ALAN S.

A one room school, what is that Pop Pop?  I remember our granddaughter asking that question when we were talking about her starting kindergarten.  Her elementary school was completely different than mine.  But that question made me realize, wow, just how different.  Certainly others from the NHS class of ’64 had similar experiences.  So to get a sense of my little world in elementary school, I wanted to start my story way back “then.”   Those 6 years of elementary school in some ways no doubt had an effect on who I became.

September 1952, my first day of school, I was six years old and going to first grade!  The kids in grades 1 through 6 in the neighborhood walked.  The lucky ones were driven to the one room school at the top of the hill outside Klecknersville, approximately ½ mile east of the current Moore Township Elementary School.  Mrs. Sheiner was our teacher.  The building had no running water.  The bathrooms were outside, one little wooden building for the girls and a separate little wooden building for the boys.  Each had a ½ moon cut into the top of the door.  We did have electric lights.  The heating system was a cast iron coal stove in the middle of the room.  There were rows of desks. 

Row 1 was where 1^st grade sat, row 2 second grade and so forth to the last row for the 6^th graders.  Each grade was called up to the front row seats when it was their time for a lesson from the teacher.  Other grades worked on assignments in their workbooks when not being taught by Mrs. Sheiner.  I remember a ceramic crock filled with water.  Two older students would walk down the hill to Klecknersville to a home in the village to get fresh water for the “crock”.  My dad was on the school board.  One day I remember he got a call from Mrs. Sheiner that she was sick and could not make into school.  With no time to get a replacement, my mom, who had only completed 8^th grade, was the substitute for the day.  I am sure I was on my best behavior that day!  Recess was outside.  Typically, 2 boys would choose up teams for baseball.  The best players always got chosen first.  The girls, as I recall, would scratch out hop scotch squares in the stones and line up to take turns.  We learned the 3R’s, Reading, wRiting and aRithmetic.  I remember learning in science about the planets.  In geography we learned how big the United States was and learned of Europe and the Far East where our fathers, uncles and neighbors fought in WWII and Korea.  In June of 1958 we 6^th graders watched as the school was closed.  We were the last students to complete all 6 grades in that one room school.  In September of ’58 all Moore Township elementary students began school in the new consolidated township elementary school, which continues to serve the community and the Northampton School District.

September 1958, seventh grade began at Northampton Junior High. What a shocker!!  Lots of classrooms in one building, central heating, and indoor plumbing and bathrooms, combine that with separate teachers for each subject, what a change from just three months earlier.  Who could forget the bus rides to and from school?   We bounced along the roads, accelerating down hills, held on as we rounded curves.  You squished your seat mates or got squashed based on how big the kids seated next to you were.  But through the Junior High years there developed a routine: studies, activities and trying to “fit in”. 

Finally we moved to 10^th grade and into the senior high school building.  Sure we were the new kids in the school, only sophomores.  Eventually you could get a black and orange Northampton jacket with the year of your graduation stitched on the upper arm.  I am not sure most of us realized how quickly this would mark the beginning of the end of our time as students at Northampton.  I recall fondly chorus with Mrs. Santee, football games, especially the Thanksgiving morning games against Catty at Muhlenberg Stadium in Allentown and wrestling on Coach Harry Wall’s squad. 

By the mid-point of our senior year, I was amazed that classmates had a plan for “after graduation.”  Some talked of using their talents in the work place, others considered the military and for some college lay ahead.  For me it was a big question mark.  I was in the academic section, but it was not a given that college was next.  My sister, Margaret, NHS class of ’62, was attending Kutztown.  She would graduate with a degree in elementary education, become a teacher in the Northampton district, and spend her career at the Bath elementary school from where she retired.  I, of course, did not know it at the time, but one day in mid-May would set my course.  Mr. Lerch, the guidance counselor, saw me in the hallway and asked, “What are your plans?”  We went into his office and talked.  During our conversation he asked if I liked math.  I said, “Yes.”  He then told me of a two year program offered by Penn State in Allentown.  After two years, you earned an Associate Degree in either electronic or mechanical technology.  He said he thought there was going to be a need for people with that type training in the future.  He then suggested, “Why don’t you fill out an application?”

Two years later I had completed the electronic technology program and was hired by Univac, a computer company in suburban Philadelphia, as an electronic technician.  I rented a “room” from an elderly, retired couple in Norristown, Pa. for $7.50 per week.  I would spend Monday through Thursday nights there, then after work on Friday, drive back “home” to help work the family farm on weekends.  Early Monday morning I would drive from the farm to my job.

