Finding Purpose After Service: Steve Conaway's Journey

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Some of life's most significant opportunities emerge from our greatest setbacks. Steve Conaway's journey from Air Force service to successful entrepreneurship proves this in remarkable fashion.

When Steve enlisted in 1968, he sought education and skills through Air Force service. After training as an air traffic controller, he was deployed to Vietnam, where he managed complex air traffic situations near the DMZ. Despite the high-pressure environment—controlling fighter jets conducting combat missions with minimal safety protocols—Steve thrived in the challenging conditions.

Upon returning stateside and transitioning to civilian life, his Air Force expertise landed him a position with the Federal Aviation Administration. His career path seemed predictable until 1981, when everything changed dramatically. As vice president of the air traffic controllers' union during the infamous PATCO strike, Steve found himself among the 14,000 controllers fired by President Reagan. More shocking was the administration's determination to prevent these professionals from finding employment elsewhere—pressuring potential employers and even foreign countries not to hire them.

What could have destroyed his career instead sparked remarkable innovation. Recognizing an information gap in the real estate industry, Steve created a mortgage rate reporting service that operated successfully for 32 years. Simultaneously, he leveraged his technical aptitude to build expertise in computer-aided design systems, eventually launching his own computer services company.

"In the long run, Reagan did me a favor," Steve reflects. "I wouldn't be here today with that stress." His unexpected career pivot likely extended his life while providing greater satisfaction than his original path.

Today, Steve continues serving his community as commander of a VFW post and senior vice commander of an American Legion post. His advice for others facing career upheaval? "If you feel you're good at something, pursue it. But have a plan and stick to it."

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Today is Thursday, june 26th 2025.
We're here with Steve Conaway,who served in the United States
Air Force.
So good afternoon, steve, goodafternoon.
Thanks for taking time out ofyour day to sit and talk with us
.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
Well, thank you for doing this.

Speaker 1 (00:13):
Absolutely my privilege to be here, so we'll
start out real simple.
When and where were you born?

Speaker 2 (00:20):
I was born on February 19th 1949, in Chicago,
illinois.
Okay, so did you grow up inChicago?
No, my parents left when I wassix months old, so I have no
knowledge of Chicago to speak of.

Speaker 1 (00:34):
No recollection of being in Chicago.
No, none at all.
Well, where did they go fromChicago?

Speaker 2 (00:39):
From Chicago.
My dad was in advertising andhe went to Topeka Kansas.

Speaker 1 (00:45):
Okay, what kind of advertising did he do?

Speaker 2 (00:48):
Mostly, it was called Capper's Farmers, which I
believe was a magazine.

Speaker 1 (00:54):
Okay, all right.
And how long were you in Topeka?
Until the fourth grade?
Do you have any memories ofbeing in Topeka?

Speaker 2 (01:01):
Oh, absolutely, I can remember we lived fairly close
to a creek and we were alwaysdown looking for frogs and
climbing trees, which I fell outof one.
But yeah, I have some memories.

Speaker 1 (01:12):
Yeah, well, I mean, you don't climb trees and not
fall out once in a while, right?
So what are some of yourfondest memories, then, of being
in Kansas before you moved?

Speaker 2 (01:23):
Well, just as a young boy you know having a lot of
fun, a lot of friends, becausethere was no cell phones or
internet or anything like that.
We were constantly outsideplaying and it's a lot different
world today, but myrecollection was that it was a
great childhood.

Speaker 1 (01:44):
Yeah, so at the ripe old age of four, before you even
started school, then you moved.
And where did you move fromthere?

Speaker 2 (01:51):
To New York.
Okay, and again, my dad was inadvertising and being the
advertising capital of the world, we moved there and he worked
for multiple magazines Woman'sDay, field and Stream.
He actually did a story inField and Stream on big family
camping and that's pretty muchwhere I was up until I went into

(02:12):
the service All right Now wereyou in like New York, new York,
were you upstate New York,huntington?
Long Island, oh, so about 45minutes outside of the city.

Speaker 1 (02:21):
Okay, but still kind of city living yeah, all right.
And minutes outside of the cityOkay, but still kind of city
living yeah, alright and how wasthat different from Kansas?

Speaker 2 (02:30):
Not the only thing different was there wasn't a lot
of woods, but we had theHuntington Bay and the harbor
and Long Island Sound, so therewas more of a watery type
environment and you make a lotof friends there.
Absolutely.

Speaker 1 (02:47):
Yeah, and so did you have brothers and sisters.
I had three sisters and twobrothers.
That's a big family.
Yes, where did you fall in thepecking order?
I was number two.
Okay, all right, so you neverreally got to be the baby and
you were never really the middlekid.

Speaker 2 (03:04):
Well, there's some disadvantages and advantages to
that.
My oldest sister, I think shehad to be home by 9 on Friday,
and Saturday I was 9.30 by thetime it came to the sixth child.
They didn't care if she camehome at all.
Right.

Speaker 1 (03:19):
You know a lot of people I talk to say that, like
in a big family, you've got likeall the baby books In the first
kid, their baby books like avolume and a half and yeah, by
the time they get to that lastkid there's maybe three pictures
in one sentence, right, yeah,is that kind of how it worked.
Yes, now were you um prettygood friends with your, with
your siblings?
Did you hang out with yourbrothers and sisters at all?

Speaker 2 (03:38):
um, probably to uh the dismay of my older sister
because, uh, this may have myolder sister because she was
closest to what I did.
So, you know, I'd hang aroundand at that time we lived near a
potato field and her friends,which were a lot of boys and
girls, they would go out thereand I would try and hang around
with her and I'm not too sureshe was always that happy about

(03:59):
it.

Speaker 1 (04:00):
Yeah, I can imagine no one wants their younger
brother hanging out right, right, I see.
So how was school for you?

Speaker 2 (04:08):
I was a fair student, didn't have a lot of interest.
I actually made a deal with myEnglish teacher in my senior
year that as long as I did myassignments and didn't cause any
trouble, he'd make sure I got apassing grade to graduate.

Speaker 1 (04:24):
Okay, so you agreed not to make trouble.
Was there something in the pastthere with him that made him
think that maybe you would causesome trouble?

Speaker 2 (04:33):
No, not really.
I mean, I didn't cause a lot oftrouble and I don't think I
ever had.
My parents were never called tocome to school or anything like
that.
But English was not my forte.
I could have cared less about anoun and a verb, and so I just
wanted to make sure I gotthrough that course.

Speaker 1 (04:52):
Yeah, did you have any courses that you really
liked in school?

Speaker 2 (04:56):
Well yeah, wood shop, metal shop.
I played football in highschool.
I don't think I ever got butone game, but I was on the team
and around the age I'm going tosay of 15, I got a job in a
local bowling alley and theneventually got interested in

(05:18):
girls and you know all thethings that a teenage boy does
and that kind of.
I lost interest in doing muchelse, and cars obviously.

Speaker 1 (05:29):
Yes, yes, you know it's funny Like kids today are
into cars like we were.

Speaker 2 (05:35):
Oh no, I mean I've rebuilt an engine on a car and I
just to this day.
I do my own oil changes.
I do my own oil changes, I domy own brake jobs.
I've got.
I walk into Sears and the guyasks me if he can help me in the
tool department.
I'd say no, I'm pretty sure Ihave every tool you have in here
, but I'm just looking around incase I don't.

Speaker 1 (05:58):
Maybe you could help him.
Right, right, well, that's theother thing too.
You walk into an auto partsstore today and there's not a
lot of car guys behind thecounter either.

Speaker 2 (06:07):
I find.

Speaker 1 (06:08):
Right, you know I want to buy a spring for
something and they want to knowwhat size motor I have and
whether it has air conditioning.

Speaker 2 (06:15):
Yeah, they have to look it all up on the computer.

