Timothy T.K. K. Hall

“T.K.” was born in Houston, Texas, March 17th, 1929, and grew up in the Great Depression.

His father Merton, later known as Mike, came from humble beginnings; he was the son of a blacksmith and an Irish immigrant. Mike's mother Bessie took him down to the docks and got him a job in the merchant marines. Mike later won a scholarship to MIT and turned out to be a brilliant engineer. He worked for AT&T went on to invent several key components of the modern telephone and fax machine. He later worked as a civil engineer, designing the tallest bridge in the South and airplane hangars in Hawaii.

Tim's mother, Irene or "Zanah," was a kindergarten teacher, the daughter of pioneer storekeepers in Iowa. She was full of Iowa pride, straight out of "The Music Man" - stubborn, proud, self-righteous, and gossipy. She was a speech major in college, and was known for her ability to give witty humorous speeches. She coached schoolchildren in public speaking competitions, having placed 2nd in the state championship herself. She was intelligent, but did not handle money well, and tended to let things go to the point that she would constantly have to be "rescued" by T.K. For decades she relied on her son for major financial support and help obtaining the rare medicine for her diabetes insipidus.

When Tim was born, his mother knew she wanted his middle initial to be K, but she had not thought of a suitable middle name. When they called the city clerk to register the birth, Tim's parents recited the middle initial "K"; the clerk misunderstood and wrote down the name "Kay."

Mike lost his job with Mosier Steel in 1933, after refusing to sign off on another engineer’s faulty design for a cantilever roof over a loading dock he knew was unsafe, and the family moved back to West Bend (he was wise to do this; the roof was built and eventually collapsed, killing several men who were working on the loading dock). Irene recalled that the move from Houston to West Bend took place just before T.K.’s 4th birthday, and the move from West Bend to Sioux City took place during his first semester of second grade. Despite being so young, T.K. remembered this move vividly. He recalled they went to Iowa in a 1929 Model A Ford, and he packed his favorite toys in the back seat of the car because he knew they were leaving this house and didn't know what the moving van was doing with them. The rainstorms they faced on this trip left a vivid impression as well. The rain was too much for the windshield wipers on the car, and Mike had to have them replaced at a service station with hand-crank wipers. Irene had to operate the hand-crank mechanism, moving the wipers back and forth as his father drove through the storms (they may not have even stopped at a hotel on this trip).

T.K. attended Kindergarten, first and perhaps a small part of second grade in the school in West Bend; Dan was one year ahead of him. He recalled that his Grandpa Ben made the move possible because he had a spare house in West Bend they could live in. He said that Mike and Ben liked each other, as did Mike and Bob Tinsley (due to a common interest in music). The family lived in West Bend from 1933 to 1935, after which Grandpa Ben got Mike a job with the WPA in Storm Lake while the family stayed in West Bend.

Tim and Dan's stamp collecting hobby, which they took up during the Great Depression in West Bend, gave them an interest in geography, as they wanted to learn where each stamp came from. This served Tim well in his college years in Houston, when he took a Christmas job at the Post Office. They assigned him to sort the outgoing international mail because he knew which port served each country.

Later in 1935, Mike transferred to the WPA Headquarters in Sioux City and moved the family there. Tim went to 2nd and 3rd grade in Sioux City.

The boys got their beloved dog Duke in Sioux City at the dog pound in 1936. He was about a year and a half old. He was their companion all the way through college.

Tim recalled an incident in Sioux City in 1936. He and Dan were throwing rotten tomatoes at the windows of passing cars. They were surprised to find out that one of the windows was open...

In 1937, Merton got a job with Orange Car and Steel in Orange, Texas. He went there right away to start work on a bridge, and the family came later. (This bridge spanned the Neches River between Port Arthur and Bridge City; it remains the tallest bridge in the South, although a companion bridge has since been added. The bridge was renamed Rainbow Bridge in 1957, and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1996). T.K. recalled that they lived on US Highway 90 (the Old Spanish Trail Highway) in Orange, TX, across from the Pinehurst Stables, from 1937-1939. Zanah and Tim both recalled that Tim and Dan packed their own possessions and helped pack and seal the rest of the family's furniture in crates (goods were moved by train on these trips). Tim and Dan went to Bancroft Country School (4th-5th grade for Tim, 5th-6th grade for Dan). They once had a set of tin can phones leading from the garage of their house to their backyard tent.

In 1939 the family moved to Beaumont. Tim was in 6th grade, Dan in 7th. This was where they met their lifelong friend, Wes Eckles. Tim was still recovering from a series of ear infections, having missed a month of school in Orange the previous school year. The doctor in Orange pierced his ear drum as part of the treatment. (The doctor was later picked up as a German spy for photographing the Intracostal Waterway). While recuperating from the ear infection, Tim stayed in his parents' bedroom listening to KFDM radio in Beaumont (now KLVI). His favorite program was Garry Moore's "Club Matinee" with Jimmy Durante.

Tim's ear and tonsil problems continued, and he eventually had his tonsils taken out in December of 1939 (this proved to be a dangerous operation, as his carotid artery was slightly out of position and was almost cut during the operation). The school system in Beaumont required Tim and Dan to get shots, but Tim's doctor said he could not have them until his ear and tonsil problems cleared up. With Tim not allowed to attend school, Irene took both boys out of school. She enrolled them in Calvert Correspondence School, and they finished junior high school by correspondence. When the truant officer came by, he found them hard at work at the dining room table.

Tim and his brother Dan did almost everything together as children. Their father Mike would start them on a hobby (Morse code, stamp collecting, crystal radio), then leave them on their own to pursue it (one exception was photography; this was introduced to the boys by a neighbor, Mr. Bosse, who had his own darkroom). One time when they were fighting, Mike's solution was to buy them boxing gloves. When Mike and Irene bought the boys bikes for Christmas in 1940, they hid them in the Bosses' garage.

For 6th grade wood shop class, Tim made a garden trowel and a mahogany nut bowl, both of which were still in good shape 70 years later. He played flageolet, penny whistle and recorder in the elementary school "orchestra." The instructor would write the numbers for each note on a board at the back of the room.

The family was living in Beaumont when the Second World War broke out. Mike worked as an independent engineer, getting jobs from local firms. He worked in the sun room of the family house. Mike bought a farm between Doucette and Colmesneil, where he intended to establish a small family farm and use the produce to supply a roadside restaurant (they bought this farm in 1940 or 1941). He ended up renting the farm to a tenant farmer, who probably raised corn. Tim recalled one visit to the farm, when the farmer had just captured some baby foxes that inhabited the property. Tim and Dan went back to Beaumont, taking the baby foxes with them (they gave the baby foxes to other boys in the neighborhood in Beaumont). They learned to hunt with Cam Flowers and his dog, Fuzz (Cam was still there when Tim visited in 1969 and again in 1980 with his friends Red and Curtis).

In World War 2, Mike joined the Army Engineers, serving from 1942-1944. During these years (just before the boys entered high school), the rest of the family moved from Beaumont, Texas to Cedar Falls, Iowa, shipping their possessions by truck. They lived near Tim’s Aunt Marguerite and Cousin Natalie, while Natalie attended Iowa State Teachers College, now known as the University of Northern Iowa. Tim and Dan attended Teachers College High School at the same college (they were in the same grade by this time, having covered the same materials in the Calvert Correspondence School back in Beaumont). While there, Tim took a high school science course. It included detailed study of internal combustion engines, which provided the foundation for his deep understanding of automobiles. In the summer of 1943, Dan and Tim attended summer school at the high school. Dan took typing, creative English and radio. Tim took typing and radio. Both Tim and Dan had newspaper routes in high school (Des Moines Register and Waterloo Courier). For their first two years of high school, they had lived at 2211 Merner St. just north of the college (this house was eventually torn down to make room for a parking lot).

