tl;dr

I’m getting close to the decision to retire. I’m looking back at my career trying to put things in perspective. By most accounts it has been a great career, but it is also short of what it could have been. I’m going to express some genuine disappointment. I’ve seen a lot and accomplished some great things. I could have done so much more too, but bad decisions and people cost me a lot.

How it Started?

Maybe this is indulgent? Maybe this is a really bad idea? but fuck it, I’m going to do this. This is sort of a rough draft of an obituary too. Writing your own obituary is supposed to be good for your perspective. Perhaps that argues for doing this after all.

My Origin

I am an Army brat. My dad was an officer in the US Army, field artillery. A lot of his focus was on missiles, nuclear tipped ones. As will become infinitely clear my life was shaped by nuclear weapons. I was born in September 1963 right before Kennedy was assassinated. If you do the gestational math I was conceived in November 1962 right after the Cuban Missle Crisis. This is not a random happenstance. I was an actual Cuban Missile Crisis baby. My dad deployed as part of 1st Armored Division to Mississippi waiting to invade Cuba. He makes light of it now, but this is very close to a near death experience. He was a forward artillery observer, parashooting in, a very low life expectency pursuit. After the crisis ended it was time to create a family. Me.

The theme of nuclear weapons comes up over and over in my life. This is especially true being in New Mexico. My grandfather planned the invasion of Japan in WW2 for the US Army. He was also part of the occupation force after the war. The invasion was unnecessary because the first atomic weapons hastened the end of the war. My wife’s father came to New Mexico after being drafted to work at Los Alamos in 1946. Then it was still a secret city. Thus he reported to PO Box 1663 like those who were part of the Manhattan Project. He worked on nukes as part of the military for most of the rest of his life. I eventually worked at Los Alamos and then Sandia on nukes as well. My life has been intimately shaped by nukes and the Cold War. The end of the Cold War also created some immense challenges that still play out today.

By the time I was born my dad was in Greece, Macedonia. He was with a nuclear armed 8 inch howitzer battery with the M33 warhead (as I later discovered). Nine months later I was in Germany in the alps at a town called Oberammergau. I spent three years there. He was off to Vietnam after that and I went to my parent’s home town of Spokane with my mom who was pregnant with my brother. After my father returned we went to Texas for a few months that were not memorable. Then for the entirety of my elementary school years I lived in Lawton Oklahoma. My dad was at Fort Sill, the field artillery school for the Army. I’ve noted it was an ideal place to be that age.I had the immense freedom of a kid in the 1970’s. I played expansively with some great friends, Claude and Pat. The creek in our neighborhood the focus on incredible fun. The same town would have been hideous as a teen. I visited recently to see where I’d lived almost 50 years ago. It was surreal, and I was overly generous about what my teen years would have been there.

After this I moved to Germany for my early adolesence. I had always been young for my school year, so my parents held me back a year (good practice for young men). I redid my sixth grade year and after that I was old for my year. For two years I lived in Achaffenburg (1975-1977). I played football and got my big growth spurt the summer before seventh grade. My dad was the XO of a Lance missle battalion (more nukes). We moved to Stuttgart where my dad worked for the Seventh Corp headquarters. A fun fact is that my dad worked for George S. Patton III (son of the famous one). I went to school with George S. Patton IV. I went to the eighth and ninth grades there. I really started my love of science there with an infatuation with nuclear rockets to Mars. Los Alamos developed those rockets before the program was cancelled in 1974.

New Mexico

In 1979 we moved back to the states to Albuquerque. My dad had extended the stay in Germany to allow this. He was an avid tennis player, and didn’t like shoveling snow as he did growing up in Spokane. I was a sophomore in high school and went to Eldorado high school. A highlight of high school was being a state champion in football. While I contributed having a future NFL starting quarterback (Jim Everett) makes a difference for a team. I also wrestled with modest success (2nd in the city as a Senior). After high school I entered the University of New Mexico studying nuclear engineering. My undergrad days were unremarkable with mediocre grades. I was also married and working full time for the bulk of those years, so my plate was full. I met my wife Felicia two weeks after high school graduation. We were working at McDonalds.

So having mediocre grades and BS in Nuclear Engineering meant no jobs were coming my way. I did the second best thing entering graduate school at UNM (cause who else was taking my mediocre ass!). I went to grad school and continued my track record of mediocrity. At the end of this year I had a moment that stands out as one of three huge crises in my life. The moment was my final in an incompressible fluid dynamics class. My grade sucked. I looked around and realized I was not applying myself. I was letting myself down. I’d also dropped a class on computational physics taught by Jerry Brackbill from Los Alamos too. These classes defined topics I was passionate about, but I couldn’t succeed at them.

During these undergrad years a couple things defined me beyond school. Number one of these things was my romance with Felicia. We met and dated briefly before my Freshman year. We quit dating, but our friendship blossomed. We shared classes in Air Force ROTC, and continued to work together at McDonalds. In the Spring she went to work at another store, but also reached out to me. We became closer and closer as friends.

A pivotal moment was the Spring fitness run and weigh in. The Air Force requirements were that I only weigh 205 pounds, the weight I carried as an 18 year old. I would have to use my skills a wrestler to cut weight. I also had to do a timed run, but I was extremely fit for a big guy. Felicia hated running. At the end she made it, but it was a struggle. I waited for her then helped and comforted her. The guy she was dating ignored her. We were on a trajectory to being a couple. It took til the end of the summer, but it happened. It was a little bit thanks to a sexy co-worker, Lana, who wanted to date me too. In the end, I chose Felicia although Lana was pretty exciting. Felicia and I have been together ever since. We moved in together in February 1984 and married in July of 1985. As a married guy I worked very hard becoming a manager at McDonalds. I worked my way all the way up to First Assistant manager. I was taking a full load of classes too along with 50-60 hours of work a week. It would be the hardest I’ve ever worked or ever will work.

The Moment makes the Man

This was the moment I resolved to fix my shit. No more poor grades or dropping classes! I spent the entire summer learning all the stuff I had failed to learn as an undergrad. I returned to school and just killed it. I had a banner year and finished my Master’s degree. I got a research project for my PhD from NASA. At the same time my new confidence started to undermine my relationship with my advisor. I finally snapped. I could not work with him any longer. As it turns out I had the qualifications needed for a job by this point. In early 1989 a bunch of programs were hungry for people like me. I had a Masters degree in Nuclear Engineering, was a USA citizen and had a pulse. I had six job interviews and six job offers. I took the best job available, Los Alamos National Lab. My crisis a year earlier set me on a path for one of the best things that ever happened to me.

Next time, the years in Los Alamos get the treatment.