Dale Edward Randall's Childhood and Family History Updated 10-30-09 I was born at home on November 22, 1935. My parents lived where my father worked at 777 Emerick St on the Gault Dairy Farm near Ypsilanti, Washtenaw County, MI. My parents moved to a dairy farm in Holly, MI where their home burned in 1936 when I was a year old. I started attending kindergarden in Clinton, Lenawee County in the fall of 1940. We moved to the village of Manchester in the winter of 1940-1941 and I finished kindergarden. My parents then lived in Washtenaw County until their deaths in 1991 and 1993. WHEN MY FATHER ROY RANDALL WAS A KID! My father had eight siblings, all deceased. His father was "Fred" Norman Randall who was born on August 25, 1876 and died on December 31, 1953. I had just started school at Michigan State College in the fall of that year. Five cousins and I were the pall bearers at his funeral. My grandmother, Florence Maransa "Flora" (Every) Randall and my one week old sister, Evelyn Irene Randall had both died in 1939. Later in the late 1940's my grandfather married "Mother Marian" (Van Camp) Snyder. They lived in Jackson Michigan. Fred would always build a new house trailer in their back yard in the summer. Then they would drive to Florida for the winter. In the spring they would sell their home made trailer and then drive back to their home in Jackson. Marian's given name was probably Mary Ann Van Camp, the daughter of George and Ellen (Northrup) Snyder. Marian had married Jay William Snyder in 1901 and they adopted a son, Ivan D Snyder who was born in 1908 and died in 1987. "Mother Marian" owned her home on 125 E Euclid, Jackson, MI from 1954 for 15 years after Fred died until her death at the Chelsea Methodist Home in 1969. Dad, was born on November 15, 1907. He was raised by Fred and Flora on the farm homestead on Lima Center Road, between Manchester and Clinton in Bridgewater Township, Washtenaw County, Michigan. There were nine children in the family born between 1898 and 1913. Their farm had no electricity when my father lived there. Horses were used for farming and travel. The children used a horse drawn buggy or sleigh to drive to and from the Bridgewater Center school house about a mile away. The horses were tied and allowed to graze during school. The family drove a horse drawn wagon to Clinton or Manchester to buy what they needed each Saturday. There were New York Central railroad steam locomotive trains that would travel through Adrian, Tecumseh, Clinton, River Raisin, Manchester, Napoleon, and Jackson. Another New York Central track passed through the north part of Manchester from Ann Arbor to Brooklyn. The two tracks crossed just north of town. So there were two freight depot stations in Manchester. The depots communicated with each other using a Telegraph to send and recieve Morse Code. The passenger trains would sometimes stop near the village of "River Raisin" at the junction of Hogan Rd and Wilbur road. This was just west of the Bridgewater Center Town Hall and School. There was a small lake near there where my grandfather, Fred Patterson and I fished when I was young. The train would only stop at this "Podunk Junction" if a passenger want to get off or if a flag was raised for a passenger to get on the train. Some modern maps still show this location as "River Raisin", but the village doesn't exist now. My grandfather's hobby was to grow flowers on the farm. He had almost every variety and color of peonies and glads which were planted in long rows. The Randall farm home was heated by a wood/coal burning furnace in the basement. I remember it because it had a large square grill in the middle of the living room. It was too hot to walk on because the hot air register was on top of the furnace. Meals were prepared before dark on a wood burning stove because they had no electricity. They had a large round table with a "lazy susan" in the center to make it easier to pass the food around. Kerosene lamps and flashlights provided light after dark. They used a battery powered radio reciever set, which required a long wire aerial and a ground rod. I remember my father telling us how sparks would sometimes jump from the aerial to the ground when it snowed. Horses were raised. Cows, steers, hogs, chickens, and eggs were raised for food. The major crops were Wheat, Hay, and Corn, and sometimes Oats or Soybeans. In the fall the ears of corn were picked and dehusked by hand and tossed into a horse drawn wagon. The ear corn was shoveled by hand into a corn crib to dry, then later shelled with a hand crank driven corn sheller. The cobs could be used for fuel or fertilizer. The cows were fed and milked by hand. In the summer after the wheat was ripened, it was cut and tied with strings into bundles by hand with a hand sickle or a with horse drawn mower/binder. The bundles were stacked by hand into shocks to be dried. All of the farmers in the area would bring their horse drawn wagons to each