When Mike left the Army Engineers in the spring of 1944, the family reunited at the farm in Doucette. There was no high school in Doucette, and Irene did not want Tim and Dan to have to ride the bus to Woodville on the highway every day, so she enrolled them in the American Correspondence School (she did not have the money to do this, so Tim cashed in his War Bonds and paid for his own materials). Tim and Dan helped plow the ground with their horse, Bill, but there was not enough rain or water, and crops were poor. They had pigs and a steer. Mike was working for a survey firm in Colmesneil, mapping for Dam "B" on the Neches River. About a year later, shortly after Natalie got married and moved away from home, Dan returned to Cedar Falls and lived with Aunt Marguerite in 1945-1946 so he could finish high school at Teacher’s College High School.

It was during this time in Doucette that Tim met another lifelong friend, Red Blakeney. Red would ride the 10pm train from Woodville to Doucette (the three-mile ride to Doucette took about ten minutes and cost ten cents), singing and occasionally playing his guitar (his mother had taught him how to play the guitar; he occasionally played with local bands in dance halls, and had improvisational skills), and walk past Tim's house around 10:30 singing country songs after he got off the train, so Tim knew Red as a "voice in the night" well before he actually met Red. They eventually met one day while Tim was out riding his bike, and Red would stop by to see Tim and Dan from then on. Tim recalled Red was a "free spirit," and generous to a fault; "if you needed something, and he had it, he would give it to you." Red had dropped out of 3rd grade, but was literate enough to work as a carpenter when he felt like it. He also had a mischievous streak; Tim recalled Red saying one Halloween he and some other boys went down to the schoolhouse and restacked all the school's firewood so that it completely blocked the school's doorway.

These were some of Tim's favorite times, filled with hunting, fishing and camping trips, generally initiated by Red. Tim would go, even if he had homework he wanted to complete. Tim and Red would load up Bill the horse with a wooden sled filled with camping gear (Duke didn't go on these trips). They always rode Bill bareback. Dan would also go along on these trips, if he was home. In Dan's absence, Red was like a big brother to Tim.

They eventually built a cart, which they used for trips in town (it was generally too cumbersome to use on the camping trips). The 2-wheeled cart was fashioned from iron wheels retrieved from an old abandoned sawmill. It made a loud noise on the concrete highway.

From the summer of 1945 until he left for college in 1946, Tim worked for John H. Fain's Feed Store (J.H.Fain, General Merchandise) starting at $40/month and eventually getting a raise to $60/month.

One day at Fain's, a load of groceries and supplies came in from Lufkin on East Texas Motor Freight. Tim signed for a box of 10,000 rounds of 22 caliber ammunition (they were extremely popular in this part of East Texas; the boss would hide them in his office and ration them out carefully). Unfortunately, the box only contained 5,000 rounds, and the boss had to call the freight company after discovering Tim's mistake. Thankfully the driver was honest, and remembered only dropping off one case. (Tim never forgot this lesson. Throughout his Navy career, as he dealt with inventory and classified documents, he insisted on counting everything he received. Throughout his time on the Hornet, he stayed up nights checking shipments and classified document page revisions. The squadron appreciated his efforts, and even helped account for some of the items his predecessors had mismanaged before his arrival).

Once, Duke wandered away from home. Tim and Dan found him waiting at the Post Office the next day, where he knew they went every morning to pick up their mail. He had red mud in his fur, giving Tim and Dan an idea that he had been all the way to the other side of town. They asked a man whom Tim had known as a customer when he worked at J.H. Fain's store if they would drive them partway home (as far as he happened to be going in that direction) and he obliged, on the condition that the muddy dog had to stay on the floor of the pickup truck. He dropped them off at the foot of the country road that led to their house.

This same summer, Tim bought his first car, a 1931 Chevrolet, for $35, from the father of two sisters who worked as clerks in the store. The owner had tried to convert it to a truck. The doors and tires were gone, and the headlights had been kicked out by a mule. The car was in such bad shape that he had to drag it home. He soon became an expert in improvised makeshift repair techniques. He fixed the car at the lower level of the yard under a hickory nut tree. The neighbors marveled when he actually got it running (it took off with a big roar). The store owner, who was head of the local Ration Board, gave him some tire ration coupons. Tim sold the car the following summer for $250.

When Tim visited the Doucette house in 1989, the house was being dismantled by the latest owner.

When Tim came home from work, he would bring a treat for Bill (usually a carrot). Bill would come running for it (they had a five-acre pasture behind the house, and Bill would usually be all the way at the back of it; Tim would call, "Hey, Bill!" and he would come running). Tim would ride Bill into town to the post office, pick up the mail, run errands, and ride home. Bill knew when it was feeding time and would always be in a rush to get home if it was getting close to that time. Once, Bill was so eager to get home for his dinner that he took a shortcut through a field, made a quick left turn at full gallop, and threw Tim off, bouncing him off a hogwire front-yard fence in the process. (Bill had been an old rodeo horse, competing in barrel races, and could turn on a dime).

In the spring of 1946, Tim and Grandma drove back to Cedar Falls for Dan's high school graduation, dropping off Fern and Carolyn Christenson in Des Moines along the way. (After they left Des Moines, Grandma drove while Tim slept, and took the wrong road at night, heading east instead of northeast and ending up running low on gas in the middle of the night in the wrong part of Iowa). By this time, Tim had also almost finished high school. Tim wanted to play on the summer softball team in Cedar Falls, but was declared ineligible, so he finished his trigonometry correspondence course in West Bend while Dan was finishing high school and graduating in Cedar Falls. Tim was still missing a half unit of Latin, but colleges were not accepting correspondence school educations in general, so he abandoned the Latin course and instead studied from a book "High School Self-Taught" to prepare for the college entrance exams. They ended up giving him the military GED exams as his entrance exams. He got three marks of 99+, one 99, and one 97. The American Correspondence School eventually included Tim in their list of 1947 graduates, allowing him to receive a small scholarship.

Tim returned to Doucette for the summer of 1946. Tim and Dan continued to go camping, hunting and fishing with Red and some other boys for days at a time, hunting squirrel and other small animals. Once they lost a chicken they had brought (Red was cleaning it by the creek, and the plate slipped off the tree root, sending the chicken into the deep creek). Searching the woods for a replacement animal, Tim and Red found an Armadillo, dressed it and cooked it up, and Red presented it to the others as a "big swamp rabbit." (Before they were done eating, they disclosed what it really was. In those days, Armadillos were known as "Hoover Hogs," and were occasionally used for food).

When Tim prepared to go back to Iowa to start college at the end of the summer of 1946, the family gave or sold Bill the horse to the Stone family (from the Stone and Pitt architectural firm) to live on their ranch. Bill did not want to leave, and would not be dragged into the trailer, but Tim showed them he would go anywhere if you gave him a slack lead. Tim led him into the Stones' trailer and closed the door. Bill knew that he had been tricked, and stomped his hooves in frustration. Tim always felt bad that he didn't drive to the Stone's farm that day and let Bill out at the other end of the trip, so Bill would know everything was OK. Tim gave the cart to Red, and sold his bike to Red (as did Dan). Red sold them for a profit.

Tim and Dan returned to Cedar Falls in the fall of 1946 to attend Iowa State Teachers college. They went to Beaumont first, to spend the day with Wes Eckles. From Beaumont, they took the train to Cedar Falls (the Rock Island Line - you could also take this train to Chicago or West Bend). Before they would be allowed to enroll at ISTC, they had to have a place to stay. Fortunately, they ran into a man they had worked for delivering the Des Moines Register (Tim also delivered the Waterloo Courier); his mother had a basement room available, at 2216 Merner St., right across the street from their old house. Aunt Marguerite lived just a bit east on Walnut St. Tim had his first real girlfriend in Cedar Falls (Ruth Boone). Tim went on to spend his first two years of college in Cedar Falls.

Tim owned over 60 cars in his life. He often fixed up old cars and sold them. In Cedar Falls, Tim bought a 1931 Model A Ford (he once identified this as his favorite car; he believes he recalled paying $115 for it). In the early summer of 1947, Tim drove the Model A down to Texas (accompanying his mother who was driving her Plymouth). They drove through Missouri in a driving rainstorm. Driving through a wash at 40 MPH, the impact with the water uprooted the floorboards, and simultaneously came crashing over the windshield and into the driver's seat.

