Today's Featured Biography

 
Robert Thorkildson

After high school, I attended the University of Minnesota (U of M) for a year before they got tired of me not attending classes. We used to hang out at the Union playing gin
rummy, hearts, and communist bridge. Wanting to keep out of the military, I enrolled at Brown Institute and graduated with a diploma and FCC license in electronics in 1967.

Then it was off to Cedar Rapids, Iowa to a company I had never heard of called Collins Radio that manufactured aircraft electronics, ham radios, and computers for internal use.

Since some of the radios were intended for military use, I was able to get a work deferment. This lasted about two years until I got tired of working under a union environment where everyone's wages were lumped together and individual work performance was not rewarded: so I quit and decided to go back to school in Minnesota.
Since I did not have a stellar school record through high school and college so far, I needed to essentially start over. My goal was to be an engineer but I had not taken any
math in high school, however, I did do well in math while was at the U of M. In 1969, I went Normandale Junior College in their pre-engineering program but only made it through two quarters until the "draft" called my number.
The Army shipped me off to Fort Knox, Kentucky for basic training, then to the dreaded Fort Polk, Louisiana for advanced infantry training, and by early January, 1970 I was in Viet Nam. A year later, I was back home with two bronze stars and a purple heart and wondering how I survived it all. The generous Army let me out 6 months early but that was only so that they could screw me out of 2 years paid education on the GI Bill. I was back at Normandale and completed my AES degree in Engineering. Since, I needed to get a job to complete my education, I decided to head back to Iowa where I knew that I could work as an electronic technician and perhaps finish my degree in Iowa.
In September of 1974, I started back with Rockwell Collins (formally Collins Radio) but now as a laboratory technician, which introduced me to the measurement technology of light and color, in the field that I would work for most of the rest of my career. Through Rockwell I was able to finish my degree in mechanical engineering at the U of Iowa and graduated in 1981. It took a long time because I could not take a full load and work full time.
While at Rockwell Collins, I was heavily involved in the sporting activities that Rockwell sponsored. There was softball (fast and slow pitch, including 12 inch and 14 inch) three days a week in the summer along with golf. In the winter, there was bowling, basketball, and my biggest passion, volleyball. I started playing power volleyball in 1980 and played on many teams, indoors and sandpit, until I finally had to give it up two years ago when the knees and shoulders said stop. Now, I play golf most of the year (indoors during the winter) and ski a little bit when I get the chance. Ski racing was another sport that Rockwell sponsored that I participated in for a few years but it was too far to drive home after apre-skiing with friends.
A couple of years after I moved to Iowa, I joined a ski club because it was the biggest singles organization around with a membership of over 600 people. Most people did not ski
but came to the meetings to meet new friends and drink cheap beer. The club did offer a half dozen ski trips every year and that is where I learned to ski at places like Steamboat Springs and Aspen. My wife, Nancy, was one of those that did not ski but I dragged her along (and still do) when I go West every year. Since we got married in 1989, she tried skiing for a while but did not enjoy it as much as I do but she has enjoyed our trips to Banff, Big Sky, Telluride, Aspen, and Sun Valley.
My wife came from a small farming community in southeast Iowa, graduated from UNI, and still works as a social worker for the Iowa DHS. Her biggest interests are cooking and
travel. For our 20th anniversary, we're going back to Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and PEI for good food, golf, and sight seeing.
In studying our family's genealogy, I found that all of my grandparents were immigrants, which never occurred to me since none of them spoke their native Norwegian or in one case, Swedish. I joined the Sons of Norway, learned some Norwegian, and headed off to Norway where I had heard we still had some relatives with whom my mother had exchanged Christmas cards. When I got there, I found we had a whole bunch of relatives (mostly second and third cousins) and they were very anxious to meet with us. Since that first viist, I have been back twice more, one time to study Norwegian at the International Summer School at University in Oslo, and are planning on another trip in 2010 or 2011. Besides studying how to "snakker norsk", I studied Norwegian history and have given a number talks at our local lodge on that subject.
My wife says that I have too many hobbies because a year before I retired, in 2007, I started building a kit car and finished the Shelby Cobra look-a-like a year and a half later.
Actually, the car is never finished because you always want to add something else to it and like to enter it in local Rod and Custom shows. My latest project is the restoration of a 1930 Ford Model A Tudor that I got in 2008 and I have had to replace or refurbish most of the running gear, suspension, and brakes.

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