farm to help with the threshing. The shocks were loaded by hand with pitch forks onto the horse drawn wagons, to be hauled to the threshing machine. The strings were removed and pitch forks were used to throw the wheat bundles onto the threshing machine conveyer. The thresher was belt driven by a wood or a coal fired steam engine tractor. The waste straw was blown into a large "hay stack" near the barn. The grain was stored in a grainery in the barn. The farm wives would come to the farm to get together and help prepare the meals for the men. I saw this type of threshing in the summer of 1946, on the Hogan road farm, where my aunt Ruth (Breitenwischer) Randall was born. When the threshing was finished, the steam engine tractor was used to pull the thresher to the next farm. All of this work is now done by one farmer with a self propelled combine. The left over straw is now raked into rows, baled, and transported by a tractor and wagon to be stored in a barn. Farmers still use the straw for cattle bedding. The alfalfa or timothy hay was cut two or three time each year with a horse drawn riding sickle bar mower and then left in the field to dry. The mower sickle bar could be raised by the driver at each corner of the field when the horses were turned to pull in a new direction. The hay was then raked into rows with a horse drawn riding rake. The driver, who rode on the rake, "lifted" the tines with a handle each time a new row was reached. After the rows had been turned over a few times and were dry, the hay was loaded onto a horse drawn wagon with a hay loader and/or by pitch forks. There were many jobs, driving the horses, pitching the hay from the ground, and on the wagon to evenly spread the hay. Hay slings were laid on each of three or four layers of hay as the wagon was loaded. If a hay loader was pulled behind the wagon, it was unhitched before the wagon was pulled to the barn. Eventually tractor drawn rakes, bailers, and wagons were used to harvest the hay. There were different ways to lift the loose hay into the barn. A long large hemp rope was strung through wooden block and tackle pulleys in the barn and out through a large door above the load of hay. The block and tackle pulley system reduced the force required to lift the hay up into the hay mow. The team of horses were unhitched from the wagon in order to pull the hay slings or hay forks up from the wagon into a large door opening at the end of the barn. A hay fork could be used to lift loose hay if a sling failed. When the hay reached the track at the top of the barn, it would release a little car. The car and hay would be pulled into the barn on the track. The horses were then stopped when the hanging sling reached the position where the hay should be dropped. There was a long small rope attached to a latch with a release mechanism at the bottom of the hay sling. The hay could be swung back and forth by carefully pulling on the the rope and then yanking it at the desired moment to let the hay fall into one side or the other of the barn. A longer rope was then attached to pull the release rope, sling (or hay fork), and the car back out to the end of the track. When the car reached the end of the track it would unlock and allow the sling to be pulled down and removed for the next load of hay. When done, the horses were then hitched up to the wagon to be driven back out to the field to load more hay. My father bought a brand new 1928 Chevrolet automobile for $600 before my parents were married in Ohio in 1932. They were married when my mother was 18 and dad was 24. She was living in Findley Ohio. They had met when her family were in Michigan to work in the onion fields. My parents moved to the Gault dairy farm in Ypsilanti where I was born in 1935. The Gault Dairy farm no longer exists, but was probably located near the Gault Village Shopping Center in Ypsilanti near the old Ford Motor Plant that can be seen from I-94. My parents moved to a farm in Holly, MI where their rented home burned in 1936. I was a year old. My parents lost everything they had. In the 1940's, during the war, my grandfather (Fred Patterson) and his family moved from Ohio into a rented farm house on Kies Road about one half mile north of the Bridgewater Center Town Hall on Clinton Road. Many of my aunts and uncles on both sides of the family had attended this same country school house. WHEN DALE RANDALL WAS A KID! I first remember that we lived in Clinton, also with my aunt Minnie Randall, at her home on the old Clinton-Manchester road, near the Bridgewater Center Town Hall and School. I believe that we were there for less than a year when I was three or four years old in 1938 or 1939. She and her sister Clara, had taught school all of their lives. I have photos of our family on our Web Site. There is a photo of me riding my tricycle in aunt Minnie's driveway. I tried to run away to go to the school house, which was about a half a mile north of her home. But my