Speaker 1 (06:17):
Yeah, I remember I had a car and I was going to put
an aftermarket carburetor on.
I was going to buy a Holleycarburetor for it and I had to
go round and round with the guybehind the counter.
I'm like I know what I need,just sell me the carburetor, you
don't need all that other stuff.

Speaker 2 (06:35):
Today, they don't even know what a carburetor is
no less than a four barrel.

Speaker 1 (06:38):
That's true.
That's true, or a six-pack, orany of the other great things
that we got to see, right yeah.
So yeah, so you make it throughschool.
I wanted to ask, though, whatdrew you to play football for
that season?

Speaker 2 (06:58):
Well, I'd always, since I was very young we'd go
out and up to the field withfour or five kids and play
football.
You know, I bought a helmet andI was always very interested in
football.
In junior high school theguidance counselor would call me
in and he would ask me what Iwanted to do when I grew up.
And I used to tell him my dadwas in the Navy.
So I'd say, well, I either wantto join the Navy or I want to
play football, and they'd lookat me like, wow, that's some

(07:19):
wild choices.
Well, today, football playersmake millions of dollars.
Maybe not so much in that day,but when it was kind of thought
as being kind of strange at thattime, it's not so strange
anymore.

Speaker 1 (07:32):
Right, I never thought about it that way,
though there's so many thingsthat have changed over the years
.
I mean, sports figures back inthe day were popular and people
liked them, but they weren'tmaking the kind of money they
make now.

Speaker 2 (07:42):
Well being a New Yorker too.
Mickey Mammal, roger Maris.

Speaker 1 (07:45):
Right, yeah, Right Now.
Were you there when theBrooklyn Dodgers?
When did they leave New York?

Speaker 2 (07:53):
I don't think I ever went to see a Dodgers game.
We'd go into Yankee Stadiumoccasionally and see the Yankees
play.
I don't think I was ever inMets Stadium.
Oh okay, I left New York when Iwas 19, so I'm not too sure.
I think the stadium might havebeen brand new.
I'm not even sure.

Speaker 1 (08:11):
Yeah, big baseball town though?
Yes, definitely.
My brother-in-law is a hugeYankees fan.

Speaker 2 (08:20):
He lives in Arizona so I don't understand it, but
he's a huge Yankees fan.
I've got a brother who lives inSt Louis and he's tortured by
the Cardinals and the Yankeeswhen they play.
Oh poor guy.

Speaker 1 (08:30):
So you make it through school.
Did you go right into theservice at that point or did you
go to college?
What happened after school?

Speaker 2 (08:38):
I didn't have much interest in going to college and
so I wanted to join the serviceto get an education.
That's one of the reasons Ipicked the Air Force and,
believe it or not, during thattime with the draft there was a
year waiting list to get intothe Air Force and I ended up
taking my draft physical the daybefore I was inducted into the
Air Force and I asked myrecruiter why should I bother to

(09:05):
go into the city and take thedraft physical?
He says because for some reasonyou're not inducted and then
you've got a problem.
So I spent my last day as acivilian taking a draft physical
.

Speaker 1 (09:15):
Oh great.
And military physicals aren'tthe best either?
No, Not at all.
So you end up enlisting in theAir Force then yes, that's
correct.
Okay, and what was your job?
What was your rating?

Speaker 2 (09:28):
I had very believe it or not what I did when I took
the Air Force test.
And there's four differentareas.
One of them was mechanical andI was very mechanical.
I was what was called a pinchaser.
I worked on automatic bowlingmachines and stuff like that
worked on cars, had torn enginesapart when I was a kid,
lawnmower engines and put themback together.
But I answered all thosequestions wrong.

(09:50):
I had no idea what I was doingwith mechanics because I didn't
want to be in the motor pool.
That wasn't the education I wastrying to get.
I had very high scores inadministrative and general and I
can't remember the othercategory.
What I was trying to do was getinto computers, which in 1968

(10:11):
were in their infancy.
So my recruiter signed me up toget into computers.
Little did I know.
When I got down to basictraining my score wasn't high
enough to be in computers, so hekind of buffaloed me.

Speaker 1 (10:26):
Nice you.
You buffaloed the test and yourrecruiter buffaloed you, yeah,
yeah.
So, before we get too far intoit, I really want to know what
was, what was that experiencelike for you getting to basic
training, and what was it likewhen you arrived and what were
your thoughts?

Speaker 2 (10:43):
Well, it was in May, a very hot, humid day,
especially down in Texas by thetime we got in.
And, by the way, this was myfirst airplane flight ever.

Speaker 1 (10:54):
Really, yes, Did you wear a suit?

Speaker 2 (10:56):
No, no, I don't remember no.

Speaker 1 (10:59):
The reason I ask is I've talked to a couple of guys
and their first airplane rideever was to go to basic training
and their parents, their moms,made them wear suits because
that's what you did when youflew back in the day.

Speaker 2 (11:11):
No, I don't recall ever wearing a suit, I'm just
curious.
So anyway, to this day, on adark, muggy day, it reminds me
of flying into Texas.
It was probably four o'clock inthe morning.
You're tired and you'rethinking, oh boy, we're going to
be able to finally get somerest.

(11:33):
And that doesn't happen.
You're not going to bed, boy,they're running you around and
it's a real eye opener.

Speaker 1 (11:42):
Yeah, were you kind of double guessing your own
judgment when you got off thatplane?
Not at all, I definitely wantedto serve.

Speaker 2 (11:49):
My mom wanted me to serve in the Air Force because
she said she felt that I'd haveless of a chance of going to
Vietnam, which was not an issuefor me, right, I wanted to go to
be quite honest and within I'mgoing to say, a year and a
couple of months, I had ordersto Vietnam.
Wow so, but that's not at allwhy I joined the Air Force.

Speaker 1 (12:11):
Right, so you get to basic training.
It's hot, it's muggy and that'sprobably how it is the whole
time.
You're there, yes, so tell me alittle bit about you.
Get there and they're like, oh,you're not going into computers
.
What ended up happening withthat portion of it.

Speaker 2 (12:26):
well, at that point you, you select I'm believing
several different uh areas thatyou could work in, and one of
them that I selected was airtraffic control, and I had no
idea what it was.
I thought actually it was theguys with the wands that park
airplanes no concept whatsoeverof it.
Right, and I ended up gettingthat, and when I got out of

(12:49):
basic, I was sent down to Biloxi, mississippi, for the air
traffic control school.

Speaker 1 (12:55):
Okay, and you know, that's interesting though with
the military is like the namesdon't necessarily match, like
what the job is.
Right, I was in the Navy and Iwas a fire controlman and for
years my mom thought I was afirefighter and I had to explain
to her.

Speaker 2 (13:12):
No, mom, I start fires on other people's ships,
right, well, when I got theorders, it was actually called
an aerospace control systemsoperator.
Wow Was what they called it,whereas today, if you were to
say air traffic control or airtraffic controller, everybody

(13:32):
would know what you were talkingabout.

Speaker 1 (13:34):
Right Almost like it was written by an attorney or
something.
So how was your schooling thenfor that?

Speaker 2 (13:41):
Great, I was an honor graduate out of school.
How was your schooling then?
For that Great, I was an honorgraduate out of school.
It was a 16-week course inBiloxi, mississippi, at Keesler
Air Force Base.
So I had about a four-week timeperiod where before I was
actually going to get into thisschool.
So they had you out sweepingthe streets and doing all kinds

(14:03):
of crazy stuff just to keep youoccupied.

Speaker 1 (14:06):
Now was your schooling.
Was it kind of almost like anextension of basic training,
where they kind of still treatedyou like a basic trainee?

Speaker 2 (14:16):
Not quite as bad, but pretty close.
You still marched and theystill had a lot of control over
you, versus two or three yearslater when you were now on your
own and doing your job.

