Maybe this version will post. I hadn't heard of them doing anything other than asterisking out the bad info before, but they didn't even post previous versions of this and I was unaware of that fact.
College
I was more serious about college than I was about high school, but it wasn't easy. I was trying to raise five kids the whole time I was working on my Electronics degree, not to mention hold down a full-time job. I'm afraid I never took a full load, and sometimes dropped classes that I wasn't doing well in. I also had to drop classes when my shift would change at work, or the overtime situation would change. Sometimes I would take subjects that were interesting, when I couldn't get the classes I needed for my degree plan, but sometimes I would take classes to qualify for a job that seemed in easy reach. It took me five years to get that little two-year degree, and I only finished it to prove that I could. I learned too late that I would have had to take a terrific cut to change careers, and I couldn't afford it.
I got pretty burned out on college, but I had just started back, looking for a mid-management degree, when I got the chance to break into programming. I had to drop out in order to take Bell's in-house programming training, which was every bit as intense as college.
After that, I just took an occasional course, and it was usually at a different college for each course. I don't even remember all the colleges now, but I attended in California, Illinois, North Carolina, and Tennessee.
After I retired, I thought I might return for a Bachelor's degree in IT, but it was a bad idea. I could get one in just another couple of years of taking one class at a time, but there would be almost no chance of gaining employment from it.
Instead of landing a scholarship like I thought I might, I had to get a loan and the rates are outlandish these days.
I barely squeaked by on my first class because I passed out in the hospital parking lot and spent the last week of class in the hospital. (If ...Expand for more
you ever think about passing out, take it from me that a hospital is a goooood place to do it).
The next class ended up like the first, but for different reasons; I had trouble coordinating with my team and wasn't getting my personal assignments done. The team work was getting done, but without any coordination and my own work suffered, while everyone else seemed to work on their personal stuff and let the team work get done by those who thought like me.
I was out-of-sync with the other team members who all thought that the boss worked for them and that after the Enron thing, we peons had to keep a watch on our superiors. I was just 180 out from all these people, so I dropped the last night, forgetting that I wasn't just getting a withdrawn grade. Those two little classes cost me almost two grand. Sure am glad I don't have to pay back two years worth of classes. The classes each only met five times (once a week). I can sure see how one could take these classes without learning a darn thing but it just takes a different way of thinking. Maybe it's not that different from when I got my 2-year degree after all. I never was able to gain employment from what I learned in school, but I did get into programming thanks to having that piece of paper. Somehow that just doesn't seem fair.
Workplace
Work just never worked out for me. I originally wanted to be a Medical Artist and I used to get all kinds of artwork from our family doctor, along with a number of write-ups on it. I had my idol who was Dr. Frank Netter, but somehow I never connected the dots to come to the realization that he was first a doctor, then an artist. Anyway, I needed two years at an accredited art school, which I never got, before I even started college. It turned out that only six schools in North America turned out medical artists and SMU was one of them. So much for that dream.
When I joined the Navy, they gave me a battery of tests to see what I could easily learn, and that's how I came to be a Radioman. Before I actually started to strike for RM though, I auditioned for the Navy band, just as a matter of course after having auditioned for and being accepted into the Recruit Drum & Bugle Corps. The audition went horribly, I recall, but the guy who auditioned me told me that while I didn't really know anything about playing, I had a really sweet tone that he thought I should lend to the band. It was going to be hard to make it through music school and I would need to work really hard at it (I wasn't into working hard at anything back then). After a moment, I decided that this was too much of a long shot, while I was perfectly suited to Radio school, and I just didn't want to flunk out to become a Bosun's Mate. He marked me one point under passing in every gradable area, and when I told the guys waiting outside what I had done, they said, "Aw man! He hasn't passed anybody in six months." I've wondered ever since if I made the right decision that day. I would have loved a career in music.
After the Navy, I applied at Bell Helicopter with the idea of working my way up the ladder pretty much as my dad had. President Ducayet had personally told me that they would put me to work after the Navy, but I didn't go to him. I didn't ask dad to put a word in, either. Stupid me simply put my application in, took the typing test down at Texas Employment, and went home to wait for the phone to ring. It actually did ring within the month and I found myself competing with guys that had Bachelor degrees for a clerk's job. That unnerved me, but it seems that just such a graduate failed to show up for the interview, so I got the job. I actually got out on Sep. 23rd and went to work on Oct. 15, 1966, without applying anywhere else. Oh, for the dumb luck of the young and ignorant!
