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08.11

The Restructured Engineer: How I
Re-invented Myself and Kept Going

By Gunther Karger, IEEE Life Senior Member

As a boy, I became fascinated with “Kapten Frank,” a Swedish comic strip which was the forerunner to Flash Gordon. It stimulated my imagination with space ships, interstellar travel and a world of high tech, something I wanted to be involved with. That was 1941, when I was an 8-year-old war orphan living in foster homes and orphanages in Sweden, after my parents sent me out of Germany at age six in 1939. I never saw them again and was on my own from then on.

My obsession with space and science never faded. After graduating from high school in New Jersey in 1951, I joined the U.S. Air Force which offered to train me as a radar instructor. After the Air Force, I used the GI Bill to get an electrical engineering degree at Louisiana State University (LSU). Shirley and I were married in 1954 while I was in the Air Force, and she worked during my EE studies so I could finish in three years.

Having received several job offers when graduating in 1958, I chose the opportunity to work on the Bomarc cruise missile at Boeing. This led me to an assignment in cryogenic magnetic computer memory storage at Bell Labs and later to ITT Labs, where I helped design Courier, our first active communications satellite. In 1960, I was sent to Cape Canaveral to help launch Courier into space. I was well on my way to realizing the dream I had reading that science fiction comic strip while surviving in Sweden as an orphaned refugee during World War II.

When this assignment was successfully completed, I seemed to catch far-out, science-fiction-type assignments. The most notable task was to design a survivable communications system that would be usable after a nuclear attack on the United States that destroyed most existing communications infrastructure. The purpose was to make possible a counter-attack using missiles launched from submerged submarines.

I was no less excited when I was offered a job at Cape Canaveral planning communications for missiles and space missions during the height of the Apollo Moon program and Cold War. The zenith of this excitement occurred when I was elected chair of the IEEE Canaveral Section and sat in meetings with science legends such as Wernher von Braun, the German rocket scientist. I thought I “had arrived” when I was cited as Fellow of the British Interplanetary Society in 1967, and named as one of the Outstanding Young Men of America by the U.S. Jaycees that same year.

But the Apollo program was nearing completion and I was notified that there would be no further need for my services. In fact, my entire planning department was being phased out. This was a low point for me at age 35, when other highly qualified engineers were also being laid off, jobs were already scarce and houses near the Cape were already hard to sell.

While I could understand the need for project resource realignment, I couldn’t understand that someone working diligently and making significant — and widely recognized — contributions could be laid off with no offer for a new job. While I got a job almost immediately paying about the same, it wasn’t anything challenging and was remote from my line of work — spare parts engineering on the “Crawler Tractor” used to move rockets to the launch pad.

In looking for a new challenge, I noted that the airline industry was going through a transformation and decided it could benefit from applying aerospace engineering concepts to operations. So, I wrote the presidents of several airlines offering myself to bring their engineering departments into the space age. Eastern Airlines “bit” and offered me a job to transform its engineering dept. Even though the pay was a bit less, I accepted as it seemed to be a long-range opportunity and we moved to Miami.

Since I knew nothing about the airlines except how to board planes and enjoy good food and service (alas, no more), to learn the business I went to the maintenance hangars at night helping the mechanics. Within one year, I was well into that new (to me) industry and by the time four years ended, I had transformed the electrical engineering area to the current century.

Although that ended my assignment, I was invited to develop a computer model to forecast traffic and revenue. My knowledge of telecommunications networks was transferable to the airline industry enabling me to accomplish this never-before-done task. Why not? Telecom networks are similar to airlines networks. Traffic switching systems equal traffic hubs, bandwidth equals aircraft capacity, bits equals passengers and cargo etc. The model forecasted traffic and revenue so well that I was appointed Director of Economic Planning and Forecasting of a multibillion dollar public corporation and managed it for 15 years. I thought my job was secure, because who would have thought then that Eastern Airlines would not be around forever? I sincerely thought I had found my job until retirement.

Then, at one of the quarterly financial review meetings, the vice president of finance says, “ Expenses are higher than revenues, what do we do?” I replied, “you cut costs to be inline with business level.” But our boss said “Raise the revenue.” I asked “How much?” He said, “Whatever the banks need.” My answer was “But that’s cooking the books and it’s unethical and probably illegal.” That ended my aviation career at age 53.

So, in 1986 I launched yet another new career, this time rooting out corporate and investment fraud. I became a financial newsletter editor, TV and radio commentator and author. I wrote the book Thieves on Wall Street and others on financial fraud. I became known as a shareholder advocate and even was cited for this work by then U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft. It led to a two-year assignment as a lecturer on major cruise ships speaking about corporate and Wall Street fraud.

Today, 25 years later at age 78, I am again reinventing myself to adjust to the new times. And have they changed ! A major problem today is public debt as the politicians have overspent and now are short. The opportunity I have found is advising the Dade County commissioners on how to save millions in the library budget by transforming a large system of 50 libraries to just a few, but to expand the library service using telecom network and information technology to make the library services available via e-kiosks at malls, hotels, train stations and other public places open nearly all the time. I also am addressing the health care industry by proposing a new concept I call “The Virtual Clinic” to bring cost effectiveness to the doctor’s office while lowering expenses which are skyrocketing. Has anyone assigned me to do these things? No…but since I know lots of people in all kinds of high places resulting from my “prior lives,” I simply offer my ideas. This keeps my sanity, my brain functioning and, above all, my dream alive.

Finally, there is our personal financial transformation triggered by the massive changes seen in our financial world over the past five years. As companies have downsized to adjust to the new realities, so have we. In just the past month, we completed our own "downsizing," moving from a large house to a smaller one more than adequate for Shirley and me, and definitely more suitable for the life stage we are entering. We will realize a net cost savings of $25,000 per year while also improving our living standards. This will enable us to survive the “economic storm,” which could still last years while getting us ready for the next opportunity, whatever shape it may take.

What can be learned from this lifelong experience?

·         It’s important to have a dream and seriously follow it.

·         Adapt to unexpected changes by learning entirely new things.

·         View change as an opportunity rather than a problem.

·         Accept changes and adapt to them knowing that they are not a “one-time” thing, and thus keep up with a changing world.

·         Maintain high ethical standards, even though they can be costly in the short run.

·         It’s never too late, nor are you too old to reinvent yourself. You never know how long our productive life will last. In fact, we can extend our productive life by entering a new challenge with a positive attitude.

·         Face the next life obstacle as a hill you can climb instead of a mountain which will stop you. The primary obstacle to climbing that hill is your assumption that you can’t.

The most important thing about reinventing oneself and adjusting to new, sometimes unwanted, situations is to learn how to learn. This learning process is lifelong and never stops because when we stop learning, we can no longer reinvent ourselves, to get ready for our next challenge. If we have learned to learn, we can overcome enormous challenges and survive the world such as it has become.

Gunther Karger is an IEEE Life Senior Member, past chairman of the Northern New Jersey IEEE Communications Society chapter (now COMSOC), and past chairman of IEEE Canaveral Section, He received his BSEE from Louisiana State University. During his career he worked at Boeing, Bell Laboratories, International Communications Systems (ICS), Radiation, Incorporated (now Harris Corp), Eastern Airlines and was President of Discovery Group (investment advisory services). He is also an author, lecturer and political adviser. He lives with Shirley, his wife of 57 years in Homestead, FL. Email Gunther@ieee.org Gunther was born in Lahr, Germany, in 1933, and is the sole survivor of his entire family which were killed in the Holocaust.

Comments may be submitted to todaysengineer@ieee.org.