Speaker 1 (14:29):
Right, treated like an adult.
Finally, yeah, so you go tothat school At some point.
Did you come home for leave?

Speaker 2 (14:38):
No, my brother had a friend that was coming down my
younger brother, and so he camedown to visit me, but other than
that there was no leave.
When I left school I was ableto go back to New York.
My base was going to be in NewHampshire, so I was able to get

(14:59):
home for a few days, get my carand then drove up to New.

Speaker 1 (15:02):
Hampshire.
Okay, and then how long wereyou stationed in New Hampshire?
About a year, and you were justdoing regular air traffic
control duties.
Then what was that?

Speaker 2 (15:13):
like yeah, it's a constant job with constant
training.
Every time you go to a newlocation you don't just
instantly sit down and startcontrolling air traffic.
You have to learn the area, youhave to learn all the
approaches.
More often than not you're alsocontrolling into satellite
airports and stuff like that, soit's not uncommon.

(15:34):
I would say I probably was ajourneyman controller during
that time of maybe two monthswhere I could actually work the
position by myself.

Speaker 1 (15:44):
Okay, so that's pretty standard.
Then you go there, you have tolearn, and then you.
So not bad if you're intocontinuous learning.
Right, yeah, and what was itlike there?
Was it fairly busy.

Speaker 2 (15:57):
I wouldn't necessarily say so.
It was a SAC base, which meantthat we had B-52s and KC-135s.
No civilian traffic.
Civilian traffic on the SACbase are not allowed to land,
even with an emergency, becauseof the security involved with
the B-52s.
And then they had what theycall EWO launches, where EWO

(16:20):
means eminent war.
They go out, they get in thoseB-52s.
They don't talk to air trafficcontrol.
They go out on the runway andthey take off.
They go out, they get in thoseB-52s.
They don't talk to air trafficcontrol.
They go out on the runway andthey take off.
They don't care if they've gotyour permission or anything.

Speaker 1 (16:30):
Because something's got to happen, like right now.
Yes, okay, yeah, all right.
And so you did that for a while, and so that kind of lines up
with is this when you got yourorders to go to Vietnam, then
yes, all right.

Speaker 2 (16:41):
So in September of 1969, I had my orders.
They were actually calledre-levied orders, which means
that somebody had gotten theirwife pregnant, so they weren't
going.
So guess what?
You get to go Nice, which wasagain wasn't a problem for me.
I really had no problem at allgoing to Vietnam.
Probably where it was a littlebit strange is that I had my

(17:05):
order said that I was supposedto go to a survival school and
combat training, excuse me.
And they waived all that andjust sent me.
But that was the attitude ofthe government at the time.
You know, if you get killedthey'll just send somebody
else's son over there.

Speaker 1 (17:22):
Yeah, yeah, they just needed breathing bodies, right
yeah, butts and seats, and whatwas really?

Speaker 2 (17:27):
strange was when I got my orders, they would either
tell me the name of the base orthey would tell me the field
post office box number, but notboth.
So they gave me the name and Iwas going up to a Marine
encampment up by the DMZ calledQuang Tri, and I don't even know
if they had a control towerthere.
And I kept saying you know Iwas in the Air Force, don't you?

(17:55):
So with not having any realtraining other than the air
traffic control training, itseemed a little strange.
But once I got to Da Nang,which was the main squadron, and
then you were sent up to KwongTri, there were quite a few
controllers over there and theyclosed it down there traffic
controllers.
So we were sent to other placesin the country.

Speaker 1 (18:14):
I'm just curious is Da Nang that's where everybody
gathered Was that like themarshalling area for all the
people coming in country?
It seems like a lot of peoplewent there.
Not necessarily the Air ForceCommunications lot.

Speaker 2 (18:24):
of people went there yeah, not necessarily the Air
Force Communications Squadron,which is relatively small in
every location I'd ever been at.
So that was their main location, which was the 1972nd Comm
Squadron, and then from thereyou would go out to some of the
closer bases, and then I was inthe 18th, 84th Comm Squadron

(18:48):
when I went TDY.

Speaker 1 (18:49):
Okay, all right.
I want to ask, before I forgetwere you married at this time?
Were you dating someone?
What was going on like in yourpersonal life?

Speaker 2 (18:57):
I got a dear John within about two weeks of basic
training and I had no plans ongetting married while I was in
the service.

Speaker 1 (19:05):
Yeah, I don't blame you.
So you get to Vietnam, you getto your duty station.
Tell me a little bit about that.

Speaker 2 (19:13):
Well, originally we sat in the barracks for well.
An interesting story is, whenwe got to the barracks, they had
two sections.
They had the air trafficcontrol section with the
controllers, and then they hadpeople like me who weren't going
to stay at Da Nang and we wereup in a two-story barracks.
And so I was up in the top ofthe two-story at the end, where

(19:38):
the perimeter was, and you couldsee holes in the wall from the
shrapnel, and the locker wasmangled.
So this is where the new guysget to stay.
If you survive that you get tomove on to someplace else, right
?
So I think I was there for two,maybe three weeks before I got
temporary duty orders to an airbase called Tuiwa, which most

(20:00):
people would tell you they'venever heard of.
It was on the South China Sea,I'm going to say maybe a hundred
, maybe a little bit more milesnorth of Cameron Bay, and it was
typically an Air Force.
F-100 wing squadron was there.
That was the primary aircraft.

Speaker 1 (20:19):
So how was it different being air traffic
control for the SAC base, whereyou have a large aircraft and
now you're at another?
It sounds like a completelydifferent way of doing air
traffic control.

Speaker 2 (20:33):
Yeah, it's a little faster, obviously, you deal with
the small jets versus thelumbering KC-135s and B-52s.
Probably the most interestingpart of it was is we had
mountains on one end of therunway so we couldn't bring any
traffic straight into that tothem, to the runway, which were
parallel.
There were only two runways.

(20:54):
They were parallel, so we had arun, what was called opposite
direction traffic.
We had arrivals coming in whiledepartures were taking off, so
the requirement was for thef-100 that was taking off within
a mile of the end of the runway.
They had to turn out andsometimes they got pretty darn
close to each other because theywere in the clouds.
I never had one say he saw one,but we had what was called

(21:17):
precision approach radar whereyou could see their azimuth and
elevation as one was going outand one was coming in.
And in Vietnam air trafficcontrol, they had what was
called tactical, which meantthat the pilots could follow
your instructions or they didn'thave to.
So if they were on an outboundfor a bomb run and you had to

(21:38):
hold them down for other trafficand they didn't want to, they
just did what they wanted to do.
It wasn't positive control likeit is here in this country.

Speaker 1 (21:47):
Wow, that's got to make your job a little difficult
sometimes.

Speaker 2 (21:49):
Well, yeah, it tends to make you a little nervous,
hopefully.
And then there were always alot of emergencies, Another
problem we had.
I worked in a radar unit.
I was a radar approachcontroller versus a control
tower controller.

Speaker 1 (22:02):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (22:02):
So our radar unit was between the two runways and
what would happen when an F-100came in with hung ordnance?
They would come in and theywould do a touch and go to see
if the ordnance was going tofall off the airplane or not,
before they came in and actuallydid a landing.
So what would happen is whenthey were doing that, the tower
had a buzzer what we call it abailout alarm where we're

(22:24):
supposed to bail out of theradar unit.
But you didn't know which wayto go.
There were four ways to go andyou were just hoping you were
running the wrong way.
The right way, I'm sorry.
You had a 75% chance of going tothe correct way we never had
one actually drop napalm oranything on the wrong way, but
it's never a comforting feelingknowing that that could happen,
right, right.

