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Carolyn and I are
enjoying our retirement very much. God has been good to us. We both enjoy good
health and have enough resources to travel, at least up to last year. Man a
bitch of a year 2008 was!! We have done a lot of traveling and find visiting
new places and meeting new friends and old friends exciting. The top picture
was taken in the 60s when I was at the Area, and the bottom picture was taken
40 years later when we were in Iceland. Carolyn and I live in a condominium in
Largo, Florida. I have been president of the Association for six of the 25
years we have lived here. Believe me that is more than any sane person should
be president of an association. I retired from that position for good in
December of 2003.
I retired from the big red H (Honeywell or Midwest Engineering South to all
you Roadrunners) in 1997. For about four years after retirement, I did
consulting for a number of companies. Carolyn also retired from being a full
time property manager in 1997, but continued managing one property on a part
time basis. In 2002, we both gave up our part time work to do retirement on a
full time basis.In my 34 years with Honeywell, the programs I enjoyed working
the most were the five years I spent working on the Oxcart and Tagboard
programs at the Ranch or Area 51, whatever you want to call it, Lockheed in
Burbank and Beale AFB. I started at the Ranch as a flight line INS engineer and
this was my first and most significant assignment in my life. Being away from
home so much was hard on Carolyn and the rest of the wives, but it was an
exciting program with great people. The one thing great about the assignment
was that every weekend seemed like a honeymoon. I remember one instant after
less than a year assigned to the Ranch, when I had got a scratch on my back
about six inches long when I was in the cockpit and raised up too suddenly. I
stuck my back against the edge of the cockpit. It happened on a Monday, and I
had forgotten about it when I got home. On Friday when I got home, my wife
noticed the scratch on my back and asked how I got it. I absolutely panicked
trying to think of something to say. The only thing I could think off was to
say “its classified”! God bless Carolyn. She believed me and that
was the end of it. The fact that we left work on Monday in scrubby clothes and
came home the same way on Friday probably helped.
After a couple of years at the Ranch, I was assigned to Operations. That was such a kick for me to interface with the pilots of the A12. The INS could be a mysterious beast at times resulting in an interesting job trying to explain to our pilots what had happened in flight. Sometimes I knew the answer, but many times there was a lot of home work to do including discussions with the home office in Florida. I later became the site supervisor for the INS group, but not too long after that the Oxcart program ended. I was then assigned full time to the Tagboard program (the drone) and stayed at the Ranch for a few more months until the program moved to Beale AFB. I spent the next year splitting my time between Building 199 in Burbank and Beale. When the Tagboard was cancelled (about a year after the Oxcart program was terminated), Carolyn and I moved back to Florida for good (although this certainly was not the plan at the time).
Meeting the people again at the reunions under a completely different environment than what existed at the Ranch, at least in the 1960s, is probably why Carolyn and I go to most Roadrunner Reunions in Las Vegas. In fact we have only missed one reunion. I think that I must have gone to three or four reunions before I could finally call Col. Slater - Slip! We thought the reunions were so much fun, that we wanted to get more Honeywell people involved. With that goal in mind, we started the Honeywell Spooks consisting of people who had worked for Honeywell on the Oxcart or Tagboard programs. We held our first reunion in October 2004 in Clearwater, FL, and held the next ones at the same place in 2006 and 2008 to ensure that we did not have a conflict with the big event in Las Vegas in October during the odd numbered years. But alas, we were not able to kindle a fire in enough people to make future gatherings a viable alternative. This is especially true when one needs to guarantee rooms and attendance to the host hotel. I really salute the gang in Las Vegas that keeps the Roadrunner organization viable.
May God bless you all and our country.
Russ
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