POST-NAVY ADJUSTMENT
With my Navy years over, it was time to begin to look toward the future. I went in the military as a 17-year-old, single man and I was now getting out with a wife and a new child, wondering what to do now with my life. June, Crystal and I moved into June’s parent’s house all living upstairs in one room. It was nice to be home, having family around, everyone was excited not only that we were home but about our newest addition Crystal. The big excitement at that time January – February 1980 was the Winter Olympics as the underdog US Hockey team was captivating the country as they rolled through the Olympics, beating the Russians and winning the gold medal. We were so glad to be home to witness the event, sitting downstairs in June’s parent’s house all watching together around the fireplace, life was good. For me the first month or so was great, but then the reality of what to do next was weighing on me. I loved my job in the Navy, but how does that translate into civilian life. I needed a plan as we couldn’t just live in June’s parents’ house as much as we were enjoying our time with them.
The first step was finding a place to live. My mom told me we could move into my grandparent’s house in Morristown as a start. With both my grandparents passing away last year, the house was empty, not being used and for my Mom, the perfect use would be for her son, his wife, and her new grandchild to live there. My mom has often told me that after Crystal was born, my grandfather was worried about where we would live when I got out of the service in a few months. He told my Mom one day that he was going to move out of the house and rent somewhere so the house would be available for us when we got home. It was just like him to want that as he was a very loving man. Of course, my mom told him no as none of us we would want that for him. He passed away suddenly right after that, almost as if he was saying in his death – “OK the house is now available for David and his family, as I have moved on to another place, to be with Martha” (his wife, my Grand-mother who had passed away just months earlier). I have often thought of that and figured that was just like him – I have forever been grateful, though I have missed him and wish he could have seen Crystal in person (along with my other children). So June and I started fixing up the house so we could move in. Though I told June, I am so appreciative of having a house to move into, but I don’t plan on staying in Morristown. For me, Morristown still had the stigma of not being a great town to raise a family. Even though I had been around Morristown my whole life, living there for a year as a teen, it seemed too big and city like to raise a family. I was used to more of the suburbs and wanted to raise my family in a nice development like I grew up in. Plus, after spending 2 years in Scotland, I wanted to raise my family in a more rural setting. I wanted to head west more toward Randolph, which was less populated back then. Heck, I even considered Pennsylvania, anything seemed better than Morristown. Well, you all know how that turned out – still here in the same house – been a blessing.
Well, we now had a home, a car which was also my grandfather’s, but now I needed a job and a career. Finding a rewarding job was the biggest part of my adjustment to civilian life, which I was struggling with. I have to admit, I was missing Navy life, the traveling, the overall security, and mostly my job. My lowest point came when I was on unemployment during the first few months after getting out of the service. Two main requirements back then when you were collecting unemployment was: you had to be actively looking for a job and be open to temporary work if they had something to offer. I was asked to accept temporary work for a small packaging company in Pinebrook. My job for the week I was there, placing bicycle chains in a box for shipping to bicycle stores. Just a few months ago I was working for the US Navy, living in Scotland, monitoring intelligence from around the world in order to keep our country safe. Here I was now sitting in a warehouse in Pinebrook NJ, placing bicycle chains in a box. I think that was one of the lowest points of my life professionally. I was so depressed and wondered if I would ever be happy in civilian life. While I was in the service I ran into people who had gotten out of the service, had difficulty adjusting to civilian life, and ended up going back in. I would think to myself that it wouldn’t happen to me but here I was going through the same adjustment. If at any time June would have said we should go back in, I would have run down to the nearest recruiter and signed back up again. I even gave serious thought of joining the reserves, as it would have required serving in the Navy one weekend a month, and then two weeks in the summer, possibly back in Scotland. In spite of my struggles, I was determined to make it work since I knew now that we were home and June (remember she is Greek) was getting settled in and there was no going back – so forward we go.