Mother came and rescued me before I got there. We moved back to Clinton in 1939 when I was still four and my younger brother, Gerry was born. My parents had rented a house and then an upstairs apartment in Clinton. I remember that we had an new electric clock that would gain or lose 15 to 20 minutes and had to be reset by hand. The Clinton Power Company could not regulate the 60 cycle frequency of the power very well. My Dad walked to work at the Clinton Woolen Mill near the Raisin river, west of town. The factory which made woolen cloth was on the east side of the river near where the Fred N Randall reunion is held every two years in June. The woolen mill burned down a few years ago. Dad worked there until 1941 when he started working at the Ford Plant in Manchester. Their were New York Central train tracks with railroad cars parked on a siding about two blocks west of where we lived in Clinton. I remember riding my tricycle to the railroad tracks. For fun, another kid and I would play under the railroad cars without my mother knowing it. Steam locomotives made a lot of noise. We would be scared away if we ever heard a train coming. My uncle Leon Randall was killed in 1923 by a railroad box car closing door accident in Clinton. I had tried to run away to my aunt Minnies house which was half way to Manchester north of Clinton. My mother had tracked me down in Clinton before I got very far. This is similar to when my cousin, Marilyn (Whelan) Blue and I went through the the farm garden and fields to the woods when we were 3 years old. My mother drove the 28' Chevy down through the corn field rows on aunt Alice Whelan's farm, to rescue us before we could get lost in the wood where the previous day, my mother had taken us to pick flowers in the woods beyond the corn field. I remember that our next door neighbor in Clinton had given me a new 1940 nickle with a white house on it instead of a buffalo head or liberty head. This was a lot of money then. Licorish "nigger babies" were a penny per small bag. I know this because my mother used to give me a penny to go to the store to buy a bag of the candy. I came back one day and told my mother that I had discovered the difference between boys and girls, "Girls have longer hair than boys". I started kindergarten in Clinton in the fall of 1939. Jerry was born in April of 1940. In the winter of 1940, my father bought an old house and we moved from Clinton to Manchester. We lived on Granger Street near the Ford Motor Co mill pond. At first, we had no electric power, so there were no electric lights, refrigerator, running water, bathroom, sewer, toaster, freezer, dishwasher, washing machine, microwave, radio, television, or telephone. We did have a kerosene cook stove/oven, kerosene lamps, a coal heating stove, and a dirt cellar with stone walk out steps. Clothes were washed with a scrub board and wash tubs filled with hot water heated on the kerosene stove. Dishes were washed and dried by hand. Clothes were dried on a clothes line and ironed by heating a heavy cast "iron" on the stove. We had an outdoor hand operated water pump. We had a two hole out-house at the end of a flat stone path between the house and garden. There were no sidewalks or paved roads. I finished kindergarten in the Manchester Public Schools in the spring of 1941 when I was 5 years old. I had to walk almost a mile to and from the school up hill and down hill, both ways. I graduated from Manchester High School in the June of 1953. This was in the same building where I had finished kindergarten. Bread was 15 cents per loaf. We bought sugar scooped from a barrel for 5 cents per pound. Milk was delivered to the door step by a milkman for 10 cents per glass quart bottle. In 1943 we were hooked up to electric power. We got a manual electric toaster. The toast could be flipped by opening the doors and closing them again before the toast burned. My parents bought a refrigrator that sprung an ammonia coolant leak. They replaced it with a new freon GE "Monitor Top" refrigerator with a round compressor/evaporator on the top. It lasted 50 years and was still working as a spare cooler in the basement when the Grossman Road farm was sold in 1993. They also bought a new Admiral four band AM/Short wave radio with a jack in the rear that was labeled "ready for television". We still have this radio. The Adrian Firestone store salesman did a good job. The TV jack turned out to be an RCA audio jack which we later used to amplify the output of new 45 RPM record changer. We listened to AM radio stations, usually WJR (NBC) in Detroit, CKLW in Windsor Ontario, or WJBK in Ann Arbor. There were no FM or TV stations until 1946. My father walked to work at the Manchester Ford plant because of the tire and gas rationing. World War II ration stamps were required to buy tires, gasolene, sugar, and meat until 1945. Before the end of the war, we could occasionally use a telephone at our neighbor's house. If someone