My life after Okemos High began with a four-year tour of duty in the US Navy. Following boot camp in San Diego, I was assigned to Naval Air Station Glencoe in Brunswick, GA, for six months of intense air traffic controller training. I left air traffic school at age 19 with an FAA license to control air traffic. My next assignment was Naval Air Station Miramar in San Diego, where I worked in the control tower for the three years remaining on my enlistment.

With a year and a half remaining in the Navy, I asked Sharon Piper, class of '63, to marry me. We were married at the Okemos Community Church in June, 1965. One year later we were blessed with a baby girl born in San Diego. After active duty, I went to work for the FAA at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago. My duties included working in the control tower and radar room controlling traffic as well as instructing developmental controllers on working live traffic. While in Chicago we were again blessed, this time with a son.

Following eight years in Chicago, Sharon and I moved on to Kansas City, MO, where I worked as a first-line supervisor in the tower and radar room. Three and a half years was enough of that, and we moved on to Detroit Metro Airport to work traffic. Four years of dedicated service later, then-President Reagan fired me and 12,500 controllers for withholding our services (striking).

Then began a new life as a sales rep in the Detroit area, truck dispatcher in Kansas City, and on to O'Hare as a contract instructor. Mrs. Grinnell would love this part: I taught local air traffic procedures in the classroom as well as on simulators. Two years later I was rehired into the FAA as a traffic controller at O'Hare. This time, before starting to talk to airplanes, the government sent me to the FAA Academy in Oklahoma City to learn to work radar. It was a nice vacation. I worked radar traffic in the Chicago area for the next five years and retired in 2002.

So after living in San Diego twice, Chicago twice, Kansas City twice, and Georgia once, Sharon and I returned to Michigan to spend our summers. In 45 years of marriage we had two children who have provided us with five grandchildren ranging from newborn to 20 years of age.