In the summer of 1947, Dan stayed in Cedar Falls and worked in Waterloo, eventually buying a car (Tim recalled that Dan's work might have had something to do with maintaining or repairing boilers). Tim initially stayed at the old house in Doucette, but his mother subsequently rented a room for $5/month at Mrs. Baskin's boarding house (Tim only went there for meals; he preferred to stay at the old house where all of his things were). He and Red also worked with a contractor, putting up telephone poles in the swampy areas south of Woodville, where water moccasin snakes were common, and laying hardwood floors in apartments in the south side of Houston, which he described as backbreaking work. He sold the Model A in Beaumont before returning to college in the fall (he couldn't afford the upkeep; this was apparently the car for which he rebuilt the engine on his front porch, combining the best parts of two engines to make one). His parents took an apartment in Houston to be close to Mike's engineering job.

After Tim returned to Cedar Falls in the fall of 1947, he started seeing Ruth Boone (he had been friends with her brother), and Grandma came up from Texas to meet her.

Early in 1948, Tim sold vacuum cleaners in Waterloo and West Bend. He drove a 1931 Chevy Coupe, then sold it and bought a 1932 Ford V8, which he drove to West Bend for about a week, shortly after his grandfather's death.

Later in the spring semester, Tim worked at Baker Ice Cream in Cedar Falls. He had a variety of duties, working behind the counter as a soda jerk, packing ice cream into cartons, making popcorn, and anything else that was needed. He earned his first tip, ten cents.

In the summer of 1948, Tim worked in Waterloo. He worked in the QA department at the John Deere plant (on the night shift, while his girlfriend Ruth was working the day shift). The job was easy, and checking nuts and bolts all night was rather unsatisfying work. Tim soon found he could finish his allotted work in about half of his nightly shift. Walking home one night, he got a ride from a man, and proceeded to tell him how easy the job was. The man turned out to be his boss, whom he had never met. The boss' initial reaction was, "we'll see if we can get you more to do," but they eventually agreed that Tim should move on.

For a brief period of time Tim worked as a delivery man for a lumber yard, often delivering coal (shoveling it down the basement chutes of people's homes). He would occasionally show up at Ruth's house around lunchtime, covered in coal dust.

In his second year at Iowa State Teachers College (plus taking accounting by correspondence during the summer when the dorms were empty), they were starting to sign him up for teachers' courses, and he didn't want to be a teacher, so he decided to transfer to another school. Turning his sights to Houston, he applied to Rice and the University of Houston; he was accepted by both, but his application to Rice got lost in someone's desk drawer and wasn't answered until much later, so he enrolled at the University of Houston.

On 24 Jun 1948, the day before the draft resumed, Tim joined the Naval Reserve. At Waterloo, they only offered training in the diesel engine unit. Houston offered seamanship, but he wanted to become an electronic technician.

Later in the summer of 1948, he returned to Houston in his 1932 Ford V8, transferred to the University of Houston, and took some extra courses so he could still graduate on time in 1950.

This same summer (1948), Mike and Irene (who would soon adopt the nickname Zanah when she resumed her teaching career) bought the Laverne St. house in Houston, which was situated on a roomy 2-acre lot. They built a one-room cabin for Tim to live, with an outhouse and a phone extension. He also had a trailer on campus for a while; he described this form of postwar student housing as "dirty and grubby."

As the summer of 1949 approached, Tim became concerned that he had not yet fulfilled his first annual training duty requirement with the Naval Reserve. In approximately June or July, he was assigned to a training cruise on the destroyer VSS Waldron DD-644, sailing from New Orleans to Norfolk by way of Bermuda. He did some sightseeing in New Orleans' French Quarter before reporting for duty. Aboard the Waldron, he served as a Seaman Apprentice and had duties as a Messenger and a Rear Lookout. On liberty in Bermuda, Tim and a Petty Officer rented bikes and went on a tour of the island. After turning in their bikes, they walked along the beach to a nightclub and met a midshipman. The management of the nightclub did not want to have sailors in his establishment, but the midshipman had officer privileges so they were allowed to stay.

When the Waldron docked at Norfolk, Tim was given a train ticket to return to Houston, but he cashed it in and hitchhiked back to Iowa instead. Natalie and Jim's friends at the Cedar Falls Daily Record had mentioned they wanted to sell their 1933 Ford V8 5-window coupe. Tim bought it, drove it home to Texas, and owned two cars for a time before selling the 1932 Ford. He described the 1933 Ford as a good car, and wishes he could have kept it and restored it.

Tim worked in the Post Office in Houston during the Christmas rush in 1949 and 1950 (in 1949, he worked in the Coliseum post office, salvaging damaged mail; in 1950, he worked two jobs in the Heights post office in Houston, delivering mail during the day and sorting the outgoing foreign mail in the evenings).

For Christmas 1949, Tim took the 1933 Ford and drove his college friend, Bob Snarr, back to southern Indiana, then continued west through Illinois and back to Cedar Falls. Some of Tim's pictures of Cedar Falls in winter were taken on this trip. Tim had replaced the engine in the 1933 Ford, but the replacement engine was worse than the one it had replaced. It lost a quart of oil every 40 miles, and they had to keep a case of oil with them and put in a quart every 40 miles.

Tim's second Navy Reserve cruise took place during his last semester of college in the spring of 1950 (he made arrangements with his professors to miss two weeks of class). On this cruise, Tim was a Seaman Apprentice Mess Cook as they sailed a PC boat from Houston (the Dixon Gun Plant) to Norfolk to be decommissioned. They were accompanied on this voyage by a "PG" gun boat, and had to stop in Key West for oil after a valve on the gun boat had come open and pumped oil overboard in the Gulf of Mexico. (The crew had one night's liberty in Key West). The seas were rough as the ship sailed around Cape Hatteras, and the other mess cook was too sick to work. Tim recalled the chow hall was in the fantail of the ship; he remembers washing dishes and singing country-western songs. He doesn't recall how he got back to Houston after this cruise, but he recalled he returned quickly. He never bought books for his classes this semester; instead, he read the copies in the library.

Tim received his Bachelor's degree in Business Administration from the University of Houston, graduating in June 1950. After his graduation, he applied for a commission in the Naval Reserve, which he would obtain the following year. (Around the time Tim graduated college, the family lost Duke. It had been raining heavily in Houston, and Mike had to let him out into the flooded yard. Duke appeared to suffer a stroke, and Mike had to have him put to sleep).

For his third-year training in 1951, before earning his commission in the Naval Reserves, Tim was assigned to be an Electronic Technician (ET-SA "striker") in the reserves. He applied for the Supply Corps, but was assigned the general line. He went for a training cruise at the Great Lakes ET School. He was only assigned to stay there 2 weeks, and had a choice of taking a course on transmitters or receivers. He chose the receivers course, which he subsequently discovered was actually weeks 23-24 of the 36-week advanced course. There was a test every day. If you got 4 out of 5 right, you got liberty for the weekend; if you got less than 4 right, you had to stay behind for "stupid study." Tim eventually got 4 out of 5 right one Friday, and managed to visit his cousins Jean and Ken Revell in Park Ridge, Illinois that weekend.

Tim also worked at Gehring & Weston Feed and Supply from 1950-1951.

To earn his commission in the Navy, Tim needed 2 math courses including trigonometry, and 1 other subject. He used his high school transcripts, tested out of some courses, and took correspondence school to cover the others. He drove to Dallas to get his commission. This was a direct appointment (no Officer Candidate School). He got his Ensign uniform in a hurry (from a Lieutenant's old uniform). He took correspondence courses in military justice. He soon became a seamanship instructor in the reserve unit, at a time when he should have been studying it himself.

His third cruise in the Reserves (fourth reserve training assignment), in the summer of 1952, as an ensign, was aboard the destroyer escort Haas, a PCE WW2 sub chaser, from Houston (Dixon Gun Plant) or New Orleans to Nassau, The Bahamas. He recalled taking his turn at maneuvering the ship for a man overboard drill, where you run the ship's engines in opposite direction to rotate the ship around. Tim chose to turn the ship around by traveling forward and making a "teardrop turn" instead (using this more conservative approach, he was the only one to successfully rescue the dummy that had been thrown in the water, beating the 2 Lieutenant Commanders who were performing the same drill).

