CLSNA' LamontCentral Forum

I enlisted in the U.S. Army in March of my senior year of high school at the age of 17 and reported to basic a week after graduation. I had qualified for electronics school so I spent a year at the USASESCS (US Army Southeastern Signal Corps School) in Augusta, GA. Six months as a student and six months as an instructor and in fabricating training aids. The next sent me to Thule, Greenland to a Nike Battery and after I re-enlisted into the Army Security Agency, to Fort Hood, Texas. I spent a couple of years there and was transferred to the 101st Airborne at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, but only for a few weeks because my unit had to catch a ship in Oakland, CA headed for Vung Tau, Viet Nam.

When that vacation was over I was sent to Fort Wolters, Texas where I declined an opportunity to re-enlist and go back to 'Nam and returned home. I found that I was "overqualified" for most jobs that I applied for and ended up working at the Kodak Processing Lab in Palo Alto, CA. That was an interesting job as we processed most of the film from the guys in Viet Nam.

As I was working nights and going to a JC days life was full, but I met my first wife in an Anthropology class and quit the Kodak job and went to work for a subcontractor on the Apollo program in the purchasing department. That job lasted about 18 months until the recession in the early '70s convinced me to go back to school on the GI Bill. I majored in Automotive Engineering but dropped out before graduation because we were expecting our first child and I needed more income. I spent the next 14 years in the import auto parts industry in every position from driver to store manager.

In the late '80s I was laid off because nobody wanted good parts - just cheap ones and the store closed. I decided to take 6 months to spend with my 2 kids (my wife and I divorced in 1982) and within a week a friend called to ask me to do mechanical assembly for the company he worked for at a wage I could not refuse. About that time I married my wife Susa (even though she is a Patrick we have been married 28 years now) and within a year I was designing the electrical circuits, wiring harnesses and programming the system for Topographic X-ray systems. That job lasted 8 years until the boss moved the company to Australia one weekend. It was a surprise to the workers, the vendors, the IRS and his wife. I was contacted by our European distributor about doing some install of systems for him and that developed into a year in Germany and Switzerland developing my own version of the system to manufacture there.

After I cane home, I started playing with computers more (I had a TI-994A in 1982) and decided to get Novell certification. This led to my current job as Senior IT Engineer (R&D) with a software company where I have been for the past 20 years. The economy has hit us a bit as the IT department has gone from 4 to me and the hours are closer to 12 than 8. In 2011 we were bought by OpenText, a Canadian company, and last year they shut down our site on May 10th and moved us to San Francisco to the Transamerica Pyramid. Since that time most of us have been surplussed and there are only about 10 left. Most of the new hires are from India. AT the end of next March I will walk out the door for the last time.

In my spare time I do websites. I am National Webmaster for Clan Donald, USA as well as the Clan Donald Central Pacific Region and Technical Admin for OBOD (The order of Bards, Ovates and Druids in England) as well as managing my wife's collection of websites.


I discovered Clan Lamont in 1986 when I met Ogden Lamont and Bob Smith at the Santa Rosa, CA games. Ogden went on to start a Lamont group in California but I had already been drafted by Clan Donald (my wife's family, although there is a Patrick lurking in the background) and have been a Convener, California Commissioner, co-newsletter editor and tent hauler for 20 years. This is my last year of doing that!!!!!! Now I am Northern California Commissioner for Clan Lamont.

In January of 2015 I decided that I would retire on my 70th birthday in March of that year and also put in the paperwork for VA medical coverage. However things changed when I was diagnosed with cancer in February. I decided to keep working while I was undergoing testing and ended up working from home until July 2nd when I officially retired. I had surgery on July 7th. Since then I have been diagnosed with 2 other cancers all 3 are listed by the VA as probably caused by exposure to Agent Orange during my time in Vietnam with the 11th RRU, attached to the 1st Brigade, 1st Infantry. The VA has me rated at 100% disabled now and I have had to cut back on a lot of things. 

-- Edited by EoinDubh on Sunday 22nd of November 2009 07:33:21 PM

-- Edited by EoinDubh on Wednesday 16th of July 2014 07:37:28 PM

-- Edited by EoinDubh on Monday 28th of November 2022 02:40:03 PM