Today's Featured Biography

 
Harold Martin

After a freshman year at UT Austin switched to U. of Houston. Helped keep body and soul together working in broadcast radio as a transmitter engineer, recording tech and even for a year as a country & western DJ. Graduated 1965 with a BSEE. Spent some time in the Arizona desert working on secret military radar projects before starting my Coastal America tour. For several years worked for Bell Labs on the Atlantic Coast (NJ) and the Lake Michigan coast (suburban Chicago) with a break of a year when they sent me off to Purdue University for an MSEE in 1967 on their dime.

Then it was back to the Gulf Coast (Houston) for several years, first in seismic data acquisition projects at Shell where I was awarded two U.S. patents in integrated circuit technology. From there I headed closer to the coast to MSC/JSC to work on development of ground support equipment for the Space Shuttle program.

From there it was off to the Pacific coast (San Francisco peninsula) first for a field assignment on a satellite communication project at Sunnyvale Air Force Station in the Big Blue Cube and later working for Fairchild Semiconductor in Palo Alto. Spent lots of free time touring the Bay Area on motorcycle and roaring up and down the mountain roads in the Santa Cruz mountains.

Returned to Houston for the final time in early 1982 to attend South Texas College of Law, earning a JD in 1985 and was admitted to the Texas Bar the same year. Argued cases in the Texas trial and appellate courts and in the U.S. District Court. Mixed results as a lawyer, having one judge telling me I was stupid. Still, another judge stopped a contested hearing when I walked into the court room, telling the lawyers that a real lawyer just came in who other lawyers get to take cases to trial for them. Had my first divorce case before our classmate Michael Hay, who has long been a special master and associate judge in the Harris County Family District Court.

Left the law in 1997 to go back to the computer world, this time as a software developer. Wrote flight software for the International Space Station and the Space Shuttle as well as software used in the petroleum industry. Began partial retirement in 2003, working intermittent software contracts until full retirement in 2008. I still do some programming and have written seven mobile apps, three for iPhone and four for Android for online upload, plus several only found on my own Android phone,

Had mixed results in domestic life, in and out of two marriages and a couple of torrid liaisons but have a wonderful daughter, Juli Elizabeth, a summa cum laude graduate of St. Edwards in American Literature. She lives in South Houston and we are very close and in regular contact. I live in Pasadena now, my sole companion being Wendy, a grey tabby rescue cat of whom I am truly fond.

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