Tim worked at Cameron Iron Works from 1952 through early 1954.

In 1953, Tim was assigned to flood control duty at the Sabine River in Orange, Texas, but quickly discovered there was no one coordinating any of the activities. He hotwired a pickup truck at the BOQ with a paper clip, and used it to carry out his duties over the weekend. He drove a flatbed ammo truck from World War 2 to move sandbags. He had his truck driver license since his feed store days. This was Tim's last trip in his Pontiac. When he got home, his new 1953 Willis was ready. He was subsequently promoted to Lieutenant JG.

In early 1954, Tim left for Saudi Arabia to work for Aramco. On the way there, he stopped in Amsterdam. The canals were frozen, and children were skating on them (when he returned to Amsterdam about 3 decades later, he learned it had not happened since). While in Saudi Arabia, Tim learned Arabic numbers so he could negotiate with shopkeepers. He worked in a construction office evaluating Arab contractors' construction bids.

By this time, Tim's father Mike had developed very serious alcohol problems, and Dan and Irene put him in a sanitarium (Mike’s lifelong friend Captain Tom Weston, who had been young Mike’s mentor in his merchant marine days, agreed). The Red Cross brought Tim home. He stopped in Rome on the way back.

While in Arabia, Tim met a Navy/PanAm pilot who worked in Aramco's aviation division, and decided to visit the Bureau of Personnel in Washington, DC to check the requirements for flight training. He discovered he was already near the upper end of the age limit.

His next step was to go to the Officer Procurement office in Minneapolis. He applied to become a pilot, but they told him he would have to give up his existing commission in order to apply. Thankfully, Tim knew the regulations and was able to show them he did not have to take that risk. They agreed, put him on a waiting list, and gave him some screening tests. Tim had driven all night from Washington, DC, and was very tired when he took the tests. He got a letter saying he had been granted a place on the waiting list, and continued to build his Reserve time in the meantime.

Tim bought a 1940 Plymouth for $75 and drove it back to Houston. He had to report to the draft board (he had given up his deferment when he went to Saudi Arabia). Tim and Mike were broke, and Tim had to buy uniforms in Corpus Christi.

The draft board, learning of Tim's Reserve commission and rank of Lieutenant JG, put him in charge of the two busloads of draftees traveling to Fort Sam Houston. The draftees didn't realize Tim was also going there to take the same tests. He got a perfect score (4.0) on the test, and was rated 1-A. On the return trip, the draftees were all trying to figure out who got the perfect score.

Tim wrote to the Navy requesting orders for active duty while waiting for flight training, and was sent to the USS Randolph which was in the shipyard in Norfolk for repairs (an Atlantic hurricane had curled the flight deck above the hull along the bow of the ship). His girlfriend, Anna Marie Michaels, who had joined the Army Nurse Corps, had orders to go to Germany, and they drove to Norfolk together. Once aboard the Randolph, since Tim was awaiting flight training, he was assigned to the flight deck, directing airplanes. (Prior to this time, he had only taken a course in military justice). He was appointed Assistant Arresting Gear Officer. He never met the primary Arresting Gear Officer; this man was a star baseball player on the Atlantic Fleet team, so he spent little or no time on the ship. The Randolph sailed to Europe and the Mediterranean toward the end of 1954.

When the ship docked in Palermo, Tim was assigned to Shore Patrol. The waves were too rough for anyone else to come ashore, so there was little to do, and he mainly stayed in a hotel overlooking the harbor. He took trains to go sightseeing. He saw the Catacombs, and took a cable car to the mountaintop.

Tim spent Christmas 1954 in Marseilles, France. He was offered a trip to Paris (aboard a 4-engine double-decker plane flown by French commercial pilots), and accepted. This flight had a rough landing; the pilots dragged the tail too low and dragged it on the runway, much rougher than any U.S. flight Tim had been on, and it brought to mind stories he had heard about French military pilots being wild and reckless. Paris in 1954 was still recovering from World War 2; there was still a lot of visible debris and damage. Tim walked around on Christmas Eve and took pictures. Later he went to the Follies Bergere, where he was easily spotted as an American. He got called up on stage for the rocking-horse race. He won a bottle of Cognac in this race, and kept it for 2 years until he had finished his flight training. He recalled walking back to the hotel at night, cutting down dark, narrow side streets. When he and Pat returned to Paris in 1984, everything was clean and well lit.

Other ports of call for the Randolph included Genoa, Italy and Oran, Algeria. In Oran, he went on a shore excursion with a fellow officer, and visited the headquarters of the French Foreign Legion. Then they went back to town and stopped in at a local bar. (When the fleet was in town, all the prices in this bar doubled, but since Tim knew some Arabic from his Aramco days, he was able to point out the posted prices to the bartender. The bartender saved face by explaining that every other round was free). While they were there, they met a man from the Foreign Legion who had just returned from Vietnam. The man spoke 7 languages. When Tim's fellow officer admired the epilet (aguilet) on the man's uniform, the Frenchman promptly gave them to him. Tim knew from his days in Saudi Arabia that this was the custom, and it was also the custom for such a favor to be returned, so when the Frenchman admired his friend's necktie the next day, he knew what to do.

The Randolph also stopped in Athens, where Tim saw the Acropolis, and Istanbul, where Tim was surprised to hear Tennessee Ernie Ford's "Shotgun Boogie" playing in the harbor. He went to the bazaar and bought musical instruments, including a "zass" or "aoud" (4-string gourd).

In 1955, while the Randolph was in Naples, Tim got his flight training orders. As he was preparing to go to flight training, he learned of a bad plane crash (the plane's load had shifted suddenly). The air boss told him, "Anytime something like this happens, somebody made a mistake. If you don't make mistakes, you'll be fine." Tim shipped his gear home, left the Randolph in Naples, stopped in Frankfort to see his girlfriend, flew back to Blackpool, England, took the train to London to check in with Headquarters, and left for home from Scotland a few days later (after missing his flight on purpose so he could have a few more days of sightseeing in London before he caught the train to Glasgow to fly home).

At flight training in Pensacola, Tim was the senior person in his class, so he was appointed class leader, and was assigned to take attendance and bring the class to order before the professor arrived. He was matched with a 245-lb. marine for PE.

Tim studied engines, and went out to outlying fields for flight training. He received his basic flight training at Whiting Field in Milton, Florida. He progressed to instructor-led flight, solo flight, and eventually a cross-country solo night trip to Jackson, Mississippi. His roommate, Curtis Williams, went on to become an astronaut. Tim visited with him in Japan and Texas. Williams was never on a space flight; he was killed in a solo plane crash after his oxygen failed at altitude. He is buried in Arlington Cemetery.

For Christmas 1955, Tim visited Dan and Anne at law school near Boston. He met Anne's sister, Dr. Mary Waring. He missed the return flight, and hopped a military flight the next day. (Anne introduced Tim to a nurse who later got a job in Pensacola and dated Tim. But she was Catholic, not a good match, and very clingy, always putting her arms around him). Tim went home to Houston on weekends, driving the Willis automobile he bought before his Saudi Arabia trip. He also bought a Studebaker to give to his mother. In early 1956, he went to Corpus Christi for advanced training.

After completing his flight training, Tim bought a new 1956 Chevrolet.

Tim was stationed at NAS North Island on Anti-Submarine Squadron VS-21 from 1956-1958, then came ashore for a while, and asked to go back to the squadron to get more flight time (fleet duty). All through his Navy career, Tim had more seniority than he had experience, and he was always looking to find opportunities that would give him the experience he was lacking. During this time he was befriended by Paul Cowan, an older officer in the squadron who would answer his questions and give him good advice. They would stay friends for life.

In 1956, VS-20 and VS-21 combined to form a training group to train Japanese pilots flying the S-2 and learning anti-submarine tactics as part of a maritime self-defense force as mandated after the war. This was still quite a controversial mission only 11 years after World War II. The squadron's executive officer had been a POW of the Japanese for many years, and had lost about 90 pounds during this experience. He once told the men, "if I can overlook the past, I expect everyone else to." Paul Cowan was with this training group.