(22:45):
And then we were also veryclose to the perimeter.
So prior to me getting to Tuiwathey had a sapper team that
came in and blew some F-100s upin the revetments and all that.
So we had F-16s in the unit andour responsibility would have
been if there were a breach ofthe perimeter, then we were to

(23:05):
guard the radar unit.

Speaker 1 (23:07):
Okay, it sounds like a lot of stuff going on while
you're there.
I wanted to ask you too so thisis kind of backing up just a
little bit but you were in Texasand you were in Biloxi, and
I've been in Biloxi in thesummertime and it's not even
half as much fun as Texas, right?
So when you got to Vietnam,were you pretty well acclimated

(23:27):
for that here, or was it just awhole different thing when you
got there?

Speaker 2 (23:34):
I don't remember real issues with it.
One of the things was the radarunit, which is almost like a
mobile trailer, had airconditioning, so at least eight
hours a day you were sitting inair conditioning because the
equipment needed it.
That wasn't the case once youleft the job.
But my recall was it was moreof the monsoons where, when it

(23:59):
just rained and rained andrained, you could have your
poncho on and it didn't make anydifference.
That water came off the poncho,hit your, your pants and then
soaked all the way up, so it waslike you didn't have a poncho
on at all.
Yeah, when, when, uh, you tookthe poncho off, you were just
soaked to the brim yeah, andthat lasted for quite a while
too, right yeah, I'm pretty suremonsoons last around six months

(24:21):
yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (24:22):
So you're just wet, and miserable for six months.

Speaker 2 (24:25):
Right, and then we had the lizards and all kinds of
stuff.
We were kind of a very sandyarea and so it was interesting.
When I was a kid in Kansas I'dgo to YMCA school and we'd get
horned, toads and lizards andall that stuff, and so it didn't
bother me any.
Some people didn't particularlycare to have lizards in their

(24:47):
hooves.

Speaker 1 (24:48):
Right, they were just sharing space with you, right,
right.
How long were you in Vietnamthen?
One year, just a one-year tour,yeah, okay.
The other question I had foryou is did you find that your
mechanical abilities werehelpful when you you got there?
I mean, I know that your airtraffic control, but my
experience in the military hasalways been like people have

(25:10):
these other skills and theyreally come in handy if
something breaks or somethinghappens.
Did you find that at all?

Speaker 2 (25:16):
no, not really, because we had maintenance
technicians to handle all thatkind of stuff.
I mean, we did have all kindsof knobs and all this kind of
good stuff.
We plotted the artillery sothat we made sure we weren't
bringing the aircraft in andknowing artillery places and
stuff like that.
But as far as any maintenance,we had maintenance technicians

(25:36):
for that.

Speaker 1 (25:37):
So you absolutely got what you wanted.
Then you were nowhere nearturning wrenches Right.
Do you feel like the educationyou got in air traffic control
although I mean it's rudimentarycompared to today?
Do you think that helped yougain computer skills, that kind
of thing?

Speaker 2 (25:55):
I do, just simply.
I mean, we haven't gotten thereyet, but I went into the FAA
where it became very much morecomputerized, where, when an
aircraft would call you, youwould punch in the number and
all that, give them a squawkcode and it would instantly tag
that target, indicating thatthat was the aircraft, which is

(26:15):
a whole other story.
Yeah, but we were still havingto turn aircraft for
identification.
So if an aircraft came in, saidI'm 20 miles northeast of the
airport, the first thing you'ddo is look for a raw radar
target.
If you saw one, you'd ask themit's heading?

(26:37):
And then you would turn them 30degrees and see if that target
made that move to get positiveidentification, because you
never wanted to misidentify anaircraft, right?

Speaker 1 (26:46):
right?
Yeah, that would be so whenyou're looking at them on radar.
So there's no identificationnumber or anything on that.

Speaker 2 (26:56):
Not at that time On that blip.

Speaker 1 (26:57):
So you just got to know that that blip belongs to
that one and that blip belongsto that one.
Yeah, wow, that's challenging,yeah.
So when you think back to yourtime in Vietnam, is there
anything that really sticks out?
Is there anything else you kindof want to talk about your time
in country?

Speaker 2 (27:16):
No, the only thing I can remember is that I had
considered going for anotheryear there and my problem was
that I was going to have aboutfour months left in my
enlistment and I didn't have anycontrol tower experience and I
wanted to get some in myenlistment.
And I didn't have any controltower experience and I wanted to
get some.
So I was afraid that they wouldlet me have an early out and I

(27:40):
didn't want that.
So that's why I didn't extend,and so when I eventually
Selfridge was the next base Igot to here in Michigan, I was
able to get about six months ofcontrol tower experience.

Speaker 1 (27:50):
All right, well, let's talk about your return,
then, from Vietnam.
Did you take some time off andgo home for a while, or what I
mean?
What did you do when you left?

Speaker 2 (27:57):
country.
Yeah, I did.
I actually got home maybe threeor four days before Anybody in
my family knew it and I didn'ttell them.
I thought I would surprise them.
Well, when I left New York, thedoors used to be wide open.
Nobody locked it or anythinglike that.
So I get to the house andnobody's there.
My mom's teaching and all thesiblings are either gone or in

(28:19):
school or whatever.
My dad's in New York Cityworking and I tried to get in
the house and I couldn't get inthe house Because they were now
locking everything up.
So I forget how, but somehow mymom got word and rushed home.
But the other thing I rememberwas that they had a microwave
and I had no idea what amicrowave was, and so I'm

(28:41):
looking around and they had somecrab cakes in the freezer.
So I took a crab cake out and Iput it on for five minutes in
the microwave and when it cameout you could have taken it out
and put it in the rock garden.
There's some nuance to cookingwith a microwave right, yeah,
yeah, five minutes with a crabcake is not.

Speaker 1 (29:01):
No, not a frozen crab cake.
Good thing it wasn't wrapped infoil.
You'd have gotten a wholedifferent experience.

Speaker 2 (29:06):
Yeah right.

Speaker 1 (29:08):
Yeah, so things changed a lot in the time that
you were gone.

Speaker 2 (29:11):
Yes, yes, and my mom was.
You know.
I wasn't a big writer, you know, and so occasionally I would
get care packages and my momwould have liked if I'd have
written a little more, but shewas a warrior to start with.
You know what was I going towrite about?
Well, we were on DEFCON 5 todayand we're expecting an attack

(29:32):
tonight.
That wasn't going to calm hernerves at all, no, no, and again
, I wasn't a big writer to startwith.

Speaker 1 (29:39):
Yeah, you know what I told my family was.
I'm not going to tell you howbad it is here as long as you
don't tell me how bad it is backhome.
Yeah, and that kind of keptthem away.

Speaker 2 (29:48):
Well, unfortunately, with Vietnam.
We knew how bad it was backhome.
Yeah, the protests and the AirForce times.
We were able to get that overthere.
So we were well aware of whatwas going on in this country.

Speaker 1 (30:02):
Yeah, it was kind of a mess, to put it lightly Right,
so you're back home for alittle while and then you end up
at Selfridge.
So tell me about kind of that.

Speaker 2 (30:15):
Well, the transition was it's Vietnam returnees get
choice of base.
Being an East Coaster, I pickedsix bases up and down the East
Coast and my seventh choice wasno preference.
And I learned a lesson fromthat Never leave anything blank
and don't say no preferencebecause they sent me to
Selfridge, which wasn't anywhereclose to the East Coast no, no,

(30:38):
not even, yeah, not even close.
So and, to be honest with you,it was.
It was the worst assignment.
I had believe it or not even Imean considering.
I just come back from Vietnambecause we were the only regular
Air Force on the base, so whereyou had to guard the reserve
and all that they were closing.
And just come back from Vietnambecause we were the only
regular Air Force on the base,so we had to guard the reserve

(30:59):
and all that.
They were closing down the autoshop.
They were closing down the gym.
There wasn't a whole lot to doexcept to go off base to the
bars and drink, and it just wasnot a great assignment.