needed to call us long distance, they would have to call the Stiebs. They would run down to our house to get us to answer the call. There was no "dial" on the telephone, it would automatically call the operator when the handset was lifted. Andy Stieb used to give me thrill rides in one of his two old model "T" Ford cars which he stored in a garage near our driveway. My father worked as a speedometer calibrator at the Manchester Ford instrument panel assembly plant from 1941 to 1950. Then he became a parts quality inspector at the Rawsonville Ford Plant until he retired in 1972. Dad started re-building our house on Granger Street in 1941. By 1947 we had a new roof, asbestos shingle siding, an electric water pump, a modern kitchen and bathroom addition, a wood/coal convection air furnace, concrete/brick front porch, and concrete basement steps walls and floor. After the war we got an electric stove, city water, a dial telephone with a four digit phone number. My father traded the 1928 Chevy for a used 1935 Chevy. My first job at 13, was a one hour Saturday morning shoe shop machine cleaning job. I used kerosene soaked rags to clean the dust and dirt off of the Shoe repair machines. I made 50 cents for the one hour job, which I put in my savings account at the Union Savings Bank. We raised rabbits and chickens which my father would kill for food. In the summer I would cut and gather hay for the rabbits from neighboring roadsides and fields. We always had a garden for vegetables that my mother would can in glass jars. We also had Strawbwerries and Black/Red Rasberry bushes. We lived near the New York Central railroad that used steam locomotives to pull freight trains between the north and the south. They would go by twice every day. In the winter, we would race the train by sliding down the hill next to the tracks. I walked on the tracks over the Ford Motor Co mill pond train trestle twice a week to get a gallon of fresh unpasturized milk from a farm on the other side of the Raisin River. This gallon of milk cost 30 cents. I carried it in a galvanized steel can with a steel handle and cover. I worked in the onion fields a few times with my grandfather, Fred Patterson each fall. I pulled, topped, and crated onions for 15 cents per wooden crate. I made $2 per day. I went fishing with him a few times, on a lake on Wallace Road, behind the Bridgewater Center School & Town Hall. He always had interesting stories to tell. In 1948, I took over the two Ann Arbor News newspaper routes in Manchester. I delivered the newspapers six days per week by bicycle. My dad had bought a used 1941 two door Ford, so we had two cars. My mother would drive me over the routes when there was bad weather. In 1949, I took over the Detroit News paper route. I bought a used single speed Cushman motor scooter. Six daily newspapers cost each customer 30 cents per week. The optional Detroit News Sunday papers were 15 cents each. I received the comic strips on Saturday. Some of my customers requested them to be delivered late Saturday with the Saturday paper. I had to collect on Friday night and Saturday. I made one cent for each paper that I delivered which was about $15 each week for about 30 hours of work. This amounted to about 50 cents per hour. But candy bars were only five cents each. Pin ball machines could be played for five cents per game. It didn't take to very long to lose a whole days wages even though I could "win" more free games. One of my customers was a relative, Elizabeth Patterson and her son, Rankin who lived on Torrey St near the Double A Products plant in Manchester. My father had completely remodeled and rebuilt the house by 1948. It was like having a new home. Then my parents bought a 32 acre farm at 10331 Grossman Road in 1950, after Jim and Fred were born. Again, there was a garden, but no running water, no sewer, and no bathroom. We had electric power with an electric stove, a refrigerator, and a wood/coal burning furnace with an electric thermostat. We had an outside hand water pump, inside rainwater cistern pump, and a two hole out-house. At first, my three brothers and I rode the school bus to and from school. Later, I drove the motor scooter to school in the morning, delivered my newspapers in the evening, then drove it home. My parents received $65 for each month that I didn't ride the bus. I filled the motor scooter gas tank with about two gallons of gasolene each week. This cost about 50 cents which was a day's wages. The Cushman motor scooter was not very reliable. probably because I always drove it "Wide Open". I had numerous engine failures, clutch, brake, drive chain, sprocket, and control cable problems. I had two different collisions into car rear bumpers. I rolled it over on our gravel roads twice. The top speed was about 30 Miles per hour down hill, but I couldn't go that fast when there was loose gravel. I had to jump clear when loose gravel caused the motor scooter to slide and tip over. I