In 1957, Tim and one of the other pilots in the squadron flew from Tijuana to Mexico City to do some sightseeing. They rented a 1954 Pontiac and drove from Mexico City to Acapulco. The car was rather "sickly" running on regular Mexican gas. He remembers stopping at the silver center in Taxco.

In a letter written to his mother from Air Anti-Submarine Squadron Twenty One, dated 23 Jul 1957 (postmarked San Diego), Tim wrote, "Went deep-sea fishing weekend before last. Caught a 10-lb. Yellowtail and a 5 or 6 lb. Bonita, both very good eating… Was flying yesterday morning and spotted a tremendous school of blue-fin tuna. The water was literally 'boiling' with them. They disturbed the water so much that we first picked them up on radar! … A commercial fishing boat was passing within two or three miles, so we tried to get his attention and steer him over to the fish. He waved, but never did catch on… Went to see a bull fight in Tijuana, Mex. Sunday afternoon. It was colorful, but looked like 'amateur-day' compared to the performance I saw in Spain." In a subsequent postcard to his mother mailed from San Diego 15 Aug 1957 (while she was visiting her sister Marguerite in Waterloo), he mentioned he had taken ten days leave, spending six in Mexico City and three in Acapulco.

After the Mexican trip, a friend named Joan or Joann Pfeiffer told him of a teacher friend in Anaheim named Pat Hay, and suggested he call her. It was some time before Tim got to Orange County (to visit his cousins Natalie and Jim Day), but he eventually called her and she remembered who he was. (Pat and her mother Edith had also recently been to Mexico City and Acapulco, having won the trip in some kind of contest).

Tim and Pat dated occasionally but very sporadically because Tim was in San Diego and Pat was in Anaheim. Tim occasionally dated a few other women at this time, including Ruby Kissick whom he had seen in Houston during his flight school days, and another girl named Maureen O'Rourke whom he had met on his Mexico trip. Once, all 3 women converged on San Diego the same weekend. He recalled he was walking on egg shells the whole weekend. He took Ruby to the bullfight in Tijuana, Maureen somewhere else, and Pat somewhere else.

Sometime in the late 50s (approximately 1958), Tim was flying his Swift (which he had purchased in 1957) back from Houston to California, and picked a route that would take him through the Grand Canyon and the big meteor crater near Winslow. He flew the plane into the crater, then soon realized he was generating a lot of interest from the tourists watching from the observation deck on the crater's rim. He continued on his way, flying through the Grand Canyon (he didn't fly too low because he had heard there were cables across the canyon in some places, and you couldn't depend on them being well-marked). Tim kept his plane at Lindbergh field (San Diego's main airport) before eventually moving it to Montgomery field.

Tim went on a cruise in 1958, aboard the Philippine Sea, an anti-submarine carrier. They had an A-4 detachment aboard to provide defense against Russian bombers which would fly out when the ship passed close to their borders. Paul Cowan was on this cruise. Ports of call included Sasabo and Yokuska in Japan, Hong Kong, and Singapore, and Cubi Point Naval Base near Manila. There was a little resort town near Luzon in the northern Philippines (he couldn't recall the name) with a golf course, and groups from the ship always wanted to go up there from Cubi Point. When the ship crossed the equator, the crew went through an elaborate initiation/hazing ceremony that was common in those days.

During his time in the Philippines on board the Philippine Sea, Tim had his closest call as a pilot. It was about 2am and as the flight leader, he was the first plane returning to the ship, with other planes joining in. "Off to my left I saw a red light and a green light getting closer, which can only mean collision course." One pilot realized his mistake and dove. Dad raised up at the same time as the first pilot, then partially stalled, fell behind and almost hit the second pilot.

Back at North Island around 1959, a group of Argentinean pilots arrived for S-2 training. Tim was involved with this group, not because he was part of the training group, but rather because he got stuck aboard ship when they were out for their carrier qualification training. The ship ran out of room and had to sail out again. When it came time for nighttime refresher carrier practice, the pilots who were still aboard (like Tim) got to fly. One of the prospective commanders of the Argentine group and one of the landing signal officers were with Tim on these training flights. The commanding officer was a good pilot; he had flown DC-3s but this was a different kind of landing approach, and Tim recalled he would tend to come in too "flat" and "bounce" a bit on the landing. The landing officer was less experienced as a pilot. Tim recalled the experience was somewhat frustrating; you knew they would not crash the airplane, but they would hit and bounce. You could tell them what they did wrong, and what to do differently next time, but they would always make the same mistakes the next time, either because they weren't listening or didn't understand the instructions.

In 1959, Pat was sick of being bossed by her mother, and was impatient with Tim not getting serious yet, so she took a job with the Navy teaching school on Midway Island. Tim began his next cruise, which lasted from 1959-1960 on the Kearsarge.

On the Kearsarge, on the way to Asia, they needed a pilot to make a mail run to Midway. Knowing Tim had a girlfriend on Midway, Tim's friends in Operations picked him for the flight. One of Pat's friends in Operations on Midway knew she had a boyfriend named Hall who was a pilot on the Kearsarge, and told him of the flight. She was there to meet the flight and they spent the evening at the Officers Club on Midway. Tim flew back to the ship the next day.

As a pilot on this cruise, Tim had a bit more freedom when it came to ports of call. There was a committee called the People-to-People Committee, whose representatives would go into the ports early and make arrangements with the port officials to arrange shore patrols and help manage the liberty parties that would come ashore. Tim was flying the ships' C-1A. There was a Lt Cmdr who was head of the committee, and Tim would fly him and his members into the ports, pick up mail and whatever else was needed. These were good times.

In a letter to his mother dated "At sea, southeast of Formosa, 13 Jan 1960", Tim mentioned buying camera equipment and several suits in Hong Kong. "That is really a fabulous city. It is a paradox of poverty and luxury, but being a free port has the best goods in the world at bargain prices. A week in port just isn't enough time to do it justice."

They would always try to send the C-1A into the ports ahead of time. Coming back in the late winter or early spring of 1960, they were approaching Okinawa and there was storm coming through. It was not safe to conduct flight operations or send planes in. They got into port, and the cold front came through, followed by a 90-degree wind shift. The ship had dropped anchor at a time when the wind was favorable, but the winds would eventually shift the ship around. In morning, the sky was clear, and there was a steady wind coming off the stern of the ship, so they decided to send the planes ashore to Naha off the stern of the ship, a very unusual event. Tim recalled they must have taken off the arresting gear wires to avoid catching them during takeoff.

Continuing on the way back from WESPAC in 1960, taking the Great Circle Route through the northern Pacific Ocean, several planes were sent out from the ship to get some flying time. One of the planes spotted a landing craft adrift at sea with 4 men aboard. They turned out to be a crew of 4 Russian soldiers whose landing craft had gone adrift off the Kamchatka Peninsula on a routine training mission; they had been adrift for 42 days and the Russians had not spotted them yet (National Geographic eventually picked up the story). The Kearsarge picked up the men, and kept them as guests in the officers' quarters on the ship, which was then re-routed to San Francisco, where the men could be turned over to the naval authorities, and ultimately to the Russian Embassy (the Kearsarge did not have any Russian interpreters on board, limiting any opportunities for meaningful interrogation of the "guests"). They tried to tow the landing craft, but could not, so they just put out a notice to mariners and set it adrift. Two of the Russians were stationed in quarters that were adjacent to Tim's. Tim's stateroom, which he shared with a meteorologist, was stuffed full of the Americans' purchases from Hong Kong, and the bulkhead walls between the staterooms did not quite reach to the ceiling. Tim remembers the Russian men peering over the top of the walls looking at all of the things they had bought in Hong Kong and Japan. They decided to make a flight to Midway to pick up some interpreters, and once again Tim got assigned to the flight. Pat met the flight again, but this time Tim couldn't tell her what he was there for. They had a second date on Midway, and when she went back to the US at the end of the school year, Tim met her flight at Travis AFB, picked her up and drove her back to Anaheim. They dated for the summer of 1960 between San Diego and Anaheim. Pat was considering taking a job in Japan for the Navy, which she had earned through her service on Midway. Tim proposed and Pat canceled her acceptance of the position in Japan. They were married on August 27th, 1960.

