Gamaliel Bradford Class of 1958
Dick Emerson
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| Date: | February 19, 2005 |
| Name: | Dick Emerson (Wife Donna) |
| Email: | dickemerson@sprintmail.com |
| Home Page: | |
| Address: | 6300 West
194th Street Stilwell, KS 66085 |
|
Phone/Fax | 913-897-2913 |
| Family: | I met the love
of my life, Donna Lee, while attending Tarkio College in NW Missouri. Tarkio
was a Presbyterian college in the middle of some large mid-west corn fields;
Dad thought that would be a good place to slow down my wildness. Donna and I
have been married for over 40 years, but fortunately we did not have any
children. I say 'fortunately' because there is too much wild blood running
through both of our veins. We live in a large ranch house on 5 acres in a
horsey neighborhood of large lots about 15 miles South of Overland Park,
Kansas; which is about 30 miles South of downtown Kansas City. Stilwell was
one of the small border towns which Quantrell rode through on his raids headed
for Lawrence, Kansas. As you probably have already guessed, there are a lot of
inlaws around the KC area and I got sort of trapped out here.
Except for the lack of mountains and an ocean, it is really a nice place to
live. |
| Interests: | Boating at the Lake-of-the-Ozarks: Had a 40ft Owens cruiser for many years and
sold it, but still have a 17ft wood century ski boat of 1965 vintage.
Motorcycles: Had couple scoots over the years, but now just a 1200cc Harley
Sportster. Lost my spleen in 1960 while riding my 1956 Triumph 650cc... which
pretty much stopped my drinking.
Corvettes: I had a '62 vette in college and followed that up with 5 more, the
best being a 1969 435HP/427CI coupe with 4sp tran; now I just have a 1960 red
roadster with two tops. Tractors: have a couple large farm tractors and 3
riding mowers. Golf: use to be president of several golf leagues at Sprint,
but too busy to play much over the last
5 years. Toys: my John Deere skid steer. |
| Education: | After blowing
chances for my Dad's alma mater of Yale due to 3 varsity sports and a lame
decision to goof off my senior year, I fell back on my gymnastics 'in' to
UMASS. Hindsight tells me that I should have gone in the service to grow up
and get the wildness out of my system, but I did not and the gymnastics 'in'
was lost. I attended Babson's Midwest Institute in Eureka, Kansas for a
year... but again there was a lot of wildness and my lesson was a motorcycle
wreck with a lost spleen. After meeting Donna, I mellowed out a little and
managed to earn my BA in Business with minors in French and History. I pretty
near flunked French at WHS, but got good enough at Tarkio to grade written
tests for first and second year French classes. My professor wanted me to go
into teaching, but that did not fit me at all. After college, I attended many
computer classes offered by IBM, Hallmark and Sprint (United Telephone). |
| Work: | I enlisted in the
Platoon Leaders Class of the USMC at Quantico in 1962 with the goal of
switching over to flight training at Pensacola, but a stigmatism uncovered
during my flight physical washed my out to reserve attendance in KC instead of
the flying I first coveted. My first job was in the trust department of the
largest bank in KC. Bored to death, I then tried selling Insurance for Kansas
City Life. About two years out of college, I took a 4 hour written test to become a Sears management trainee and was offered a job at the Sears store in KC's famous Country Club Plaza; but I bailed out about 3 years later because this lake loving guy could not get two days off in a row to make it to the lake. In early 1969, I traveled to New England to check out job opportunities and was offered a job as a management trainee at GM's Chevrolet Division in Norwood. Not offered moving expenses, having a zillion vehicles and my wife having a good job with International Harvester... I had to decline that job. Then, I entered the computer software field with a job at Jackson County Courthouse (yep, that same courthouse in a film of the same name, which was built by Boss Pendergast in the 30's). I worked about 5 years there and was project lead on the county payroll system, as well as the lead on two payrolls we ran for the federal government. Leary of the poor pension offered by the county, I then worked as a senior online programmer for Hallmark Cards, in their KC home office. Hallmark was a very large shop that promoted master degrees, so I went to work for Continental Grain in KC (in 1976 CG was the largest collection of companies owned by one man in the US). About 30 days after hiring on, CG decided to combine most of their larger companies in one computer site in Chicago. I worked about 2 years there while we went from a DOS to OS environment and switched processing over to a remote site; creating a deadend job. Then I worked as a senior software engineer at Western Auto's home office in KC. I stayed there until 1981 when they started to be bought out by large auto parts companies; just before it was bought by Sears and finally disappeared from sight. In 1981, I started programming for United Telecom, the headquarters for United Telephone. In the late 80's, United bought out a long distance company and formed Sprint. Systems Development went from 70 employees to about 900 (just on the local telephone side of the business). Soon the small, warm company I hired with became a large, cold company and the layoffs started. It was safer to keep the head low, so I stayed away from management and honed my tech skills to survive. My coding was in local telephone billing for both business and residentail customers. I worked on the Millenium Bill project which was way ahead of our industry. Finally, with the threats of layoffs increasing and talk of future out sourcing, I decided to reduce my stress and lock in my retirement at age 63 1/2... which was shortly after Don McNutt's passing. I got to know Don when he worked twice for our billing teams and his passing sort of woke me up; time to smell the roses, so to speak. After using my retirement time to do major remodeling on my home's exterior, I ran out of money and drove a large diesel roll-back truck for a huge John Deere dealership for 10 months. Quit last Thanksgiving when they would not fix a couple big safety problems on my truck. Good experience, however... I now have my CDL which I can upgrade for motorhoming when they pull that trump card; also lost 35 lbs while doing all that activity. |
| Achievements: | We worked
hard, we earned pensions, we tried not to hurt anyone along the way, we have
our health (knock on wood) and we look forward to another great 30 years. |
| Comments: | I survived the hell of corporate life, as did my wife who worked 30 years for International Trucks. We have eight cars and everything, but everything is paid off. We both still have our health and our Aetna coverage through my wife's employer costs us only $75.00 a month for medical, dental (100% of 1,400 per year each), vision and hearing coverage; plus prescriptions only cost $5 each. We own my parents home in Pennsylvania, but plan to sell it and buy a condo at the Lake-of-the-Ozarks. After a little rest and recuperation, we plan to see more of this beautiful country of ours and later we plan to take on some charity work to give a little back; Habit for Humanity might be a fit. Might even do a little more cruisin' on the scoot. Maybe I will bump into you in Sturgis ??? |
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