***Editor’s Note: The “I Became an Engineer” blog runs every Friday. To share your story email jennifer.delaosa@advantagebizmarketing.com***
This week’s story comes to us from ECN reader Ken Whiteleather, pr. electrical engineer, Sparton DeLeon Springs, LLC.
When I was a senior in high school, I really had no direction and no idea what I would grow up to be. I was a pretty good student, excelling in math and physics but I still needed a nudge to decide what to do after high school. My family was not very affluent so going to college without help seemed impossible. The school counselor suggested that I compete for an appointment to the Coast Guard Academy. So, I jumped through the hoops and actually received an appointment. I attended “swab summer,” even winning the job of drum major, leading the summer band all the way through the induction ceremony, but I did not feel the Academy was a good fit for me and I made my intentions known before the ceremony that I would be resigning. After a fairly humiliating “debriefing,” I returned home.
With the possibility of the military draft, I could end up in the army and going to Vietnam. I decided to enlist in the U.S. Air Force. I had good test scores entering the service, and ended up in possibly the best enlisted job there—the Air Force Technical Applications Group. With a classified (at the time) mission and the promise of not being shot at (which was greatly appreciated by my wife), they taught me basic electronics, and electronics specific to the equipment we operated. Looking back, I realize now how archaic our “specialized” equipment was. A calculator has way more computing power than the eight full racks of electronics we used.
During my more than 7 years in the service, the last 5 years were spent working in the Tech Lab building (AFTAC—Air Force Technical Applications Center) at Patrick AFB, Fla., with some amazingly brilliant mathematicians and scientists (all officers, of course). You would recognize the building if you are old enough…they inserted a view of it often on the show, I Dream of Jeanie, as the workplace of Majors Nelson and Healey at “NASA.” It was the large tan brick building with a line of various missile mockups erected out front along highway AIA at Patrick AFB. That building is gone now. There is a new, modern campus located elsewhere on the base where they continue the AFTAC mission. I believe AFTAC and that talented workforce spurred me on to the idea of higher education.
While I was still in the service at AFTAC, I applied to the university and was accepted but my discharge date was too late to enter. When I was discharged, I parlayed my electronics background into a job across the river at Harris Corporation in Melbourne/Palm Bay as an electronics technician. After almost a year at Harris, the University of Florida contacted me and granted entrance in the fall of 1979. Supporting a wife and three children, I worked at various part-time technician jobs and graduated with a BSEE degree in May, 1983. I started my engineering career back at Harris, and jumped right into designing, working with ultra-high-speed digital electronics using ECL and GaAs logic, and received a lot of electro-optics exposure. That ultra-high speed digital specialty carried me through several years of extremely interesting work at Harris.
After Harris, I worked briefly for GPT-Stromberg-Carlson in telephony, then for Viking Industries, Inc. designing custom process control electronics for hot-melt gluing equipment as well as pattern controllers for glue application. For the last 16 years, I have been with Sparton, initially in medical electronics and later in the ASW (anti-submarine warfare) side designing electronics for sonobuoys for the U.S. Navy.
It has been a wild ride that I would not trade for anything. I suppose I am one of many engineers who just got lucky enough to “fall into” engineering.
Read other stories, here:
- A Note From The Editor: An Engineer’s Story
- I Became An Engineer: Despite Being Bad At Math
- I Became An Engineer: Because I Grew Up In Kenya
- I Became An Engineer: By Just Being Myself
- I Became An Engineer: Because Of MacGyver And Comfortable Clothes
- I Became An Engineer: Because Of A Model Airplane Contest
- I Became An Engineer: So I Wouldn’t Have To Go To Vietnam
- I Became An Engineer: Because Of Sci-Fi Novels
- I Became An Engineer: Because Of A Watch
- I Became An Engineer: Because Of A 1930s Vintage Radio
- I Became An Engineer: Because I Kept Asking “Why?”
- I Became An Engineer: By Studying The Fundamentals
- I Became An Engineer: Because Of Microscope Modifications
- I Became An Engineer: Because I Drew A Flower
- I Became An Engineer: Because Of A Paperback Book On Electricity
- I Became An Engineer: Because I Wanted To Travel
- I Became An Engineer: Because I Tinkered With A Radio
- I Became An Engineer: Because Of Math, Science, And Serendipity
- I Became An Engineer: Because I Loved Discovery And Fixing Things
- I Became an Engineer: Because It Was Hot That Day
- I Became an Engineer: Because of Viktor Frankl and Existentialism
- I Became an Engineer: By Turning Curiosity into a Career