Tim's cousin Natalie Tinsley Day and her husband Jim served as matron of honor and best man. Tim originally thought his brother Dan would not be able to attend the wedding at all, but at the last minute Dan was able to attend after all. Dan had not been able to use Tim as his best man, because Tim was in flight school at the time and could not get away.

Tim was assigned to Anti-Submarine Squadron VS-41 at the time of his marriage.

Sometime between 1960-1963, when Tim was an instructor in the RAG (Replacement Air Group) at North Island, Tim and his companions were on their way to El Centro (Holtville?) to practice carrier landings, his companions ran out of gas and had to put the plane down in a bean field. Tim was the maintenance officer on this trip, so he oversaw the repairs in El Centro and took the first test flight after repairs. He may have flown it back to North Island.

Tim's next cruise was aboard the Hornet from 1963-1964. They had a lot of business at the Marine Corps base in Itazuki, on the southern sides of Honshu Island in Japan. Once they went into Itazuki when the ship's liquid oxygen system was contaminated and they had to pick up two large tanks. The airplane was designed to hold up to three of these tanks securely, but they could only carry two for weight and balance reasons. They would schedule the departure from Japan to go around the west side of the island and "tease" the Russians into sending their planes out, then the Hornet would send out their A-4's to meet them (a typical Cold War maneuver).

In a postcard to his mother mailed from Honolulu dated 4 Aug 1963, Tim mentioned that his mother had visited Pat and the kids in Coronado, arriving shortly before Tim left for Hawaii. A letter from

Tim's wife Patricia to his mother Irene, dated 19 Oct 1963 indicated the cruise had started one week earlier and had just passed through Hawaii. Tim's letter to Irene dated 22 Mar 1964 "At sea, southeast of Tokyo" indicated the ship was scheduled to leave Japan 2 Apr 1964 and arrive San Diego 15 Apr 1964 – then the ship would go to Long Beach and San Francisco.

Leaving Japan in winter, there was snow all over the flight deck. Conducting flight operations was kind of miserable.

Tim recalled an incident which occurred in the winter of 1963, when he was the Aircraft Maintenance Officer on the Hornet. They were flying over Japan in freezing weather, and the air speed indicator on the C-1A malfunctioned. An air speed indicator compares pressured air to static air to calculate forward speed. The problem was in the aircraft itself, because the static line, which ran from the front of the plane to the back sagging through the belly of the plane, would send condensed moisture to the low spot in the line where it would eventually freeze and plug up the line. This prompted an impromptu repair: Tim disconnected the static line in the cockpit where it hooked up to the air speed indicator, and allowed the cabin air to enter the static port instead. It may not have been as accurate as the original design, but it was reasonably close.

Another incident occurred about this time, in which Tim had to abort a landing at El Toro NAS after the cockpit indicator showed a problem with the plane's nose gear. Tim had all his passengers move to the back of the plane to redistribute the load away from the nose gear. It turned out to be a false alarm; someone had merely left peanut husks in the nose gear.

During his days with RAG, Tim had met Paul Karschnia. They had some fleet time together. Paul was ship's company on the Hornet while the ship was in the shipyard in Hunters Point, where they occasionally had assignments on the ship together, and both flew the C-1A. The two families lived in opposite halves of the same small quonset hut on base at Hunter's Point (most of the other officers kept their families down in San Diego; Tim kept his family on base, but ended up flying to San Diego every weekend to take the other men to see their families). Their paths would cross later (on shore duty near Washington DC), and their wives became lifelong friends. When the ship came out of the shipyard, Captain Hardy was the skipper. On the way out of the Hunter's Point Naval Shipyard, Paul was in Air Operations and Tim was in Aircraft Maintenance. When the ship left San Francisco Bay, it "dragged" (scraped/damaged) the TACAN (tactical air navigation) antenna under the Oakland Bay Bridge. The crew was originally confused because they had checked the tides and such, but they had failed to account for the weight of the cars on the freeway at rush hour making the bridge sag farther. Tim and Paul were assigned to come up with an excuse that would make the incident not the skipper's fault. Tim recalled that Paul did most of the work on this rather unsavory assignment. The Hornet also docked in Long Beach for a few months, and the family lived in an apartment.

Around the middle of 1965, just before his nephews Matt and Steve were born, Tim was next assigned to the Armed Forces Staff College in Norfolk, Virginia for general training to stay up to date on various staff officer duties of the day (this was the first of the family's 4 cross-country moves). The training was not particularly focused on one aspect of the job; it was just general training in staff officer responsibilities. He made field trips to see all kinds of weapons being developed, read about different systems being developed, and such.

After a reorganization of the Bureau of Aeronautics into Naval Air Systems and Naval Ordinance Systems, Tim was subsequently ordered to NAVAIR and sent to Naval Air Systems in Washington, DC (the family moved to Hayfield Farms on the south end of Alexandria, Virginia, arriving in a major blizzard, while Tim went back to sunny San Diego to sell his Swift airplane). When Tim arrived at NAVAIR, there was no assignment waiting for him, and it was not even clear who he was reporting to. Tim wanted to take some leave, but there was no one there to approve it. So his orders were changed to Naval Ordinance Systems command, and he got his leave. He worked at the main US Navy building in Washington, DC. He would drive to a fringe area parking lot on an island, then take a cab to the main Navy building. There was always a battle with the cabbies over the fare, because they claimed the island was in Virginia, causing a mileage charge (it was actually in DC, and required only a zone charge). Tim would have to call the cab company to get his money back.

When the family lived in Alexandria, Virginia 1966-1968, Tim owned a green 1958 Chevy Bel Air with the original Air Ride suspension. The car was recalled by Chevrolet (the suspension was shot) and had to be converted to spring suspension, but Tim drove it for years before finding out about the recall.

Tim converted the den in this house to an office, and set up a small workshop where he would repair the family's broken household appliances and toys (anything that was broken became known as a "Daddy fix," and we don't recall anything he couldn't fix). During these years, the family got their first dog, Alfie, a beautiful Springer Spaniel pup who turned out to be quite intelligent and fiercely devoted to Tim.

In a letter from Tim's wife Patricia to his mother Irene, dated 13 Aug 1968, she wrote, "TK's new job is much better than the old one – much more like being back in the Navy. He is compiling materials and writing the Admiral's speech, once every six weeks. He is also trying to get qualified in the U-11 (like a twin-engined private plane) so that he can pilot the Admiral around on occasion – proficiency flying around and around the airport here was getting him down… TK has his car apart. Need I say more. As much as I gripe, it is good that he knows how. On our last trip north, the car radiator popped a seam in the middle of nowhere on a Sunday! After a four hour delay we were on the road again."

Tim's next orders took him to Monterey, California, and the family was off on a cross-country trip, stopping at Tim's mother's house in Houston for Christmas, and visiting his aunt and uncle Vivian and Reece in Tucson along the way. He was sent to the Defense Postgraduate School, next to Fort Ord, where he studied computer systems management and received his Master's degree. From January 1969 to April 1970, the family lived in a large one-story rented home at the west end of Carmel Valley, inland from Coast Highway 1, on a cul de sac that sloped steeply downhill from county highway G-16. Tim set up his den in the garage of this house. He needed to spend a lot of time studying, but the family still found time for several short car trips, heading south to the Los Angeles area (to visit cousins Natalie and Jim, and aunts Marguerite and Mary June), and north to The Sea Ranch, a beautiful area north of San Francisco where Tim and Pat bought a plot of land in hopes of building a home to retire to (sadly, this was not to be; endless regulation from the Coastal Commission made it very difficult for anyone to build homes on these lots). On the Sea Ranch trips, the family camped at Anchor Bay. The campsite ran from highway 1 to the coast, and had its own beach.

Tim owned a pickup truck in Carmel. One day, he stopped by the mailbox on the highway to get the mail, and the door handle fell forward and locked the door with the engine running. Tim had to walk down to the house, get a spare key, and unlock the truck. He subsequently moved the door handle so it wouldn't happen again.

