EARLY DAYS
Great family that camped, hunted, fished, learned to swim well. My family was supportive in everything! Dad bought a canoe when I was three. It was the center of our family recreation. Mom and dad set a great example. They were together for 55 years.
I built lots of things (Dad was a cabinet maker and we had a shop at home). I was a skinny kid and not athletic at all. I built lots of things instead of playing sports.
• 6th Grade, I built a kayak from a picture in Earnest Thomas Seton book. I made a trailer and pulled the kayak behind my bicycle. I learned that a kayak should not have a round bottom!
• I built a couple of Kayaks copied from a salvaged kayak
• Pumpkin Seed hydroplane – Lots of fun with this project
• Sailing rig for canoe – More fun with this, as well
• Was Sea Scout– learned to sail a big boat
• Rockets, big ones with lots of support from engineers, machine shops (like October Sky movie shot in West Virginia). I was doing the same thing at the same time in Oklahoma.
Kids in my class nicknamed me “Verner” after Werner Von Braun.
• Air cushion vehicle or hovercraft: “Blowbuggy” 5’ x 9’ science fair project in my Junior Year in High School. Rules said exhibit needed to be no bigger than 48” x 36”. I ended up demonstrating it on the roof in the Student Union Building where the science fair was held.
1961 – 1965 Attended University of Oklahoma, graduating with a degree in Aerospace Engineering.
1965 – 1967 Propulsion Department at McDonnell Aircraft, Gemini and Gemini-B MOL Worked on the Re-entry Control System and the Orbit Attitude and Maneuver System rocket engines and fuel systems. Worked on the simulator for the “Popgun” effect.
1967 – 1970 Worked in Flight Systems Division of Emerson Electric in St. Louis. We built gun turrets and ammunition handling systems. I set up tests for our firing range an analyzed the results.
Worked on my Masters Degree in evenings. Thesis was a simulation of the Interior Ballistics of a Recoilless Rifle Rocket Launcher. I finished my degree just in time to get tuition re-imbursement before leaving to go to work in R&D at Halliburton.
1970 – 1977 FreightMaster Division at Halliburton, Invented Train Dynamics Analyzer (patent).
1977-1982 Project/Group Leader Halliburton Drill Stem Test system (more patents).
1982-1985 MicroAge Computer Stores (Franchise) in Tulsa, OK. We had two stores, one in Woodland Hills in a suburban location, the other on Bartlett Square in the heart of Tulsa.
June 1985-1986 MicroAge at Franchise Headquarters. Independent Contractor with the project of choosing the In-Store Accounting system for Franchisees. Recommended SouthWare Excellence Series as the solution.
1987 – 2002 Became a Dealer for SouthWare and inherited a few installations from a Dealer who quit selling it. My company, Excelco, sold, installed and trained on this system. It was written in COBOL. Excelco owned source code and billed around $1,300,000 in customization and Y2K programming in 1998 and 1999.
2004 – Present – Sold Real Estate in the Prescott Area focusing mostly on selling vacant land.
SUMMARY OF LESSONS I LEARNED AND PLAN TO SUBSTANTIATE:
• A strong upbringing including a family life are a big step towards future success.
• Develop the ability to control your own mind to stay focused and positive.
• Make sure all team members and networking partners share your value system.
• Hold everyone on the team accountable to established goals.
• Watch out for other people’s and other company’s AGENDAs. (Can you say Microsoft and Google here?) Emphasis here is heavy on watching team members’ AGENDAs.
• ALL relationships FAIL when goals cannot be lined up or at least reconciled.
• Learn as much as you can as quickly as you can.
• Save as much as you can as quickly as you can. Almost all successful people have CAPITAL (in $). Even successful immigrants have saved in order to get their start. Miners had grubstakes.
• CAPITAL is knowledge (when combined with $) is FREEDOM and FLEXIBILITY!
• Knowledge is also a form of CAPITAL. You need specialized knowledge and the CAPITAL in $ in order to be able to capitalize on your knowledge. CAPITAL in knowledge when combined with $) is FREEDOM and FLEXIBILITY!
• Get a job you enjoy in a place where there are resources, potential mentors and a stream of problems to solve. Preferably this should be with an organization that is or wants to be THE LEADER with their product or service.
• Focus your energy to everything you need to do to succeed.
Some of these I have experienced in a positive way when I did them and sometimes in a negative way when I did not.
Dad was from Muskogee, Oklahoma. Almost every year we would camp, swim and fish on the Illinois River near Talequah. Dad bought a canoe when I was three years old. That canoe was the center of many of our family activities. This picture is mom and dad with their dog Silver.
Around my 7th grade, my friend, Mark and I got really interested in chemistry. Mark’s dad built an 8’ x 8’ shed [our chem lab] on the side of his house. We ordered chemicals and apparatus from an ad in the back of Popular Science Magazine. We were also known to the drug store pharmacies where we bought Potassium Nitrate and Sulphur for gunpowder.
One of our favorite “experiments” was to create spontaneous combustion. That could be done by making a small mound of Potassium Permanganate, hollowing out top and placing glycerin in the cavity at the top. As the glycerin soaked into the potassium permanganate, it would begin to smoke and after a few seconds would burst into flame producing an enormous cloud of purple smoke.
The chemistry books said this would work with almost any organic compound. We had purchased formaldehyde and had no idea what to do with it. Being organic, we thought we would try it with the potassium permanganate. We did and it made a really big stink. We rushed out the door and let the “lab” air out. Then we did some more study. We found that we had made Potassium Cyanide. That is one of the chemicals to exact the death penalty in the Gas Chamber. As far as I know, we got out soon enough as to not suffer any serious harm.
I spent a lot of time reading and studying chemistry books.
When I was in the Eighth Grade in 1957, the Russians launched the Sputnik, the first artificial Earth satellite. This was a shock to the American people and created a craze of interest in rockets and space. The movie October Sky was about kids in West Virginia who built rockets using machine shops belonging to the mines. That movie could have been about me because I was doing the same thing only in Oklahoma. Halliburton Services headquarters and Research and was located in my home town of Duncan, Oklahoma.
George Copland, a Research Engineer at Haliburton started a rocket club and was our teacher, mentor and supporter. Outside of my father, George had the most significant impact on my life and career. Fort Sill, Oklahoma is an Army training base specializing in artillery training. Ft. Sill made their artillery range complete with spotting bunkers available to us. They even set up radar to track how high our rockets went and to find them after they came down. We car-pooled to Ft. Sill and army trucks took us to the Artilery Range.
George also loaned me a 20 hp drone engine and 30-inch diameter fan with which I built a hovercraft as a science fair project. I did science fair projects each of the four years while I was in High School.
I made A’s in my math and science classes but was never able to make an A in English or Social Studies.