LIFE BEGINS TO MOVE FORWARD
Within a short time, I made two decisions, I found a job at a company that would train me on how to install burglar and fire alarm systems in residential homes. Shortly after that I took advantage of my military benefits and signed up for an 18-month course at Chubb Institute of Technology to begin a new career in the computer field using the GI Bill which ended up paying for the entire program. My job as a burglar/fire alarm Installation Technician was interesting. For the next two years, I would go around to homes throughout NJ and parts of NY and crawl through attics and basements wiring up homes with alarm systems. In the 1980’s everything was hard-wired so we would have to drill into people’s walls and windows to run wires, hiding them the best we could. A good percentage of people whose homes we went into were wealthy and many had already been robbed. I once wired up the home of Malcolm Forbes Jr who was the son of business tycoon Malcolm Forbes. I spent two weeks in his home, never saw him once. The most exciting or scary thing that happened to me was a time when me and another guy installed a system in a large home in Upper Saddle River. We had been working there a few days and often when you are wiring a home you would test the alarm which could be heard throughout the neighborhood. One day as we were busy, suddenly I heard someone yell outside from a window we had opened, “Freeze, get down on the ground”. I looked over where I heard the voice and saw a man at the window pointing a gun right at me. I couldn’t see who it was and thought we were being robbed. I turned to run and the guy yelled, “I have this gun pointed right at you, one more step and I’ll drop you”, at which I froze in my tracks. All of a sudden a police officer bust through the back door and yells for me and my partner to hit the floor and spread our arms. The guy must have been a rookie as he came through those doors like a cop in a movie scene, yelling with both hands clutching a gun, he looked as nervous as we were. I hit the ground, spread my arms and legs and started to explain to him that we were not robbing the place. He yells at me to shut-up, then stands over me, places his knee in the small of my back, and puts his gun to the back of my head, and begins to pat me down. Finally, I was able to convince him who we were and what we were doing by showing him my ID and he calmed down. Apparently there was a rash of burglaries in the area in recent weeks. Someone heard the burglar alarm go off during our testing and spotted my black pickup truck in the driveway, which was the description of a vehicle seen leaving a burglary scene just days before. We had uniforms that we were typically supposed to wear (shirt and pants) that identified us as technicians for this company. That day both my partner and I were wearing jeans and had taken off our shirts, both of us were wearing only a t-shirt. So when the police arrived and looked into the house we probably looked like burglars. After they left, we had a good laugh but remained nervous for the rest of the day. When we completed the job we were glad it was over. Right after that incident the company changed it’s rules and required all technicians to wear their shirts at all times. Chubb Institute was a challenge but I enjoyed the whole process of problem-solving. A programmer’s job is to control the function of a computer through logic by writing code that converts into a set of instructions a computer can follow. Back then everything was done on big main-frames that were programmed by inserting these perforated cards into the system. I became efficient in coding in Assembler programming and also learned COBOL which was the main computer language in those days. So for two years, I was working full time during the day, going to school two nights a week along will raising a family. Life was moving along. It was during that time that I received a letter in the mail from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). They were looking for ex-military people who worked in the Special Intelligence field in the service to continue that type of work with them. I was excited, this was it, I could go back to the same type of job as I did in the Navy, but do it here in the USA. The CIA headquarters was in Virginia not far away, June would still be close to home and I could go back to the work I enjoyed most in my life. I told June though she wasn’t as thrilled as I wanted her to be, she said I could pursue the position. I set up an interview with a CIA agent which was held in a hotel room in Saddle River, NJ. I remember the interview went well, the guy told me they were looking for former Cryptologic Technicians and I had all the skills they wanted. All I had to do was set up an appointment at the agency in Virginia to take a polygraph test, if I passed, I would be hired. Then came the news that would halt the entire process, he began to tell me about my first assignment. He said every new agent that is hired would be assigned to American Embassies in various countries around the world. The assignment would be for a minimum of 10 years before I could be reassigned to the states. I knew right then that it was over, there was no way I was going to pack up my family and move back overseas. Not only would June not want to go, but she was also pregnant with our 2nd child (Christopher) plus the prospect of working at an American Embassy was scary for both of us. In 1979 while I was stationed in Edzell Scotland, a group of radical Iranian students stormed the US Embassy in Tehran, holding those working at the embassy hostage for 444 days (many who were in the Special Intelligence field). Many of them were beaten and tortured during their time in captivity. I remember when it happened I was still in Scotland and our base was in lockdown and under high security for a short time period. The news of the Embassy attack was the center of the world news for its duration until they were released on January 20, 1981. I remember the entire country watched as the hostages were flown home to the US, loaded in buses and driven down the center of Washington DC, people lined the streets in celebration. With all that fresh on our minds, the prospect of us going overseas to live and me working at an embassy stopped everything in its tracks. Even though I had set up the appointment to go to Washington DC for a polygraph test, I called them a few days later and declined the job – my future as a CIA agent was over before it ever started.
LIFE CONTINUES ON
So I continued on with Chubb, graduated, and began the process of looking for my first job as a Computer Programmer. There were plenty of opportunities, mostly in NYC, which I was not thrilled about. My job recruiter sent me in for an interview with a company in the city. Sitting on that train, I just could not see myself living that lifestyle, of commuting into the city every day, but I went. On my very first interview in the city on the way home the train stops and sits for a while. The news was that a commuter apparently had a heart attack and they had to pull him off and take him to the hospital. That sealed it for me, I was not going to accept any job in the city, it was not only a bad omen for me, but it was my excuse not to commute into the city for the next 20 or so years. I was offered the job, but turned it down, upsetting my recruiter who then removed me from his client list. I ended up finding a job on my own at a small company in Parsippany, called Dominion Data. I would be writing programs in Assembler language where I stayed for 8 years. From there I went on to work for ADP in Roseland, as a Commuter Systems Analyst, where I worked for the next 13 years.
LIFE IN THE 80s
Life was going well in the 80s. My family began to grow. In 1981 our second child – Christopher was born (August 7th), I now had a daughter and a son, life was great. Life pretty much settled as normal, working, going to family functions – Greek Easters, picnics, family outings, playing softball on June’s cousin’s team “The Artist” and vacations down the shore. My two buddies who I was stationed with in Scotland (Al Nagle and Tom “Hink”, Hinkleman) were now out of the Navy and both living down in South Jersey where I would take Saber on duck hunting trips. June’s dad and I were growing close and would go deer hunting and fishing together. Chris was becoming like a second father to me (more on him in later chapters) and I loved hanging out with him, talking outdoors and Navy adventures. My NY Giants were now a good team and making the playoffs 3 times between 1980-1985, after going my whole life never seeing them in the playoffs – I was excited about the future. Then 1986 comes along and everything was about to change. Next up – “FINDING JESUS”.