After postgraduate school, Tim was ordered to Washington, DC and given an assignment at the Naval Command Systems Support Activity (NAVCOSSACT) computer facility, where 13 different computer systems were located. The family, accompanied by Tim's mother Irene (driving her own car with her Collie Sean on board) embarked on a long cross-country trip, stopping to visit Marguerite, Mary June, Natalie and Jim, spending some time in Coronado inspecting the home at 511 Second St. which they were still renting out to tenants, then heading across country, stopping briefly at the Grand Canyon and following I-40, I-44, and I-70/270 east to Washington. To the children's delight, the family returned to the Hayfield Farms subdivision south of Alexandria, purchasing a large house with full basement on Broadmoor St., just two streets over from Helmsdale Ave. where they had lived from 1966-1968. Tim built a recreation room and hall closet in half the basement; the other half, mostly "unfinished," included the furnace, laundry room, and workshops for himself and Grandpa Hay. Tim built many things in his workshop, including an ALTAIR computer and a Heathkit color TV.

NAVCOSSACT once held an "open house", where early computers and line printers produced pictures of Alfred E Neuman, playing music on tape drives (mechanical sounds). On one computer system that produced mostly business management reports, they had made their own language converter that would create a Navy version of COBOL for that computer. They were going to work with the manufacturer of the computer to develop a commercial version of the language.

Tim continued to fly occasionally while he was at NAVCOSSACT. He was on the VIP flight schedule at Andrews AFB (based on his experience with C-1's, which were used for VIP flights). At one time he was assigned to fly a high-ranking Navy official (Undersecretary of the Navy, Nitzie). Tim's wife Pat recalled that Aunt Marguerite was visiting Irene, and they got into an argument the night before this important flight, but Tim does not recall any such incident. Another time he was assigned to fly Admiral Grolla to make a speech at a state university in Pennsylvania. While he was waiting for the admiral to return, President Nixon, who was also there to make a speech, walked by (Tim did not approach the President).

Then Tim was given a staff position in the Plans and Programs office at the Defense Systems Management School (College), a converted barracks building on Fort Belvoir. He managed structural plans for projects such as the conversion/upgrade of classrooms and relocation of the library. Our neighbor Mr. Muskovic was the financial officer at the school, but he left. Tim was granted an award when he left. "They only gave me one medal for my Navy duty, and they gave it to me for getting out." Tim recalled that he missed winning several ribbons during his Navy service because he was just outside the time period in which those ribbons were being awarded.

Tim retired from the Navy on 31 Dec 1975, resuming his civilian life on 1 Jan 1976. Pat had to finish the school year in Virginia, so Tim went to California to look for work and a house. They almost bought a house at Coronado Cays, but a last-minute price increase drove them to select a house in Bonita near Ruth and Paul Cowan.

The last few years the family lived in Virginia, T.K. took his son Tim ("T.R.") to the "MARS Station" (Military Amateur radio Service) at Fort Belvoir, where the men were giving courses in preparation for ham radio exams (he had previously bought T.R. some radio receivers which T.R. used for long-distance AM and shortwave listening, or "DXing"). Both would get their Novice "tickets" in 1974 (T.K. was WN4IUT and T.R. was WN4IUR. T.K. never really used his license; it was just something he did to spend time with his son). He helped the men build a large antenna and set up and guard the Field Day tents. A few years later in San Diego, T.K. would get his Technician "ticket" (WB6SES) and T.R. would get his General (WA6SET). T.K. always built the antennas for T.R.'s ham transmitters.

In San Diego, T.K. initially took a job working for a "headhunter" specializing in the computer field. It wasn't a good fit for him because he couldn't stand exaggerating the qualifications of the candidates he was asked to promote. He ended up getting a job with SAI (Scientific Applications Incorporated, later SAIC), a major local defense industry contractor. He developed a syllabus for a course in Computer Software Quality Assurance but it was heavily slanted toward "publication purity" with an emphasis on prior planning.

The man who was selected to teach the first course had some kind of a nervous episode, and Tim ended up teaching the course, at a facility in Norco, Riverside County. He quit soon after this assignment, and used his federal unemployment benefits to fix up the house in Bonita. (Paul Cowan helped him build a large sheltered back porch and a substantial storage loft above the garage, both of which were probably more solidly built than the home itself. The building inspector told Tim he could have put a second story on the porch if he wanted to.)

Next, he worked briefly as a software quality assurance contractor at Comptek on a tape-based submarine contact record-keeping system. When they went out to sea to test the system, it did not perform well; the contract was canceled and the office soon closed. Tim asked to be kept on leave without pay while he was waiting for his Convair application to go through. This worked even better than he had expected.

He then went to work at Convair, for the same instructor who had replaced him at SAIC, remaining there 5 years. He worked in software quality assurance for the Cruise Missile and Space programs. The Space team was not interested in QA, and eventually got the QA phase removed from their project. McDonnell Aviation in St. Louis was building the guidance system for cruise missiles; Convair created the cruise missiles and software for the test equipment. Elaborate tests at Sycamore Canyon would put the missile through its paces. Each test was governed by strict protocols and the results had to stay within certain narrow specifications. It would take hours to run a test, and each measurement would have to pass three times. These programs were written in BASIC, and were relatively easy to follow. Once Tim found an error in the program, and the engineers reset the limits and reran the test. Reviewing the code, Tim could see it was supposed to recycle through a repeat measurement, but the code failed to send it to that other measurement (this could cause the missile to pass or fail the test erroneously). So they got the programmer to bring the code to them before they ran the test on the actual missile. From that day on, the engineer was happy to share his code with QA.

While Tim was at Convair, the company wanted to send a team from the engineering department and a representative from QA to McDonnell Douglas to St. Louis to meet the team that was working on the guidance system. One night they went to Muddy Waters' bar on the banks of the Mississippi River. They had an ugly shirt contest, and Tim's blue and yellow square sport shirt won (the prize was a pitcher of beer for his teammates).

Tim recalled that there was jealousy at Convair against military veterans coming back into the job market and competing with people who had worked their way through the ranks in the civilian job market.

By 1984, Tim's boss was always running out and leaving Tim in charge. Tim soon tired of this, and went to Hughes Aircraft, where he spent the last 9 years of his career. He worked in QA with Merle Boileau the entire time (the longest time he worked with anyone). They remained friends until Merle's death around 2008. They worked on the Advanced Combat Direction System (ACDS), a system that integrated command and control of different units in a fleet to coordinate weapons firing so different ships would be sure to shoot at different targets instead of redundantly firing on the same target. Then he worked on the Combat and Control Processor ("C2P") system, a communication link. C2P was under development at the same time as ACDS; it reached final testing, which was scheduled for the Navy in the middle of the night. They had to borrow people from the engineering department to cover shifts that they couldn't cover, teaching them what records to capture so the tests could be repeated each time. This system passed all tests in the test environment, but was rumored to have problems when it was deployed in the fleet. ACDS was competing with a system that was already in use in the fleet, on a simpler computer system, in a different language. The standards for this language were never finalized, and the project may have been dropped, despite having much more capability than the previous system.

Now that Tim and Pat had re-established their careers in California, they began to travel. The following is a partial list of the places they went:

1981 – England/Scotland (they rented a car, went to St. Andrews' golf course and visited Pat's cousin Sylvia in Penrith).

1982 – Caribbean cruise at Christmas.

1983? – Tahiti.

1983-84 – Caribbean cruise at Christmas.

1984 – Europe (package tour conducted by "The European Experience" – Bob and Madelyn Sheets).

1985 – Barbados (to visit a timeshare created as a tax shelter; this beautiful property, known as the Ginger Bay, eventually went bankrupt after several accounting and tax missteps by the builders).

1987? – Spain, Portugal and England.

1988? – Hawaii.

1990 – Europe ("The Alpine Experience" package tour conducted by "The European Experience", now led by Joe and Carla Calwell?).

1990-91 – Mexico (New year's cruise from Long Beach to Cabo San Lucas, Puerto Vallarta and Mazatlan with Tim and Kitty, aboard Royal Caribbean's Viking Serenade). This was the family's last vacation together.

1991 – Caribbean cruise at Christmas?

1992 – Greek Islands cruise (this trip also included a Mediterranean cruise from Barcelona).

1993 – Baltic cruise including a tour of St. Petersburg, Russia (they waited until after Tim's retirement to travel to Russia; it was on this trip that Pat fell, and began to realize she would need a wheelchair for future travel).

