I started my professional career in Radio
Broadcasting, as an announcer and voice-talent. I served as an intern
at Lamar University's KRLU-FM, while taking college-credit courses in
the summer of 1976, between my junior and senior years at Port Neches -
Groves High School. At the urging of my parents and others, I enrolled,
as an Engineering major at Lamar University, in the fall of 1977. I returned to radio, in 1978, at KOLE 1340-AM. I worked there until
management changed, later that year. Typically, in radio, when
management changes, so does most of the staff -- except for those under
contract.
My next career move led me to KIOC K106-FM, near Orange, Texas. It
was there that I became enamored with computers, since the station was
semi-automated. The rest, as they say, is history: I was hooked on
high-tech. When I realized just how fickle the radio industry is, and
that the compensation was meager, unless one were to become a renown
personality, I changed my career -- at first moving into civil
engineering, as a technician and draftsman for the State Department of
Highways and Public Transportation, and then into semiconductor
manufacturing, at Motorola, where I started at the bottom, and quickly
moved up to Electronic Technician, Sr. in their Advanced Products
Research and Development Laboratory.
In 1999, I realized that I would not be able to achieve my goals
without a degree, and began making plans to return to college, full
time, using stocks that I had accumulated during the sixteen years I
had been there. During my last day at Motorola, essentially as I was
walking out the door, the stock market crashed, leaving me with about
half the value I was counting on to finish my degree, and return to a
better, higher-paying job. Still, I soldiered on, expecting stock
values to return to an upward climb. They didn't. And my schooling came to an end -- again.
Now, I've pulled myself back up to ground level, and I'm looking for opportunities to expand my knowledge, my skills, my resources and my future prospects.