In February of 1967 my oldest sister, Evelyn, introduced me to a co-worker of hers, who had graduated from Nazareth, also in ’64.  In June of 1968 we were married and this year Prudence and I will celebrate our 49^th wedding anniversary.  ’68 was also the year I started my quest for a bachelor’s degree.  I attended Villanova University, working at UNIVAC during the day, taking classes in the late afternoon and evening.  I graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Electrical Engineering.  After a 3 year stint at a very small company that went bankrupt, I was back at UNIVAC by 1973, advancing in their hardware design division.   By the mid-eighties UNIVAC and Burroughs Computer Corporation merged and became UNISYS.  I transferred to their Personal Computer Division in 1989, but by 1992, they closed the entire facility and I was 1 of over 1000 employees laid off.  So there I was in my mid-forties, basically having spent my entire career at one very large technology company, wondering, what now??

In 1973 we were blessed with our first child, a girl, then again blessed in 1976 when our second daughter was born.  So by 1992 when I was laid off, they both were teenagers with many friends in our hometown of Lansdale and in the North Penn School District.  Prudence and I decided it was best to get the entire family involved with some basic plans concerning “what do I do now.”  The family meeting was pretty much what we expected.  Please don’t have us move now!  We want to finish our high school years at North Penn.  Please try to find a job locally.  Ok, we will do everything possible to try to find a position here! 

In the late 1980s, three engineers I had worked with on several projects left UNISYS for a very small integrated circuit design company (ICS) in Valley Forge.  When I was told of the impending lay off in 1992, I gave one of them a call.  Steve, who by then was a manager, graciously offered to circulate my resume when, and if, he heard of any possible openings.  As part of the massive layoff, UNISYS provided out placement services to all employees.  It included counseling and resume preparation.  I worked with a counselor on my resume and asked if it would be appropriate to include any non-work related aspects to my resume.  Prudence and I had just completed the Co-Chair of a capital fund raising event at our church.  He asked the amount we raised and suggested, because of the amount, I include it on my resume. 

In the late summer of 1992, I called Steve and asked if any openings were on the horizon at ICS.  He said he had just talked to one of the managers and had given my resume to him for review.  Unbeknown to me at the time, ICS was only hiring people that came recommended by current ICS employees, and it was necessary that the ICS employee must have worked with the prospective candidate directly in the past. The HR manager called and we set up an interview.  Werner was the manager who had the opening for an electrical engineer in his department.  For the first 10 minutes of the interview, he asked questions of my background and experience.  Then for the next hour we talked about church fundraising.  His church was about to embark on a capital project.  I started at ICS the next Monday.  Four years later Werner decided to retire.  I was promoted to his position.  Then, within six months, my group was tasked with a large temporary project.  I hired Werner back as a consultant.  As you can guess, one special project usually leads to another.  He was on my team till 2006 when our company was sold to a competitor, and we both retired, for him it was the second time.

As a kid growing up on a farm, there were always chores.  Typically the older you got the more responsible the chore. Everyone pitched in, including my sisters.  All of us learned to drive tractors and trucks by the time we were in Junior High.   I remember so many summer days working the land.  It was not unusual to leave with a tractor and some implement in the morning, returning for lunch at the farmhouse, then back to the field till late in the day. Your only companions were the rabbits, squirrels or pheasants darting out in front of the tractor, frightened by the noise, running for cover to a nearby tree or hedge row.  Some days the sky was so blue, you could not see a cloud anywhere.  The endless sky on occasion was broken by a condensation trail of a very high flying airplane headed who knew where.  Maybe it was headed to New York, maybe Chicago or some other destinations far away.  Like the circular globe we had near the teacher’s desk in elementary school, some places were actually on the other side of the globe from Pennsylvania.  Looking up from that tractor seat, I wondered would I ever fly in a plane, even for a short distance.  Would I ever see more than the beauty of the Lehigh Valley?  These were thoughts as a young farm boy in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s.

When I worked for UNISYS I did on occasion travel to their Twin Cities and San Diego sites.  But in late 1995 the farm boy from Moore Township via a one room school system and Northampton High School began an 11 year odyssey as an executive traveling frequently (sometimes too frequently) because of customer issues or sub-contractor processing problems.  Trips to Arizona or Silicon Valley, where we also had design centers, at times, were like commuting to Valley Forge from Lansdale.  Traveling to most countries in Asia multiple times over that time period resulted in hundreds of thousands of air miles and experiences from South Korea to Indonesia, the Philippines to Thailand that I could never have imagined during those sunny days on the farm in the ‘60s.  I cannot count the times when I was in a country and I saw a young boy working in a field/rice paddy and would think back to my chores on the farm. 
 
Epilog:  Since I had accumulated so many air miles being a passenger, recently, I decided to learn to fly.  I have soloed and my goal is to have my private pilot license in 2017.  What a view it has been, from tractor seat looking up, to pilot’s seat looking back in time.