1994 – Heart of Europe (package tour conducted by "The European Experience", Joe and Carla Calwell).

1995 – Panama Canal cruise; England/Scotland trip for Christmas and New Years (package tour conducted by "The European Experience", Joe and Carla Calwell).

1996 – Alaska cruise (Tim unknowingly suffered his first heart attack after pushing Pat's wheelchair on this trip and running around Skagway trying to find a place to buy flowers for their anniversary. After he returned from the trip and the heart attack was discovered, he underwent quadruple bypass surgery. During the surgery, his mitral valve was found to be defective, necessitating emergency valve repairs and extending his planned 90-minute open-heart surgery to 5 hours).

1997 – Ireland

1998 – Spain / Mediterranean cruise.

1999? – Norwegian Fjords and England.

2000-01 - England/Scotland trip for Christmas and New Years (package tour conducted by "The European Experience", Joe and Carla Calwell; this was essentially a repeat of their 1995-96 tour, with T.R. and Karen joining them).

2001 – (A planned trip to Egypt in October was cancelled after the 9/11 terrorist attacks).

2003 – Australia-New Zealand trip with the Ackermans; Alaska cruise by sternwheeler with Tim and Karen.

From 1994 until her death in 2005, T.K. would push Pat in her portable wheelchair anytime they left the house. When they traveled, he somehow managed to move Pat and all of their suitcases everywhere they needed to go. He never complained.

Toward the end of 2000, both Tim and Pat understood the Gospel and were drawn to salvation. Tim was baptized a few months later.

In 2004, both Tim and Pat were diagnosed with cancer. A growth near Tim's lung, detected on a September 2003 "body scan," which had baffled local doctors for months (no one could recognize it as cancer), was discovered after his January 2004 surgery to be leiomyosarcoma, a very deadly cancer so rare that no one in San Diego recognized it (there were no sarcoma specialists in San Diego in 2004). Acting on advice from T. R.'s co-worker who was dying of osteosarcoma, the family traveled to Houston in February, and spent a week waiting to be seen at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. While there, they visited some of Tim's oldest and dearest friends, including Fern Christensen and her daughter Carolyn Jones (Tim's father Merton/"Mike" had given Fern's husband Lowell a job during the Depression) and Louise Davis and Glenn Blakeney (ex-wife and son of Tim's close friend Red Blakeney). Around this time, Tim and Pat's last dog, Shandy, passed away. By July, it was becoming apparent that Pat was having health problems, but she was not willing to go to the doctor until late August, when things had already got out of hand. Pat turned out to have a fairly common non-Hodgkins' lymphoma, which the doctors were virtually certain could be treated effectively with chemotherapy and surgery. Unfortunately, she had waited too long to get treatment, and even after a second surgery to remove a non-cancerous growth, the doctors did not immediately realize that the cancer had spread throughout her intestines. Less than 6 months after her initial diagnosis she was gone (thus, in the space of only 6½ years, Tim lost his daughter, his mother and his wife). Tim, on the other hand, was granted a miraculous 7-year reprieve from his cancer, allowing him to take care of Pat for the last year of her life, then enjoy a whole new life with friends and family for his own remaining years. He continued to travel, golf, and spend time with his friends every day.

Soon after Pat's death, Tim was "adopted" by his longtime friend, Millicent Thompson, who had lost her own husband about 6 months before Tim lost Pat. Millicent, her son Bill and daughter-in-law Becky soon filled Tim's calendar with dinners (home-cooked and restaurant meals), card and dart games, and they sent him home with delicious leftovers after each home-cooked meal. Their dog Skipper quickly accepted Tim as one of the family. Tim's entire circle of friends rallied around him in these years. In addition to golfing, he would frequently go out to dinner with the Ackermans, the Gingers, the Dukes and Millicent.

After Pat died, T.K.'s son T.R. and daughter-in-law Karen took him on several memorable vacations, emphasizing the places that Pat had been that T.K. had not visited, as well as facilitating family history research for T.K.'s side of the family, an activity that T.K. and T.R. collaborated on frequently:

2005 – Canadian Rockies (Kootenay, Yoho, Banff, Jasper national parks).

2006 – US National Parks (Yellowstone, Arches, Zion, Bryce, Monument Valley and other parks and monuments).

2007 – East Coast family history trip (South Carolina, Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York, Ontario and Nantucket Island).

2008 – Iowa and Wisconsin, including Tim's boyhood home of West Bend, Iowa.

2010 – T.K. and T.R. had a memorable father-and-son road trip to the Grand Canyon, to meet T.K.'s nephew Matt Hall and his family. This was one of T.R.'s favorite times with his dad.

T.K. also traveled on his own, reuniting several times with his brother Dan in South Carolina and getting to know his nephews Matt and Steve and their families in South Carolina and Virginia. He also visited his dear friend Margaret Siegmund several times, taking her to nice resorts in the Texas hill country (Bandera) and the Ozark/Ouachita mountains, as well as to visit Dan. (T.K. and Margaret both studied the Bible diligently under the direction of the Berachah Church in Houston). He also went to Arkansas to celebrate the 80th birthday of his close friend Wes Eckles (a favor Wes would return on Tim's 80th birthday).

Virtually every Sunday during these last 7 years of Tim's life, he would go to T.R. and Karen's house after church for lunch. Karen would prepare a delicious meal of salmon and salad. Tim would always share his salmon with his "granddogs" Corky and Trixie. During these years, T.R. and Karen would collect stray golf balls as they were walking the dogs around the neighborhood. Every time they collected 13 or more, they would present their "barker's dozen" golf balls to T.K. T.K. would share the golf balls (about 500 per year) with his golfing partners, Dick Ackerman, John Dukes, Rich Ginger and Joe Lemmo. T.K. got his first and only hole-in-one on February 14, 2006.

On March 31, 2006, Tim suffered a mini-stroke, which temporarily impacted his speech, his right hand and foot strength, and his ability to write, but he suffered no significant permanent loss from this mini-stroke or the many TIAs which followed over the next 4 years. His 80th birthday celebration in 2009 spanned an entire weekend, with lunches and dinners taking place in Orange County and Chula Vista to allow as many friends as possible to attend.

In January of 2011, Tim began to feel some congestion in his chest, and although this turned out to be lingering effects of a recent chest cold, the scan that was taken did show that the tumor on his heart was starting to grow again. At first, the doctors believed the tumor could be removed via open-heart surgery. Unfortunately, a subsequent scan showed numerous spots on Tim's lungs. Since the surgery would therefore be unable to remove ALL the cancer, it was ruled out. Two different types of chemotherapy (one of which even involved a gene-mapping of Tim's cancer gene to find the chemical with the best possible match) proved unsuccessful, and the cancer was declared terminal on September 27th. The next day, T.R. brought him home for hospice care. Tim enjoyed a number of visits and phone calls from cousins and friends before going into transition on October 6th. He would sleep peacefully for almost 2½ days before he went to be with the Lord at 2:08pm on October 8th.

T.K. was kind-hearted, and spent a lot of his later years helping his family and friends (it was impossible to inconvenience him). He was also very strong, and usually kept right on ministering to others even when he was sick; thus, it was hard for him to accept help from others when he needed it, and very hard for his friends and family to imagine him being gone.

When he passed away, the tributes were numerous and heartfelt:

"One of the greatest hearts I have met since I have been here."

"A special man… we feel richer for knowing [him]."

"One of my dearest friends in the world."

"One of the most honest people I have ever known."

"He was like a brother to me."

"He was my second daddy."

"He was always my hero."

"He was a very kind, loving soul, who will greatly missed by a lot of people. His helping hand was always there when my parents needed him… I feel very blessed to have had the opportunity to know him."

"A nice person and so easy to talk to… a great father and role model…"

"If my husband is anything like him in 30 years, I’ll be a very happy woman."

T.K. was a beloved husband, father and friend, and is dearly missed by friends and family alike. This biography is lovingly dedicated to his memory. Friends and family are invited to add to this biography (and Pat's biography) by sharing your stories and memories with us.

Timothy R. Hall

October 16, 2011