learned farming chores like milking, pumping water, feeding/watering cows, hogs, and chickens. There was barn cleaning, manure spreading, stone picking, plowing, dragging, fertilizing, planting, weeding, cultivating, and harvesting corn, wheat, oats, and hay. We bought a cow which was first used to keep some of the grass mowed down in the front yard. She had to be fed, watered, and milked (by hand), twice every day. Soon, we got a small Allis Chalmers Cub tractor for the farm. I learned to drive it and the 35' Chevy. I took a driving test and got a beginners drivers license in 1950 when I was 14. I had to drive with an adult, but not at night. Later I took the drivers training course at high school. I had to help mow, rake, and load loose hay with a hay loader and slings into the barn. The hay was lifted, using rope and slat slings, into the barn hay mow by pulling a long hemp rope through wooden block and tackle pulleys with the tractor. Dad was eventually able to add a water pump, plumbing, an electric hot water heater, a bathroom, and an automatic dishwasher. He added a septic tank and drain tile for this. He ran a water pipe from the house to the barn so we didn't have to pump and haul buckets of water to the barn for the cows, pigs, and chickens. At first we had to milk three or four cows by hand. Dad milked the cows in the morning before he drove to the Rawsonville Ford Plant to work. I milked the cows and fed the cows, pigs, and chickens after I came home from school in the evening. The milk was seperated into skim milk and cream by a hand cranked cream seperator. The cream was sold to a creamery each week to be churned into butter. A new Milk House with running water and a milk cooler was built at the barn in 1954. This was so that dad could use a milking machine, cool the milk and sell the raw milk. His best holstein cow produced a ten gallon can of milk every day. My father had bought a motor bicyle after he graduated from Clinton High School. It was stored in the homestead barn when he left the farm. Years later in the 50's when uncle Edgar Randall bought the farm, I remember that my father brought it to our farm on Grossman Road. It still had the rotten original rubber tires on the wheels with spokes. It had two large 1.5 volt dry cell batteries for the ignition. The engine had poppit valves. I was allowed to drive the 35' Chevy when the motor scooter wouldn't run. I could make the 35' Chevy back-fire by turning the ignition off, then back on, when going down the long Grossman's hill, which was about a half mile north of the farm. I did this quite a few times until I blew off the muffler and tail pipe. I told dad "it just fell off", but he figured out what had happened. My dad would haul corn and oats to Mann's Feed Mill in Manchester where they used water power to grind it into cow meal. He had taken the back seat out of the 35' Chevy which he used as a truck to haul gunny sacks of cow feed, chicken feed, or flour midlings (for hog slop), from the mill. Each fall, dad would buy two 55 gallon wood barrels of cider. The cider was stored in the basement to become hard in a few weeks. Us kids would sneak down to the basement to remove the top bung from the barrel and suck the hard cider through a straw before it turned into vinegar. Each cow was fed cow meal covered with a cup of vinegar twice a day as they were milked. They really loved it. Dad said that it helped the cow's digestion and increased milk production. I gave up my Manchester paper routes in 1952. I graduated from Manchester High School in 1953. My parents were able to help me with the tuition at Michigan State College from 1953 to 1958. The college became Michigan State University. They also helped me with room and board the first year. They helped me to get a bank loan of $1000 to finish the last year. After my grandfather, Fred Randall, died in the December of 1953, my Dad bought his 1948 Chevy from my step-grandmother, Mother Marian, because she didn't drive. This car was neat. It had a foot operated starter switch just above the accelerator pedal and a synchronized gear shift lever on the steering column. I found that it was easy to stick shift the gears up or down without using the clutch. When I was a Junior in High School, I started working for "Buff" Brown in a radio/TV repair shop in Manchester for 50 cents per hour, on saturdays. I learned to fix radios and later TV's. In my senior year, I got a raise from 50 cents per hour to 75 cents per hour. This was a 50% raise that was the best raise that I ever had in my entire lifetime. WHEN DALE RANDALL LEFT HOME! I bought my first car, a used 1940 Ford from dad in 1953 for $100 after I had left home to go to Michigan State College. I couldn't take it to the school because freshman were not allowed to drive at MSC. I would hitch hike to Jackson on Friday night where the car was parked in Mother Marian's back yard. This was after my grandfather died. I would then drive