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Today's Featured Biography

 
Robert Palmer

Joined the Navy right after graduation.

My first duty station after boot and Radioman School was a Subtender home-ported in Key West, FL. Ended up spending 6 of my 8 years there on three different ships and one tour of shore duty. Met and married a wonderful lady with two children while down there and we had one more after that. The other two years were split between the USS Saratoga (home-ported in Mayport, FL) and the USS America (home-ported in Norfolk, VA). Rode the Saratoga over to Vietnam in early '72.

Got out of the service in '76 after 8 years and entered college in Jacksonville, FL while working full time as a draftsman for a civil engineering firm. Being a Junior College, I earned my AA degree and completed as many other transferable courses as possible before I transferred to the University of Central Florida in Orlando, FL. The company that I was working for had an office in Orlando so transferring was fairly simple.

I took my Fundamentals of Engineering and Professional Engineer Exams in the spring of '89 and passed both of them with excellent scores! I received my State Professional Engineer's Registration in August of '89.

My preferred specialization was Land Development but did a lot of roadway design during slow periods. During one of those lulls in work in '91, I tried moving back to the Worthington area and obtained my Minnesota, Iowa, South Dakota and Nebraska PE Registrations. After about a year and a half, my wife decided she didn't like being that far away from the kids and didn't really like the cold winters anyway. So we moved back to Orlando where our two sons had been living in our house, and picked up where we had left off.

I eventually ended up in The Villages, FL working for the company that was responsible for the design of all that growth that the Villages was doing. It was here that I got a lot of experience with Utility design.

This was pretty much the pinnacle of my career. I was diagnosed with throat cancer in the fall of '06 and completed my treatments in early '07. The treatments were pretty rough but they got rid of the throat cancer pretty effectively! I started a regimen of follow-up visits to the doctors to make sure that it didn't come back and got back to work. The immediate effects of the treatments (radiation burns and general lethargy, mainly) cleared up with in a few months after the treatments ended. A few problems, including a bout with prostate cancer, continued. Another round of treatments for the prostate cancer and that was obliterated, also.

I finally decided to retire in August of 2015 There are still some effects showing up as time goes on but, generally, I can't complain much. The nerves in my tongue have slowly given up working so I sound like I have had a stroke (which I haven't, thank God! Sorry, Roxie! I really empathize with you!) and my main nutrition is received through a feeding tube these days. But I'm still breathing and remain active. Between my shop tools and my yard work, I stay fairly active!

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