Today's Featured Biography

 
John Henderson

I wrote the following some time ago for the "Classmates" site. No one seems to ever go there, so I just copied it again here.

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Well.. it has been a long time since Waycross. But I will start there - at Senior High. I believe our class was the first to be known as sub-freshmen. That (as I remember it) was because the old Junior High was condemmed after we spent 7th grade there. Do you remember the smell of burned rats when they first fired up the furnace that winter? Ugh!

Most of High school is a blur to me now. I remember the two old jalopies I had - first an old 36 Chevy coupe that had the names of the old gang painted all over . Then a 38 Chevy sedan with a motorola radio and,,, most importantly, a back seat! That, of course was for double dating.. I stayed up front. Honest, Mom.

Boy Scouts, camping on Billy's Island... and in the summer, on Blyth Island for two weeks. Our Scoutmaster, Jim Lott and his sainted wife put up with harmone crazed boys at their place on Saint Simonds over a weekend which turned out to be the entire week. I found some of the "For Sale" signs we had stolen from front yards when I recently closed up my parents house.

Watermelons... Bates farm. Need I say more? I saw Gene Rigdon 40 years later and he said to me.. Let's go steal a watermelon. I hope the statute has run on that crime.

There were a lot of pretty girls in our class .. and one or two behind us. No names here... I'm not that dumb. Well... maybe I am. But, girls let me tell you from the vantage point of well over 50 years now that you were the overriding subject of the boy conversation for the whole 5 years we were in Senior High. The movie "Grease" wasn't far from the truth. And Olivia Newton-John reminded me so much of..... Careful, John, no names here. My wife, God rest her soul, was jealous of Olivia.

After High School, I went into the Army... for lack of a better plan. Three years..mostly in Frankfurt Germany at the 97th General Hospital as an MP. Guarding gates, shaking down German nationals who worked there for contraban cigarettes - which somehow never got turned in to higher authorities. Crawling around Bahnhoff Strasse on days off. The King Bar where Willi the giant was the bouncer.

I played football for the NACOM Black Knights. TDY was good duty. Barracks at WAC Circle. We were the pets of Lt. Gen Renaldo van Brunt. Happy days there and Gooood duty. We won'em all and won the championship and for that we all spent a week in Garmish on an all expense paid holiday! When I reported back to my unit on Christmas Eve, I was immediately sent to the main gate for the midnight shift. (The 1st Sgt didn't like it when I went on TDY). It snowed 24 inches that night!

After the Army, I went to College! Nobody in my family had ever done that. South Georgia College and then Georgia Tech. More of the raging harmone syndrome.. but I had a few years maturity on most of those around me and I did study a lot and tried to hand in all the papers and finally squeeked by - picking up a wife and starting a family within 5 days of graduating. (more later - perhaps).

Well--- more now.. Smith dorm the first quarter. GI Bill Checks got fouled up and had to drop out winter quarter and work at the Chevy assembly plant next door to the Federal Pen. If it wasn't for a perfectly timed layoff (just in time for the Spring Quarter registration, I would most likely have been a union auto worker. As it were, when they called me back the quarter was under way and I managed to stay more or less solvent until I finally graduated. About a week later, my first daughter was born. I went to my first Job with Reynolds Metals Company in Florence, Alabama, owing Sigma Chi $200 and C&S Bank $300 borrowed in order to pay the Doctor for an unplanned for C-section. Can you believe it? No insurance.
First job was time studies and setting production standards. But ... talk about hi-tech - no more slide rule stuff. No! we had merchant calculators. And big spread sheets. There wasn't a computer in the whole company. Reynolds insurance paid for the second daughter and I left for what I thought was greener pastures with the Defense Department.

Civil Servant at Robbins Air Force Base back in Middle Gerogia. I wasn't suited for civil service work. No bad-mouthing - just couldn't take it.

Brief stint at a recently privatized Naval Ordnance Plant in Macon. Learned a lot about manufacturing - and managing people - but the bombing in Viet Nam was ratcheting down and the contracts were being cut back .... Well it was back to the Aluminum industry, this time with a start-up company we called NSA (National-Southwire Aluminum) which was a joint venture competing with the big three (Alcoa, Reynolds, and Kaiser). The joint venture never grew to the size we anticipated, but the plant on the Ohio River is still producing - and Reynolds and Kaiser are both out of business.

In addition to administrative duties, I traveled the world trying to sell smelting technology. We started a projedt in Dubai when it was a backwater Arab smuggling port that had just started producing offshore oil. What a place it is now! I lived there for over three years. What a time! The Iranians stormed the American Embassy during that period. We had about 20 american families and 50 or so on batchelor status there at the time and everyone was nervous to some degree. I had to keep them all on the job as we were only 70 or 75 of a workforce of 3,000 - 4,000. I watched a literal desert being transformed into modern industrial complex. The city is now one of the most modern in the world. While I was there, the sheep or camels would eat my lawn if I left my gate open. Later-(May 4, 2009).

Sept 3, 2009

Well back again. I wonder if anyone has ever read this far. Anyway, this Classmates site has not been very productive for me. Lots of names crop up but very few ever respond to notes left or e-mails sent. I think younger people probably see better results.

Later

Well, "later" is now September 20, 2010. I have recently simplified my life and relocated to a beach side condo in Daytona Beach Shores. I love this place! No grass to cut, no goats to feed, no roof to worry about patching, etc, etc.

I shoot skeet twice a week now and roll a few boche balls with the old timers. Hope some one other than me comes to this site.

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