Today's Featured Biography

 
Tom Chaffee

Greetings Classmates,

I was a produce clerk at the Big Y Market in 1961 and my ambition didn’t seem to go much further than that but about a year later I landed a job with Emerald Fruit and Produce Company making what was then a significant salary. I was a truck driver, a job that I loved, delivering produce to stores and restaurants between Eugene and Roseburg. The problem was that I was a 19-year-old who had moved into a house with a bunch of guys making too much money and having too much fun. It was only to be a matter of time before I was in serious trouble and I knew it. It was also only a matter of time before the draft caught up with me. My girlfriend at the time recommended that I enlist in the military to get the draft out of the way and to learn a useful skill. I did and, in retrospect, that may have been the most important decision of my life.

I remember telling the recruiter that I wanted a school where I could learn electronics and computers. I’d also heard there were Army missile sites on the Oregon coast and I thought, wouldn’t it be great if I could enlist and be assigned to Oregon…I was so naïve. The recruiter said “I’ve got just the job for you, it is a missile system with all the things you want and the school is at Redstone Arsenal in Alabama.” Visions of the South from the movie Gone With the Wind came into my head and I thought, this should be interesting. He also told me that Redstone was the place where Dr. Von Braun and his team were building the rocket that would take us to the moon. Having been fascinated by Walt Disney’s Sunday shows, which depicted the German team’s work on the moon rocket program, my excitement only grew.

With that I raised my right hand and said that I would support and defend the constitution and away I went to Fort Ord, California for basic training. That began a 20 year career which was at times crazy, a few times frustrating, a couple of times frightening but always rewarding in terms of personal satisfaction. The Vietnam war was in full swing and as we said at the time, it was raining stripes. A soldier who would do his/her job and stay out of trouble could see rapid promotions to higher jobs and greater responsibility. In a short four years I found myself a Specialist Six (E6), living in Germany, and I had been selected by the Army to be retrained in a higher level skill, the repair and calibration of test equipment.

At that point in my life I was married with two sons and had decided that after my enlistment was up I’d probably get out of the Army and seek comparable employment in the civilian sector. Out of the blue the Army began looking for applicants for Warrant Officer appointments in my specialty. I asked my wife if she was willing to take a swing at it, after all, if they actually select you, you could always turn it down. I then spent the next 16 years as a WO retiring in 1984 as a CW4. The saying was “Join the Army and see the world” and I did see a lot of it with tours in Germany, Okinawa, Vietnam, Korea and lots of little places for short periods of time on what we called TDY (Temporary Duty). Stateside duty was mostly at Redstone Arsenal (Huntsville), Alabama but also included assignments in Maryland and Arizona.

After retirement I had a short break in Eugene in my “between jobs” period during which I learned that not everyone, or more accurately, not anyone, was interested in hiring me. I even tried to get on as a grocery bagger at Albertsons to no avail. Besides being between jobs I was also between wives and, as they say, living in my folk’s garage…but bored to death. Having looked forward to moving back to Eugene for over 20 years, after three months I bailed out and moved back to Arizona to take a calibration job in the manufacturing of missiles for the Department of Defense. It was a great job and a fine company and it was an excellent opportunity for me to get back on the bench after all those years as a Warrant Officer where your work was more leadership, and less technical skills. Then the phone rang and an application I’d submitted six months earlier for a Department of the Army Civilian (DAC) position had been accepted and I was on my way back to Redstone Arsenal. Thus began the second half of my Army career which spanned an additional 30 years.

I remember thinking, on the long drive across Texas, that there were two things I was going to be firm on. Learn to be satisfied with where I was in my job and stay off the career ladder, the threat of “up or out” in the Army had always been a frustration to me. The second one was, I loved my sons dearly (they were both going to North Eugene High at the time) but I was NOT going to get involved with anyone with young children. Weeks after settling into my new job and apartment in Huntsville I met a beautiful young woman (Terri) living in the same apartment complex. She had a gorgeous four-year-old daughter, and I really enjoyed their company, so I figured, if it gets too dangerous I can always cut and run. By that time, I’d been between wives for six years and had developed a knack for cutting and running whenever the relationship got too serious.

At a little over a year into my DAC job, my boss told me that he wanted me to apply for one of his subordinate supervisory positions in Lexington, Kentucky, so I did. In the meantime, Terri and I were getting dangerously close, and worse yet, her sweet and cuddly daughter, Jennifer, had, of her own volition, started calling me Daddy. So when a few months later my boss offered me the job in Kentucky I decided to cut and run. Okay, one vow broken, back on the career ladder but after only a few short weeks in Lexington I realized I’d made a foolish mistake. I found that I missed both Terri and Jennifer more than I could have imagined and I called her up and asked her to marry me. Here we are some 29 years later after a challenging and rewarding career that brought us back to Redstone and took us to Germany (twice), so much for vows.

Our oldest son, Alan, owns and manages a very successful accounting and consulting firm in Seattle. His younger brother, Troy, is a Deputy Sheriff with King County, Washington, and is an explosives expert, bomb technician and K-9 dog handler (bomb detecting dog). Our daughter, Jennifer, is an office manager in a realty firm here in the Huntsville Area. Together they have provided us with 7 wonderful grandchildren and two great grandchildren.

I retired from civil service in January, 2014 and spend my hours, with Terri, working on our yard, travelling in our 5th wheel RV and making sawdust in my woodshop. I’m a big fan of the Alabama Crimson Tide and the Oregon Ducks. If they ever play each other I’ll have to change shirts at the end of every quarter from my Bama shirt to my Ducks shirt and back.

Take Care,
Tom

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