My basic training took place at Wichita Fails, Texas and from there I went to Denver, Colorado for college training and check out in a piper cub. Next was Classification at Santa Ana, California, where I was selected to attend Navigation training at Hondo, Texas. After graduating from Navigation school; I went to Boca Raton, Florida in late 1944 for training as a radar navigator and bombardier. I then went to Clovis, New Mexico for crew assignment and further training for assignment in a B-29 flight crew. It developed that a captain from the training command was assigned to my crew as Navigator, and I was reassigned as Radar Observer. It was while I was at Clovis that I met my future wife, miss Jeanie Rush. I left Clovis in March of 1945 and spent the next six months flying B-29 missions to Japan from the island of Guam. I returned to the U. S. in November of that year, and Jeanie and I were married on December 29th at her parent’s home in Clovis.

In 1954 I began a thirteen-year period with the Chemstrand Corporation, a subsidiary of Monsanto Chemical Co., working on major new expansion projects at locations in Pensacola, Florida, where daughter, Kate Elizabeth, and youngest son, Frank Leslie, were born. Next was Coleraine, North Ireland for the construction of a new Acrilan fiber plant, then Athens, Alabama as Project Engineer in Chemstrand’s central engineering department, then came another foreign assignment in Zurich, Switzerland as Design Manager for the construction of a new nylon plant in Echternach, Luxemberg. We went from there to Brussels, Belgium for an assignment as Design Manager for Monsanto’s European engineering office; and back to Athens, Alabama for a few months as a project engineer in the plant engineering department; and finally, as an engineer in Monsanto’s Central Engineering in St. Louis, Missouri.

In 1968 I took a position as Vice President for Engineering with Roberts Company, a small textile machinery manufacturer located in Sanford, North Carolina. This turned out to be a bad move for me professionally, as this company went bankrupt a year later. But I was fortunate to have friends in high places in Daniel Construction Company, a large construction company with main offices in Greenville, S. C. My first assignment was as Construction Engineer on Daniel’s first nuclear power project in Dothan, Alabama. I moved there with my family in August 1970, and we had a very pleasant three years on this demanding project. In 1973, as a result of my recent European experience, I was selected to be Manager of Projects for the construction of Michelin Tire Company’s first projects in the U. S., a rubber manufacturing plant in Anderson, S. C. and a tire plant in Greenville, S.C. We took this opportunity to satisfy our yen to live in the country and bought a small farm about thirty miles from Greenville. The two projects with the Michelin engineers were very successful and came to a completion in the summer of 1975. At that time I moved into Central Engineering in Greenville as Director of International Engineering, with responsibility of engineering offices located in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and Brussels, Belgium. In the fall of 1976 I assumed prime responsibility for engineering related to the design of all utilities and infrastructure for a huge new airport in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. This work demanded that I make regular trips from Greenville to engineering offices in California and New York City and to the airport site in Jeddah. In 1978 I took an assignment in Central Engineering in Greenville as Engineering Director, and supervised the design of new plants for Merck of Germany for manufacture of synthetics near Savannah, Ga. and for Eli Lilly Co. for the manufacture of drugs in Kinsale, Republic of Ireland.

In 1979 I was appointed Division Manager for Daniel’s business in the United Kingdom, from an office located near Glasgow, Scotland. As our children were all away from home at that time, Jeanie and I rented a home in a very pleasant old subdivision near Glasgow. We had a very pleasant association with a small church there and have maintained ties with these people ever since. But the British economy was in a nosedive, and we had to close the U. K. office and operation in December of 1980. I spent the entire year of 1981 in Daniel’s Greenville office pursuing a contract in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia for the construction of a new Health Science Center associated with King Saud University. While Daniel did eventually win this contract, in the summer of 1982 I was asked to be Project Director for the design and construction of a new industrial city to be located near Kuwait to support development of the oil well fields in the Persian Gulf So Jeanie and I took off again, and located near the Arabian American Oil Company offices in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. It was a very demanding job and likely precipitated my first open heart surgery near the end of 1983. At this time Daniel offered me a position as Project Director for the construction of a major commercial center in Jeddah, and Jeanie and I moved there in November for what turned out to be a five and one half year stay. The project consisted of a seven story shopping center with adjacent seven story parking garage, an exquisite mosque, and a twenty four story office tower. This was a very pleasant time for Jeanie and I and we made numerous trips to Europe, as well as taking a tour of India.

I was ready to retire, but didn’t want to do so from overseas, so we returned to Greenville in 1989 where I asked for the next assignment. To my surprise, Daniel asked me to take over a project for Panda Motor Co. for the construction of a new automobile assembly plant in southern China. I quickly assembled a staff for managing this work and set up office in Daniel’s existing office in Hong Kong. I spent a most interesting year getting the construction of the manufacturing building underway, but realized almost from the beginning that this project would not come to a successful completion. The project was being funded by the Unification Church and they intended to buy an assembly auto kit from Yugo. When this didn’t work out, they attempted to get an auto design from Fiat, Peugeot, Volvo, and other European auto companies without success, and eventually had to abandon the project with the loss of millions of dollars.