Speaker 1 (31:08):
Well, everybody knows where Selfridge is.
There's not a lot around thereanyway.

Speaker 2 (31:13):
Yeah, we were able to find the local bars without a
problem.

Speaker 1 (31:15):
Well, everybody knows where Sulfurage is.
There's not a lot around thereanyway.
Yeah, we were able to find thelocal bars without a problem.
Oh, absolutely.
I can't imagine that youwouldn't.
So what year?

Speaker 2 (31:21):
was this that you got there September of 1970.
Okay, and then I got out in Mayof 72.

Speaker 1 (31:28):
All right, what was duty like at Sulfurage then?

Speaker 2 (31:32):
Well, it was good Again because I was a radar
approach controller initially.
I worked radar approach control, except for six months to get
that tower experience and itwasn't overly busy.
We had all five services there,so we had a Coast Guard
helicopter that was out onmissions.
We had a lot of training, a lotof Navy S3s, marine Corps, so

(31:58):
there was a mixture of aircraftand where it got very
interesting was that there wasvery limited airspace south
because of Detroit Metro andbecause of that it was hard when
you started getting the jetaircraft in to keep them within
that airspace.
So you mix an S-3, which is aprop, with a jet and it doesn't

(32:18):
work out well.

Speaker 1 (32:22):
No, no, I got to think every day was different.

Speaker 2 (32:24):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (32:25):
Yeah, do you think that was good, though, that you
got that mix?

Speaker 2 (32:32):
Yeah, and I did get a chance to learn the area and,
as we get further into this, Iwas at Detroit Metro at one
point in time, so I had a lot offamiliarity with the area when
I finally got to Detroit Metro.

Speaker 1 (32:42):
Okay, so you finish out your time at Sulfridge, it's
time to your enlistment's upand it's time to to move on.
What happens?

Speaker 2 (32:52):
your enlistment's up and it's time to move on.
What happens?
Well, I met my future wifewhile I was at Selfridge In June
.
I got out in May.
In June we got married.
We went back to New York and wegot married in my parents'
house and she had a son from aprevious marriage.
So I was unemployed and now hada family.

(33:13):
Yeah, instantly yeah.
So I ended up working for acompany in Mount Clemens which
did urethane work and stuff likethat, and within a year I'd
worked my way up to supervisor.
It wasn't the greatest payingjob, but it was better than no
paying job at all.
Right, it put food on the table.
It wasn't the greatest payingjob, but it was better than no
paying job at all.
Right, it put food on the tableand I took the FAA test and I

(33:43):
believe it was because of a vetnon-veteran.
You get five extra points alongwith whatever your test score
was, and I had 105 points.
So I was pretty sure that I wasgoing to get into the FAA.
It was just a matter of when,because they had a freeze on
Right.
But I do remember that it tookme about a year to finally get

(34:06):
hired by the FAA and I just gotpretty upset.
I'd watched TV and thegovernment was putting out don't
forget, hire a vet.
And I felt like doing adropkick on the TV because our
own government's sitting theresaying, hire the veterans, but
oh, we're not going to hire youbecause we've got a freeze on
Right.

Speaker 1 (34:33):
And so it was a time where, you know, you felt like
you served your country and nowyou were, your own government
wasn't helping you get into thecareer field that you wanted to
get into, right it was.
That was a rough time, anyway,economically, like we were kind
of rolling into that recessionand you know that was something.
Yeah, yes, and all that stuffwas on the horizon, right, yeah
I believe I hired in May of 73okay, all right, and where do

(34:54):
you work?
so how does that work?
You hire the FAA.
I'm sure they'll just throw youin a control tower, right they?

Speaker 2 (34:59):
well, actually they do.

Speaker 1 (35:00):
I had to go, even though.

Speaker 2 (35:02):
I had four years of experience as a controller.
They still send you down toOklahoma City, which is where
their Academy is at.
Uh-huh, and my recollection wasit was like a four-week course.
You take the weather courses,which is never.
There's nothing wrong withrefreshers on some of these
courses.
So my first, I was hired in theDetroit City Airport and that

(35:25):
was quite an eye-opener.
I probably, to be honest withyou, worked harder at Detroit
City than I did at any otherfacility.
We used to call it shaking theCessna tree.
On a Saturday morning, everyCessna on the airport would come
out.
They all wanted to be in thepattern and I can remember as a
controller when you were workinglocal control, which is
controlling an aircraft in theair, is that you keyed the mic

(35:45):
and hardly ever unkeyed it.
Wow, turn your base, clearedthe land, this and that, such
and such follow this guy, and itwas an eye-opener.

Speaker 1 (35:59):
Did you like on a busy day like that, did you find
like when you went home it washard to turn that off, like I
would?
I would still like I used to bea dispatcher and I would still
hear like dispatching thingswhile I was trying to sleep well
, it wasn't only there, it waspretty much my whole time in the
FAA and I spent eight years inthe FAA.

Speaker 2 (36:18):
If you had a day that was a bad day, you'd go home
and you'd hash it through yourmind.
If something didn't go quiteright, you'd do the whole thing
all over again, just like youwere there, right, and there
were many times where you reallydidn't get any sleep.
Doing that no and yeah, it wasat times could be a problem,

(36:39):
especially when you had to goback in and work the next day
and you weren't getting thesleep you hoped to be getting.

Speaker 1 (36:44):
Yeah, I could see where that might wear on you
after a while, yeah, so how longwere you at Detroit City
Airport?

Speaker 2 (36:52):
I.
I could see where that mightwear on you after a while.
So how long were you at DetroitCity Airport?
I was at City until 1975.
And at that point the game inthe FAA if you want to call it a
game was that you go throughvarious stages of different
airports.
So Akron-Canton was a level tworadar approach control.
So I went to Akron Canton, Iwas there until 79, moved on to

(37:14):
Columbus in Columbus, ohio, portColumbus, and was there for
about a year and then from thereI bid on Detroit Metro and was
at Detroit Metro.

Speaker 1 (37:22):
Okay, did you like Detroit Metro Was that.

Speaker 2 (37:26):
Well, my wife liked it.
She was from this area.
I guess that's hopeful.
Yeah, and I can remember when Ifirst told her we were going
down to Akron Canton she saidwell, I don't want to go down
there.
They've got an accent.
They don't have any moreaccents than we do.

Speaker 1 (37:42):
It's such a big country.
That's funny, though, becausepeople have accents everywhere
you go.

Speaker 2 (37:47):
Yeah.
And then when I told my wifewhen I was at Columbus that I
was going to bid on Metro, shesaid let's go.
However, she did tell me whenwe got to Metro that the next
time you want to move, you'removing by yourself.
Oh yeah, well, I moved thefamily four times and it's hard
on the kids.
Well, it's almost like being inthe military really, yeah right
.
And so in an eight-year periodwe went from Detroit City to

(38:10):
Akron, canton, to Columbus, toDetroit Metro and you know, you
know.
So you've got kids that are inschool and they made friends and
fortunately my youngest sonmade friends very easily so he
wasn't greatly affected by it.
And then by the time we got toDetroit Metro was when my
younger kids were starting toget into school.

Speaker 1 (38:30):
And how many kids did you have?
Three, okay, all right andpretty evenly spaced out.

Speaker 2 (38:37):
No, my oldest was born in 66.
Again, I adopted him.
Oh, that's right.
And then my two other childrenwere two years apart, 73 and 75.

Speaker 1 (38:47):
Oh, okay, all right.
So they didn't hang out withtheir older sibling.
Then too much, not so much,yeah, just each other, right,
okay, all right.
So you do that for eight yearsthen, and now you can't go
anyplace else.
So what'd you do?

