“My Navy life as a Recruit began at NTC San Diego in July 1951. Not a bad place to start, I thought, until we were moved from the pleasant Bay climate to Camp Elliot, out on the desert, for the rest of the summer. The sunburned troop managed to survive the heat and scorpions until our return to the main facility by the bay in the early fall.

Out of Boot Camp I was assigned to FASRON-8 at Alameda NAS to await my school billet, a move that turned out well for me because I was able to explore the San Francisco Bay area for a few months. I found this very useful in later years. I was on my way, again, in the spring of 1952 down the usual track for rookie airmen to the Navy school at Norman and AT school at Memphis and eventually VP-21 at Pax River in the spring of 1953.

Due to my prior experience with Morse code, which I had acquired as a teen, I was assigned as 2nd Radio on flight crew 1 under the watchful eye of Warren (Bud) Shelton, AL1, who taught me the Navy and ICAO circuit and message protocols then put me to work. After the Command change that summer, I was moved to crew 7.

Eventually I was reassigned to crew 5 and later back to crew 1 where I remained until my discharge in July 1955. During that time the squadron had two deployments to Luqa, Malta, in 1953 and Halfar, Malta, in 1954 (See my photos in Gallery 8). Looking back, I consider my time in the Squadron the experience of a lifetime.

As a civilian, I returned to the Santa Fe RR in Kansas where I worked as a telegrapher out of high school. Once again, I was employed as a telegrapher and soon became a train dispatcher. A few months later I met and married Barbara Danford – my wife to this day. However, before long it became apparent to us that the world was rapidly changing (remember Sputnik) and, maybe, it was time to move on or get left behind – so we sold our new house that we had occupied for only a few months and moved to an apartment near the university campus to pick up where I left off in 1951.

With a B.S.E.E degree in my hand in 1961 we were on our way to work in Satellite Systems Test at Lockheed Space Div. in the San Francisco Bay Region, the area that I had enjoyed years before. In 1962 I was offered a job at Texas Instruments in Dallas to work on a NASA satellite proposal and an opportunity to enter the Electrical Engineering graduate program at SMU so we reluctantly packed-up and moved on again.

After earning my M.S.E.E. degree in 1965 we were on our way back to the San Francisco Bay area to continue work in the satellite business, where I specialized in ground/ satellite and satellite/ satellite communications; first, at Philco/Ford (later Ford Aerospace), then at Lockheed to work on classified (behind the black door, so to speak) programs, so I can’t elaborate further. I retired in 1992 and became Master of my Domain (aka, resident handyman, a title I hold to this day).

Hobbies: Care and feeding of a Cessna 182 that carried us far and wide around the Western part of the Country for over 20 years.

Barbara’s interest in photography and genealogy got me into digital photo processing including the restoration of old, abused family images, of which she has many.

We are the proud parents two daughters, both of whom reside in the Bay area and two charming grand daughters.
Glenn Harkleroad, 11/24/03”