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My wife Carole and I were both born in a
small town in northeast North Dakota. I
had a fairly uneventful childhood that
changed significantly after the 8th
grade. I had started playing saxophone
when I was in the 5th grade, and was
playing baritone sax in the high school
band. Between the 8th and 9th grade, I
was promoted to the City Band. That year,
the band marched in the Rose Parade in Pasadena,
California. I was the youngest person
on the trip and was designated a
substitute so I didn’t march. However,
this was just the first of many trips
from the 9th grade through my 5th year
of college. We went back to the Rose
Parade two years later and this time I
marched. We also went to the Orange Bowl
twice, New Orleans Mardi Gras twice, St
Paul Winter Carnival, Calgary Stampede
and numerous local events. My
saxophone playing led to another
important activity. When I was in the
9th grade, a friend who was in the 12th
grade formed a dance band. I played my
first dance job at age 14. We started
calling ourselves the Rhythm Rascals but
that didn’t last long. I played in that
band until I left college. In fact, I
worked part of my way through college
playing tenor sax.
I went to the University of North
Dakota and majored in physics, receiving
a BS and MS. I played football as a
freshman but early in my sophomore year
I had to make a choice — football practice
or physics lab. This was a choice
between the NFL and making a living in
technology. I think I made the right
choice.
After receiving my MS, I went into
the Army through ROTC. I became an
electronic intelligence officer and
served in Korea long after hostilities
had ceased. I was discharged and went to
graduate school at the University of
Michigan. After a year at Michigan, the
President called up the reserves and I
spent another year in the Army.
Following my second discharge, I had a
wife and a one-year-old child, and had
never held a job longer than 3 months in
my life.
I proceeded to look for a permanent
job and was hired by Hughes Aircraft to
work on radar systems. It soon became
apparent that as good as my degrees in
physics were as preparation, I didn’t
have a clue about many engineering
technologies. So I began to take
undergraduate and graduate engineering
courses at UCLA. This lasted for several
years until I realized that if I took
one more course, I would have met the
course requirements for a Ph.D. in
Control Systems. I took that course,
passed the written and oral exams and a
German language exam, and started to work
on a dissertation. My dissertation
advisor moved to UC Santa Barbara and I
started a three-year process of driving to
Santa Barbara from Los Angeles every
Wednesday. At the end, I received the
Ph. D. from UC Santa Barbara.
I have been involved in the IEEE for
over 30 years as a member of the Aerospace
and Electronic Systems Society. If a
person is a radar engineer it’s almost
expected that you belong to the AESS.
The annual radar conference is one of
the best networking events I have ever
known. I held several positions in AESS
and became president in 2002. I went on
to become Vice President Technology
Policy of IEEE-USA and held that
position for three years until I was
elected to be the incoming President of
IEEE-USA. |
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