home from Jackson so my mother could do my laundry and I could fix radio and TV sets on Saturday. I made $1.50 per hour, about $15 for 10 hours work at "Buff" Browns TV and Radio Sales & Service. On Sunday I would drive the car back to Mother Marian's back yard. The 35 mile hitch hicking trip to or from school would take anywhere from two to four hours depending how lucky I was with the thumb. I also parked the Ford a few times at my Aunt Lucille Woodruff's home in Lansing. I did a lot of hitch hiking and bus riding in my first year at MSC (later it was MSU). For the two summers of 1954 and 1955, I worked for $1.50 per hour driving a road-side grass mowing tractor and doing other manual labor work for the Washtenaw County Road Commission. I still worked in the radio/TV shop on Saturdays. In the summer of 1956, I worked for $2 per hour as a "scab" journeyman electrician, wiring homes for Purchase Electric in Ann Arbor Michigan. In 1955 my father helped me buy a used 1951 two door Chevy. He haggled a used car salesman from $600 down to $300 in Adrian because I had the cash. Later I sold the 1940 Ford for $75 to a fellow Ann Arbor electrician. In the spring of 1956, a college classmate, Joe Zarnick, and I drove the 1951 Chevy Friday night to Sunday morning to Fort Lauderdale, Florida for a one week spring break. I only had $75 for food, gas, and other trip expenses. Joe had less. We slept in the Chevy or on the beach. We used our electric shavers and razors in Greyhound Bus Stop rest rooms. We bought groceries to eat in the car. Coffee was 5-10 cents per cup. We drove back to Michigan via Washington DC. The Chevy broke down in Richmond Virginia on a Sunday. The generator bronze bearing wore out. I found a generator repair shop open on Sunday. It cost a dollar to get a new bearing pressed into the end cap after I had dissassembled the generator in a parking space. We were very lucky to find the repair shop open on a Sunday. I had to assemble, dissasemble, and reassemble it twice before it would start charging the battery. We drove on to Washington DC. I gave Joe $1 to take a commuter train back to New Jersey where his parents lived. Then I only had $6 left for gas and food to get me back to Michigan. I made it back with only 50 cents left. Gas was only 25 cents per gallon then. I remember that I drove all night from Washinton DC to Michigan. I didn't want to arrive home un-shaven, so I braved it and asked a barber shop owner in Adrian to let me use his electric outlet for my shaver. The barber let me shave but he would not accept my last 50 cents that I had offered him. In the summer of 1957, I got a six month job as a draftsman for Douglas Aircraft Co in Santa Monica California for $365 per month. I drove the 1951 Chevy alone to California. A high school classmate, Gale Sturdevant, and I then drove the Chevy back to Michigan just before Christmas in 1957. We left LA late Friday night and arrived in Michigan 60 hours later on Sunday noon. We only stopped to eat and buy gas. We ran out of gas once. I had to add 14 quarts of oil during the 2300 mile trip. The total gas, oil, and food bill for the trip was about $65. Gas was 43.9 cents per gallon in Ely Nevada and 17.9 cents per gallon in Joplin Missouri. We delivered christmas presents to Loren Downing's parents in Litchfield Michigan just before Christmas. Loren was a high school classmate who had married and moved to California. Loren's father had been the Superintendant of the Manchester High School until 1952. I went back to School at MSU for another two terms to finally graduate after the spring term of 1958. I found my first permanent engineering job after graduation in July of 1958. I rented an upstairs apartment in Utica MI and worked as a Test Equipment Engineer at the Chrysler Missle Plant in Warren MI for about a year. I met Mary Ann Schroeder in the fall of 1958, and bought a new 1959 Chevy. We were married in Rochester Hills (Brooklands), Oakland County, Michigan on May 2, 1959. Then in August 1959, we moved to Grand Rapids Michigan. I started as a Test Equipment Engineer for the Lear Corp, later to become Lear Siegler. We rented an apartment, then a house for a year. We were able to buy our first home for $13,900 at 661 Lyles St SE, in Kentwood, MI just before Jeff was born. Our first four children, Timothy, Jeffrey, Brian, and Debra, were born during our fourteen years in Grand Rapids, MI. In September of 1973 we moved to Minneapolis, MN and rented a house in Saint Louis Park, MN. I started working as a Test Equipment Engineer for Honeywell. Less than a year later, I was transfered to St Louis MO. We bought our current Florissant MO home for $29,500 and moved here in July of 1974. Our youngest son Matthew, was born here in 1978. I continued working as a Test Equipment Engineer for Honeywell, then later in 1994, for McDonnel Douglas (which became Boeing Aircraft) until retirement on 12-31-2000, one month after I became 65 years old.