I was born in Lima, Peru in 1948, where
my father was based as a pilot with
Pan American Grace Airways. In 1955 the family moved to Coral Gables,
Florida. Having completed the first semester of second grade at the Colegio Franklin
D. Roosevelt in the Southern Hemisphere's fall, I got to repeat it at Coral Gables
Elementary in the Northern Hemisphere's fall.
While in High School, a
neighbor introduced my father and me to sailing, which was the only sport
that grabbed my interest. During my senior year I learned how to handle the
Rhodes 19 "Sally" so well that she started to fill shelves with trophies.
By the end of the season, that collection included both the Biscayne Bay
Cruising Class C championship and the
Coconut Grove Sailing Club
Cruising Class Skipper of the Year.
My involvement with computers began one summer while I was helping my brother, Charles, who had a graduate assistanceship, in rebuilding a lab at the University of Florida. He gave me a Fortran 2 book and all of 5 minutes of his time on an IBM 709 computer. This was followed by a class at the University of Miami under a special program for selected high school seniors. Today it is not unusual to have high school students programming computers, but in the mid-1960's it was rare.
At the University of Michigan I earned an Electronics Engineering degree and took as many computer-related courses as I could. The summer before graduation, I attended the week long Pensacola Theological Istitute where I met Kathy, who in a couple of years would become my wife.
I also took Navy ROTC, so upon graduation I received not just a BSE-EE degree but also orders to report to duty on the USS Leary (DD-879), a Gearing class destroyer, in Norfolk, VA as the Electronics Maintenance Officer. After a Mediterranean deployment, I married Kathy in June 1972. After being released from active duty, we took a vacation in December and moved to Gainesville, FL.
My career as a computer professional
began at Schultz Instruments in 1973. Working again with my brother in
developing custom computer hardware and software, this was a time of great
variety. Projects ranged from nuclear medicine to voter registration. There
was also a heavy dose of process control and TV automation projects.
In 1976 Kathy and I added a son, John, Jr., to the family.
In 1980 I moved to Memphis
with my young family to work for Data Communications Corporation's
Minicomputer Division. Later I was transferred to the Broadcast Division,
which later became Jefferson-Pilot DataServices. After 15 years with DCC/JDS
the company was sold and would be moving. Instead I moved to re:Member Data
Services to work on their cuStar credit union package. When they moved I started
working for Federal Express,
a move that brought the Schultz family back full circle to aviation.
While in Memphis my wife, Kathy, and I got involved in Scottish country dancing, a hobby we have now kept up for over a dozen years. This also led to our being among the charter members of the Memphis Scottish Society.
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