Speaker 2 (39:02):
Well, the next plan would have been to get into
supervision, maybe start it backin a tower-like city and then
moved to another place and, youknow, eventually get to a place
like Detroit Metro again as asupervisor.
It's pretty rare to go from acontroller to a supervisor, but
it has happened.
So you know it's a constantmove.

(39:23):
The family game and my wifejust had more than enough of
that.
So, as it turned out, it endedup not being a problem because
in 1981, when we went on strike,ronald Reagan who had well, he
was a candidate said that he wasgoing to reduce our hours to
more commensurate with a jobfrom 40.

(39:44):
The Canadian controls wereworking 32 and never worked
traffic like we did.
And what we didn't realize isthat he meant from 40 to zero,
because he fired everybody,didn't he?
Yeah, about 14,000.
And I believe today there'sstill an effect.
So if you think about it, in1981, they had to replace us all

(40:07):
, so you had a big influx of newcontrollers.
So the retirement is 20 yearsat age 55, 25 years at any age.
So roughly 25 years later, it'slike having a strike, except
it's not a strike.
Now they're all retiring.
So today there are 3000controllers short and it's a
very small percentage of peoplethat come out of school, go to a

(40:28):
facility and actually end upbeing an air traffic controller.
So if you were to put 100controllers through school,
maybe 20 of them would end upbeing fully performance-level
controllers.
When it was all over said anddone, we'd have guys that would
come from Lansing or Flint toMetro and just couldn't cut it
and would end up going back.

(40:48):
Very high-stress environment,right?
No, not, according to the FAA.
The FAA said it was no morestressful being an air traffic
controller than driving down thehighway and our civilian
equivalent was a veterinarianassistant.
Wow, people wonder why we wenton strike.

Speaker 1 (41:03):
Yeah Well, I mean, what was that like for you?
You had this job and then, allof a sudden, you just don't like
it.
You're done.

Speaker 2 (41:14):
Well, it's kind of interesting.
First of all, I was vicepresident of the union down
there and eventually thepresident before we were
decertified and none of us wouldhave ever thought that they
would fire 14,000 out of 15,000air traffic controllers Right, I
mean, who would have thoughtthat for a second?
And Reagan got some bad advice.

(41:36):
He pretty much was told thatyou know, if you give them this
48-hour ultimatum, most of themwill run back and the hardliners
will stay out.
You'll get rid of thehardliners and we'll be in great
shape.
And that didn't happen, yeah.
And we got really beat up on acontract At that time.
We were asking for a $10,000raise.
And I would go to UAW meetingsand UAW members say you guys

(41:59):
have got a lot of nerve askingfor $10,000.
And I would say to them wait aminute.
If you're expecting to get$2,000, you don't start at 2,000
.
You start at 10 and younegotiate.
We wanted to have anOlympic-sized swimming pool on
every control tower, but we werewilling to give that up.

Speaker 1 (42:17):
We'll take a water fountain instead, right?

Speaker 2 (42:21):
So you know we got.
You know, I mean, we had nosupport from the unions.
The Teamsters crossed ourpicket lines and the UAW was
good, they gave us a haul tomeet at constantly, but the
pilots didn't support us.
You know the mechanics, youknow the various other unions.
Just simply, we got no support.

(42:43):
And a lot of people today willsay that the beginning of the
downfall of the unions was whenthey when what happened to the
air traffic controllers, whenthese companies started seeing
what reagan did and it's thesame with the detroit news,
where they fired all of theirpeople you know that they, these
companies, started decidingthat that's what they were going
to do.
They were, they were takingreagan's example and they were

(43:04):
going to utilize it.
And the unions have never hadthe strength that they had prior
to the Patco strike.

Speaker 1 (43:12):
Yeah, my dad was a union guy.
He worked for General Motorsfrom like 65 to, I think, 1990.
But yeah, you can see it.
There was like an arc where itwas very powerful and then it
just wasn't Right.
Yeah, so what did you do afterthis?

Speaker 2 (43:32):
Well, I got into real estate, which I hated.
The guy gave me the broker,gave me a cubicle and a
telephone.
I worked seven days a week.
He was giving me half thecommission.
So I made $40,000 a year andgave him $40,000 for a cubicle
and a telephone and that wasn'tmy thing, but it was.

(43:54):
Again, you got to put food onthe table.
So that's what you do In theprocess of doing real estate.
I found that when I had atransaction that it was
important to try and get thepeople that were buying if I had
the buyers the best interestrate that they could get, which

(44:15):
meant a better chance of themqualifying, which meant a better
chance of it closing, whichmeant a better chance that I was
going to make a commission onit.
But you sat on the phoneconstantly having to call all
the banks and all that.
So I actually started a companythat gathered interest rates
from the various mortgagecompanies and I published it and
sold it to real estate officesand I did that for 32 years and

(44:40):
it went from where I just justthe various real estate's office
got my report to the newspapers, picked it up, so all the
newspapers would publish it on aweekly basis and it grew from
there.
I was reporting on 90 lendersand had probably a 10 10 more
that were waiting to get inbecause the papers didn't have

(45:01):
the room to add any more thanthat that's incredible.

Speaker 1 (45:04):
Yeah, what a great story.
Like I hate this job, but thatthis, there's this part over
here I think I can do and thepart I missed was I also got
into CAD CAM Computer AidedManufacturing, computer Aided
Design so I did that.

Speaker 2 (45:20):
And then I did my mortgage thing on the side
because I only had to do thatone day a week, right.
So I built that business whileI was actually doing CAD CAM
week, right?
So I built that business whileI was was actually doing, uh,
cad can.
So I started out I think it'ssix dollars and 25 cents an hour
, which was not a lot of moneyand um went to another company.
They gave me a quarter raiseafter a year and, uh, so I went

(45:45):
to another place and got a fourdollar raise, ended up being a
supervisor, and then thatcompany started a software
company to develop a computerPC-based CAD CAM product and I
was the technical supportmanager for that company until I
left.

Speaker 1 (46:03):
Really, yeah, so that's interesting because I
used CAD.
I worked in the utilityindustry for 28 years, so I
probably used some of theproducts that you developed
Computer Vision.

Speaker 2 (46:14):
SimLink, yeah, two that I worked on.
Besides we had one calledSolution 3000, which was a
PC-based one.
So I was key in the developmentof that because I had all the
knowledge and background forwhat these high-end systems
could do that we were trying todevelop into this PC based
system.
So I left the company.

(46:35):
They had promised me apercentage of the company and it
was a husband and wife, afamily business.
The wife hated computers.
She had said to me more thanoften I don't know why anybody
would like computers.
So I would go out to customersites to do technical support
and I might have the part tokeep their CAD CAM system

(46:57):
running.
And these companies are makingmoney when their CAD systems are
running.
They're not making money whenthey're not.
And so I would have possibly,for example, a math processor or
I knew what the problem was andI'd go out there to change it.
And she would tell me that Ihad to come all the way back to
Novi from Sterling Heights toget an invoice for a $300 part.

(47:20):
And I said I'll handwrite aninvoice.
So they felt that that wasdisrespectful.
So pretty soon I was on the outWow.
So I started a computer salesand service, utilizing all of
their customers.
I didn't take their customerdatabase.
I knew who they were because Iwas out there all the time,
right, because they werethreatening to sue me for taking

(47:41):
their customer database and Ifinally said to them either sue
me or get off my back.
Yeah, because I didn't take anywritten customer database.
I visit every one of them andthese are people who knew and
trusted you.

Speaker 1 (47:54):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (47:55):
Yeah.
So I ended up doing computersales and service.
Where the problem eventuallycame in was at the time, you
know, they depended on me.
And then companies like CompUSAcame in and I couldn't compete
Right, because where they'reselling 100 computers, I'm
selling one or two a month and Iwould write post processors.