I spent the next ten years trying everything I could think of to get ahead, and was blocked at every turn. It's too frustrating to go through here, but I was even passed over for a promotion after spending five years trying to earn an Associates Degree in Applied Science for Electronics Engineering - specifically in digital computers. I think I was in the last semester and I had five kids to support and raise at home at the time.
It made me mad enough to accept a job for Timekeeper when I came to the top of the bid list right after that, even though I didn't really want it. The job had an enormous failure rate during probation, but I was determined to show them that I was no dummy and I kept that job until the Fall of '79, when my degree bought me a chance to take an aptitude test for mainframe programmer. I probably wouldn't have made it, had I not known to check a certain book out of the library and study all night before the exam. I was told that only four employees were chosen for my class out of a pool of 200, but I always felt that I must have been the bottom of the barrel, because programming turned out to be the hardest thing I ever did. I don't count passing a short-hand class, which was actually even harder, because I never used it.
By '79, when I finally got my big break, I was a broken man; I find it hard to imagine that anyone else could have tried harder to get ahead in life, and I actually took a cut at first. From then on I just hung on.
Military
I have mixed feelings about the military; I had an awful lot of lows and suffered my most traumatic blows to my ego while I was in, but I felt blessed in the kinds of duty and experiences that I had in the Navy. I thoroughly loved being a Radioman, making the Drum & Bugle Corps in Boot Camp and getting all that extra liberty, the parades and performances, and all those picnics. I did well with Morse Code and was able to copy 100% of 30 WPM long before I graduated from school. Matter of fact, I was made a Night School Instructor for Morse Code for having the highest average in my class. I loved Southern California (I sometimes went to Los Angeles for liberty) and the fact that I spent a year and a half in Sidi Yahia, Morocco (Pt. Lyote Naval Communications Station) and got to see such places as Casablanca, Rabat, Kenitra, Fez, and Tangiers -- not to mention Gibraltar. Two weeks in transit in a barracks in Rota, Spain allowed me to learn more Spanish than I learned Arabic during my stay in Morocco. I loved serving aboard a Destroyer and all of the cruises we went on. We sailed North to Nova Scotia for a shake-down cruise, to 200 mi off of Africa's Western shore and 200 mi North of the Equator to spend ten or fifteen minutes on station with the intent to pick up Gemini VI in case they had to abort in the first few minutes of their flight. We stormed Isle De Vieques near Puerto Rico in a joint exercise, involving ships and planes that were everywhere from horizon to horizon. It was better than a war movie, only they used spot lights and bags of flour for ammunition. We saved the best for last, and that was an Around-the-World cruise with four months in a war zone (Vietnam). I actually saw action though sometimes it was weird. It got weird when we were anchored a mile offshore conducting Naval Gun Fire Support (NGFS) and it was weird because the only people at Battle Stations were the gun crews, while the rest of us would be getting suntans on deck with our towels and bathing trunks, that is if we were off duty at the time.
I could fill this entire thing up with things I liked about the Navy, but I said I experienced my ups and downs, so I need to put some of the downs in here.
I passed out on the drill field during my first three weeks in Boot Camp and seriously wondered if I had what it took to make it through. Because of a combination of things I was a year late making RM3. The rule for sewing your second class crow on was that you had to have a minimum of two years active duty left in the service. It took me two years and three months time so I gave up trying for advancement after that. Just months before I got out (I don't now remember how many but maybe as many as six months) they dropped the remaining time restriction, which meant that it was too late to now take the test, but if I had taken and passed it already, I would then have been allowed to sew it on. Yagh!
I don't know if people just didn't like my looks or whether they simply thought I would be easy to stomp on, but the result was the same; I got stomped on. I experienced the only blank on a test in my entire life with the final code test to graduate from RM school and was put into Night School in my very own class as a student. I thought I would graduate with a high enough average to get my name on the wall and ended up with something quite different. I aced the make-up for a grade of passing.
I was sent to Captain's Mast twice - the first time for not catching another sailor's mistake of scheduling me to be in two places at the same time and the second was a framed charge of striking a Petty Officer. I got out with a General Discharge (under honorable conditions) because my quarterly marks were kept artificially low at 1.5 for almost the entire length of my assignment on the Stickell due to my Leading Radioman wanting to "take my crow away and make me start all over." I kept the crow but lost the Navy. I never understood why he had it in for me, but it might have been because I accidentally left my orders on the seat of the bus when I got off and had to actually show up aboard ship without them. There is a long and frustrating story here, about how I got taken by a Cabbie who refused to go fast enough to catch the bus. We chased it into Newport and back to Providence, where I finally called ahead for them to get my orders off, but I would have been AWOL, if I had allowed him the time to get them and return to the base. I retrieved the orders the next morning.
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