(48:17):
If they had a computer go outor a monitor go out, I would
bring another one out, I wouldkeep them running.
So I said to them either youconsider my services value added
or you don't, because CompUSAis not going to write you a post
processor and they're going totake your computer and who knows
when you're going to get itback.
And eventually, in 1995, Ifinally shut that down because I

(48:39):
just, you know, the people weremore interested in saving a few
bucks than they were with theservice.
Right Sort of what's going onwith like online ordering versus
going to a brick-and-mortarstore, but by the time that
happened, my mortgage reportingservice was going extremely well
, so I was working one day aweek out of my house and making

(49:03):
really good money.
I had a whole lot of people sayto me I wish, I wish I knew
what your formula was well, what?

Speaker 1 (49:13):
what is it about you?
Because you seem to have like aknack for like seeing this need
, and then I mean, because Imean I don't see the connection
between cad cam and mortgageinterest rates and air traffic
control, like you just have allthese different things that
you've done just out of seeing aneed and then figuring out how

(49:36):
to fill it, and that's preciselyit seeing a need.

Speaker 2 (49:40):
I was their head technical support guy.
When I left I knew they weregoing to be in trouble and I
mean I would go out and I wouldsolve problems that their people
couldn't solve.
So it was kind of a love-haterelationship.
You know.
They loved it when I was outthere solving their problem,
right.
So and that was, you know, Imean I had a relationship with

(50:02):
some of the software people andstuff like that and I had one
guy that was talking aboutleaving because of what they'd
done to me and I said, no, don'tdo that.
And as a matter of fact, theyfinally said to him that if we
find out you're hanging aroundwith Steve, we're gonna let you
go.

Speaker 1 (50:20):
so I mean that's how vindictive they were yeah, well,
people get protective or theyget paranoid, or I don't know
what the word is, but yes, let'sback up for a second and talk
about the strike Something that

Speaker 2 (50:33):
a lot of people don't know about is that the Reagan
administration was dead set onmaking sure that we never made a
living again, if at allpossible.
We had guys that tried to getinto the Canadian air traffic
control system and ourgovernment put pressure on the
Canadians not to hire any of us.
We had guys that went intoowner operator trucking and they

(50:54):
were the companies werethreatened with pulling all of
their government contracts ifthey hired any of their
controllers.
They just they did any andeverything that they possibly
could.
We were dragged into court.
I had, on the next day of thestrike, I had federal agents
around my house trying to findme.
I was down at the Union Hall,right, but we had.

(51:15):
We had people that were takenaway and changed in shackles
presidents of locals so thegovernment was not happy with us
.

Speaker 1 (51:27):
I had never heard that they basically was scorched
earth with you guys.

Speaker 2 (51:32):
Yes, yeah, wow, they were very vindictive.
I worked with, they developed ateam and one of the guys was
the president of ColemanIndustries out of Kansas,
another was a University ofMichigan professor and there was
one other, gm vice president,and they were charged by the

(51:52):
government to go around andvisit all the towers, talk to
the controllers who stayed inand make recommendations to the
FAA.
So I contacted this professorout of the University of
Michigan and I said who are yougoing to be speaking to?
And he said well, thecontrollers that are still in
there.
I said you're never, nevergoing to get a true picture if

(52:13):
you don't talk to thecontrollers that are on the
outside.
That went on strike.
So he went to the FAA and hesaid to them can I talk to these
controllers?
And they said yes, and I sethim up throughout the country to
go to union meetings and sitdown and talk with the
controllers.
And we actually he, I andanother controller wrote a book
that was never published and thereason was is that we, it was

(52:35):
fiction based on fact.
So what we would do is we wouldtake sections of this report
they made to show that what wewere saying was what was
actually happening and nopublisher would take it.
You either either it's fictionor it's fact that we won't take
the two combined.

Speaker 1 (52:50):
Right right Now you have historical fiction that
people write all the time.

Speaker 2 (52:55):
Yeah, that might be worth self-publishing.
Well, nobody's anymore, it'sprobably.
The funny thing is the titlewas the Mid-Air Collision of the
FAA and PATCO was the title ofit.

Speaker 1 (53:12):
Yeah, probably no one would even know right anymore.

Speaker 2 (53:15):
No, but it was pretty bad.
They were pressing real hard tomake sure that you couldn't
feed your family or get a job oranything that was related to
air traffic control.

Speaker 1 (53:28):
So that's really kind of what pushed you into real
estate.
Then, yeah, what else are yougoing to do?

Speaker 2 (53:32):
Well, I was.
Eventually Bill Clinton liftedthe ban.
What happened was the federalgovernment when you're released
like that, you can go to theMerit Systems Protection Board,
which we did, and all of us lost.
So then we filed with thecircuit court and they held it

(53:52):
for five years until Reaganappointed all justices for the
DC Circuit Court of Appeals andwe had attorneys and we never
got our day in court.
The DC Circuit Court of Appealstook five cases, decided
against them and then said yoursis kind of like his, yours is
kind of like his.
You lose, you lose, you lose,wow.

(54:13):
So this justice for all and youget your day in court isn't
necessarily how it really goes.

Speaker 1 (54:19):
Right, right, you know what.
Something interesting, though,I've got to say is that you're
passionate about it, but youdon't seem bitter about it.

Speaker 2 (54:33):
No, and I'll tell you exactly why because you and I
wouldn't be talking today if Ihad stayed in that job with the
stress, yeah, yeah.
So the simple fact is is thatin the long run, reagan did me a
favor because I wouldn't behere today and I'm at least as
successful, if not more so so,than if I just stayed in the faa
.
I could have retired when I was49 years old because I would

(54:54):
have had the 25 years that Ineeded, yeah.
So, yeah, I had to work longer,but I'm not afraid of work.
I know I've clearly startedthese companies and stuff like
that.
And here I am.
I'm now going in my seventhyear as a commander of a vfw and
senior vice commander of theAmerican Legion.
So my thing is not to sit athome.
I do my own break jobs, my ownoil changes, and my philosophy

(55:16):
is why would I pay somebody todo something that I'm capable of
doing myself?

Speaker 1 (55:20):
Absolutely, absolutely.
So I don't want to get ahead ofourselves then.
So you, I had a question, holdon a second.
It was a good one too, doggoneit, yeah.

Speaker 2 (55:40):
So the question is like, overall, philosophically
speaking, do you think like allthese things happened for a
reason then?
Eh, I don't know, I'm justcurious.
I mean, like I said, I was veryconscientious.
All my ratings in the FAA wereexcellent.
I had what was called QWIs,which were quality within grade.
So, for example, when I was aGS-12 and I went to a GS-13, I

(56:04):
went to a 14 because I got aquality within grade.
So my work was superior in mostpeople's opinion and I just
knew that I can handle thehardships.
It's the same thing you get outof the military and you're not
getting hired by the FAA.
You got to do something.
So I mean, I was offered apercentage of the urethane

(56:27):
company to stay with them, butthere was no way in the world
that was ever going to happenyeah, you sound.

Speaker 1 (56:33):
You sound like you know what you don't want.
Right, right, absolutely.
So you uh.
I'm just fascinated by allthese things that you've done,
but I want to talk about, uh,when did you become involved in
these veteran serviceorganizations the vfw and the
american legion?

Speaker 2 (56:46):
well, I joined a group downtown Brighton called
the Brighton Veterans MemorialCommittee and they have a
memorial down there and I wasjust a volunteer.
I helped them put pavers in andthings that needed to be done
at the memorial and eventuallygot on the committee and then
eventually became chairman ofthe committee, which I am today.
And we were having difficultywhen we had the parade downtown.

(57:11):
The communications between thecommittee and the parade
organizers, which were the VFWand the American Legion, weren't
communicating.
So the American Legion and theVFW would set up the parade but
they didn't do anything after.
So what we would do is we woulddo stuff after at the memorial.
We would have speakers and allthat kind of stuff.

(57:34):
So I joined solely to be theliaison between the Brighton
Veterans Memorial Committee andthe VFW and the American Legion.
So that's how it started.
And within a year I was seniorvice commander of the American
Legion and a year later I wascommander of the VFW and I have

(57:57):
a lot of knowledge, especiallyin computers.
I do all of the POS, front end,back end, I'm sorry.
Plus I can do the front endhere I do most of all of the
computer work.
You can do the front end here.
I do most of the all of thecomputer work.
I just I do accounting.
I do the accounting for thefour different organizations
because I did my own accountingwhen I was.

(58:18):
I had my mortgage reportingservice and my computer company.
So I have all of thesedifferent backgrounds that
people need.
I can remember I was sitting inhere and somebody was
complaining about thiselectronic sign out front that
nobody knew how to do it and Isaid, well, I've got a computer
background, I could look at it.
And I know Sooner said that andthey had the control sitting on

(58:40):
the table saying here you go,make it work, yeah, which I did
and still do, yeah, yeah.
So I just, you know, I've got alot of knowledge in a lot of
different areas which seem to beuseful to both the
organizations here and it servedme well with my own

(59:00):
organizations.

Speaker 1 (59:02):
Well, and it sounds too like even in your private
businesses, they're reallyservice organizations as well.
I mean providing thatinformation on mortgage interest
rates, that's a service, right?
I mean you get paid for it,that's great, but that's a
service.
Helping people out with theircomputers, that's a service.

Speaker 2 (59:20):
Right.
Well, I considered myself astatistician for the mortgage
rates.
I used to deal with a gentlemannamed Murray Feldman who did a
Sunday show here on Channel Two,and I would go in and do
interviews with him and at somepoint in his opinion to become a
mortgage expert.
People would say, well, whywould you take an arm versus a

(59:40):
15 year?
Why would you take a 15 versus30 and all that?
And I would go on his show anddo that.
So, like I say, I just when Iget into something, I'm usually
pretty thorough.
You want to know all about it,right, yeah, yeah, that makes
sense I can remember when I wasa kid I got my first bike and my

(01:00:03):
parents I remember my parentswent on vacation to Colorado and
then we were in Kansas and Itook a hammer and a nail and I
made a flat tire on my bikebecause my dad had shown me how
to fix a flat tire so I had totry it myself and I would take
lawnmower engines and tear themapart.
In those days too, I would godown to a hardware store locally
where they rebuilt and did thatkind of stuff.

(01:00:26):
And I was very lucky becausethe guy who did that was more
than happy to have me in thereand be my mentor and show me
what he was doing.
And I think that's what helpskids grow is people who can take
their knowledge and pass it onto kids and get them interested
in something, if they show aninterest in what you're doing.

Speaker 1 (01:00:46):
Right, sometimes it's a matter of just listening to
the kid, right?
Yeah, it's funny that you sayall that because when I was,
when I was a kid, my my mom usedto.
She would go to yard sales andshe would buy me like blenders
and toasters and things so Icould take them apart and see
how they worked and then putthem back together.
So very, very similar.

Speaker 2 (01:01:04):
I didn't go quite as far entrepreneurially as you
have, but yeah, Well, I've gotlike a ZTR and it's got two
drives on it and I was having aproblem with one.
So I bought this kit.
I said, well, you know, firstof all, they weren't going to be
able to give it back to me fora month and I couldn't go
without it for a month, right?
So it ended up being a blownhead gasket on it.

(01:01:26):
So I put a gasket on it and thething worked fine for years
thereafter.
So I'm just not afraid to jumpin and see what I can do.
There's a couple of things Iwon't do.
I don't do gas appliances, Iwon't put my own water heater in
because I don't want to blowthe house up, and I do lemon
electric.
I'm not crazy on it, but Iguess I know what my limits are

(01:01:52):
and when it's time to call aprofessional in.

Speaker 1 (01:01:54):
Yeah, Well, that's part of life, right Figuring out
what your limits are.
Sometimes you have to go beyondthem to figure out what they are
, but we all get there.
Well, we've talked about a lotof things and covered a lot.
I mean to me this is justfascinating, to be honest.
I've talked to a lot of thingsand covered a lot.
I mean to me this is justfascinating, to be honest.
I've talked to a lot of people.

(01:02:14):
I talked to a guy who got outof the military and invented the
machine that wraps bowling pinsin that plastic that they're
wrapped in.

Speaker 2 (01:02:34):
you know um, but this I think it's interesting that
military people um tend to uhhave kind of that spirit of if
there's a problem, we'll figureout how to fix it well, and one
thing that and you know it aswell as I do that military
teaches a discipline and theexample I always use as my
wife's up at my summer home um,for six.
So who cares if I make the bed?
Nobody comes in the house.
I make the bed religiouslyevery morning and it's

(01:02:54):
discipline, right yeah, so it's.
In other words, you know, youdo what you have to do and you
do it.

Speaker 1 (01:03:02):
Well, and if you make your bed every morning, you've
started your day doing something.
Yes, you've accomplishedsomething already, right?
Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 2 (01:03:13):
But doing something.
Yes, you've accomplishedsomething already.

Speaker 1 (01:03:15):
Right, yeah, absolutely, but I'm a firm
believer in that every kidshould be in the military and
learn discipline.
It would serve them well.
Yeah, yeah, I think we would bea lot further ahead, maybe.
Right, so you know, as we kindof wrap up our conversation, I
want to make sure we've coveredeverything that you want to talk
about.
So is there anything we haven'ttalked about that you wanted to
cover before we?

Speaker 2 (01:03:32):
No other than I'm very involved in all the
organizations.
here Again, I'm commander of theVFW going on my seventh year
I've just relinquished.
The reality is I'm not gettingany younger.
So I'm trying to push off someof these jobs onto somebody else
because if something were tohappen to me and I'm doing all

(01:03:54):
of these different functions itcould become a problem.
So the hardest thing I'm havingis finding somebody that's very
computer literate where I cantrain them on the back end of
the POS system and that kind ofstuff.
But I kind of joke sometimeswhen those people here they'll
say to me you know, somebodywill say well, this is the

(01:04:15):
commander.
And I'll say and the headjanitor also.
So I pretty much I hire thebartenders, I I go up on the
roof and put the filters in, Iset up the hall for functions
when they need help, and so Ipretty much do whatever is
called for here.

Speaker 1 (01:04:33):
Yeah, you do what's got to be done.
Yeah, Well, good, so you know.
I just have one more questionfor you then, as we wind down,
and that is you know someonelistening to this, maybe 100
years from now, what messagewould you want to leave for
people as we end ourconversation today?

Speaker 2 (01:04:55):
I guess it would be.
You know, if you feel thatyou're good at something, you
should pursue it, and if itmeans starting your own business
, the advice I would give,though, is that when you first
start a business, it takes timefor it to grow.
If you have a partner who canhelp pay the bills and the prime

(01:05:16):
example would be my son hestarted a little restaurant, and
he felt pressured to.
His wife was an engineer, shewas making good money, but he
felt pressure to start takingmoney out of the business when
he probably shouldn't have.
He should have left it in thereto build it, and the business
failed.
And so if you're going to goout on your own, you've got to

(01:05:37):
have a plan, and you've got tostick to it, and if your plan is
that, within six months ofstarting your business, you
expect to be paying yourmortgage and your bills, then
you probably shouldn't do itAbsolutely.

Speaker 1 (01:05:50):
All right.
Well then, you probablyshouldn't do it.
Absolutely All right.
Well, thank you for sharingthat.
Thanks for being the first outof this VFW post to record your
story.
I really appreciate it, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:06:00):
Well, I appreciate what you're doing here and I
think that it's a great servicefor veterans.