I was originally sent on temporary duty to work in quality control for the SAGE air defense computer system, a temporary assignment that eventually became permanent. My primary job was as a computer operator, but I found myself fascinated by the programmers who worked on the system. They programmed entirely in assembly language, which seemed mysterious and almost magical. I often talked with them, trying to understand what they were doing, and that curiosity never really left me
Later, while taking a mathematics class, we were introduced to pseudocode. Something suddenly clicked. I realized that programming wasn't magic at all, it was simply a very methodical way of thinking through problems one step at a time
When I went to business school, there really wasn't such a thing as computer science for business students. I learned BASIC in a management course, later COBOL, and along the way also picked up FORTRAN
Programming in those days was very different from today. BASIC could be run from terminals located around campus, but COBOL and FORTRAN programs had to be punched onto cards and physically delivered to the computer center. Depending on their workload, you might wait minutes, or hours, to discover that a single misplaced character required you to punch a new deck of cards and start all over again
The university computer center offered tutoring for students learning programming languages. Since very few people were using COBOL, they didn't have anyone available to help those students, so they hired me as a tutor. When I wasn't helping with COBOL, I assisted students learning the other languages as well. Looking back, the languages were primitive by today's standards, but at the time they opened an entirely new world
I took a break from school to work as a computer operator for Melville Shoe Corporation. Most of my work involved overnight processing of thousands of punched cards, first through card-processing equipment and later through a computer system. Out of curiosity, I found a programming manual and studied how the processing worked. Eventually I identified a coding change that dramatically reduced the nightly processing time. Although I wasn't employed as a programmer, it was my first experience improving an existing system simply by understanding how it worked
The company was also experimenting with optical handwriting recognition technology, becoming only the second company after Avon to use it. I had the opportunity to work with that system as well, which exposed me to another emerging technology
When I returned to school, I received a teaching assistantship. Along with accounting courses, I taught a management class that included BASIC programming. Teaching forced me to understand the material even more thoroughly
After graduation, I joined a manufacturing company as Division Controller. Although my responsibilities were in finance and accounting, I found myself increasingly involved with technology. I introduced timesharing services and some of the company's first personal computers, including the early TRS-80. Because I understood programming, I was often able to identify opportunities to improve existing software even if I wasn't writing the code myself
One of the projects I designed was a shop-floor reporting system that was considered both innovative and very successful. Eventually I was asked to lead the company's information technology department
Our primary systems were IBM System/38 and later the AS/400, programmed primarily in RPG. I never became an RPG programmer, but I could read much of the code because its structure reminded me of the plugboard logic used in earlier punched-card systems. That background made it easier to understand what the programs were doing and how they might be improved
As the Internet began to emerge, the company formed a committee to establish a web presence. Although I wasn't responsible for the technical implementation, participating in those discussions sparked my interest in web technology
After retiring, I finally had time to explore that interest
I built a family website for sharing photographs, experimented with countless ideas, registered more domain names than I probably should have, and tried many different web hosting companies simply to learn how they worked. I even took a community college course on web development and built another personal website
My brother was conducting a college research project, so I created an online survey website to support his work
Retirement also led me into volunteer work
One of the first organizations where I volunteered had lost the person maintaining their website. I took over responsibility for it and eventually rewrote the entire site. Along the way I learned enough about early e-commerce to add online purchasing capability
At another organization, I implemented the volunteer management system Volgistics. Later I helped a different organization that had become stuck during their own implementation, resolving the issues and helping them successfully launch the system
When I began volunteering as a Navigator at Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport, I quickly became frustrated by how difficult it was to find accurate flight information while assisting passengers
My first solution was very simple: a basic HTML page that allowed volunteers to enter a flight number and automatically passed the request to the airport's website. Later I added another page that used a little JavaScript to retrieve airport data and provide a searchable list of cities
I also created another simple website that listed airport restaurants in a much more compact and convenient format than the airport's own resources
Then the airport redesigned its flight search, and my websites stopped working
Instead of giving up, I started imagining what I really wanted: a comprehensive flight search system built specifically for airport volunteers. At first it existed only in my imagination, along with sketches and mockups. It seemed far beyond what I knew how to build
Around that time, I began watching Harvard's CS50 lectures online. I never formally enrolled, but I found the teaching style fascinating. Their introduction to Python and web development convinced me that my vision might actually be possible. Eventually I completed Harvard's full online Python course
Now I knew the application could be built
What I didn't know was whether I could learn all the different technologies needed to make it happen
It took several years of learning, experimenting, making mistakes, and gradually putting the pieces together. Eventually I produced the first working version of the flight search application. It was primitive, but it worked. From there I continuously improved it, adding features one small step at a time
While mentoring a new airport volunteer one day, he suggested putting all of our paper reference sheets online. It struck me as an excellent idea. Instead of carrying a stack of papers that quickly became outdated, volunteers could access current information directly from their phones
Compared to the flight search application, this project was much simpler. I gradually rewrote nearly all of the paper information into concise, mobile-friendly pages that were easier to read and much easier to maintain
Before long I had accumulated three websites, then four, then five. Since airport management wasn't actively promoting them, maintaining multiple sites became cumbersome, and it was difficult for volunteers to know which one to use
Eventually I consolidated everything under a single domain. Volunteers now needed to remember only one website, while I could maintain everything from one place
Behind the scenes, I also began combining the various back-end systems into a single application
Today the system still uses two different back ends. The flight search runs as a Python web application on an AWS Lightsail server, while the static reference information is served through Cloudflare's infrastructure. From the volunteer's perspective, however, it appears to be one seamless application. Most users never realize they are moving between entirely different technologies
Looking back, I realize that nothing I do today came from learning one programming language or taking one class. It is the result of decades of curiosity, constantly asking "I wonder if I could make this better," and never being afraid to learn something new when I needed it. Every job, every volunteer position, and every project added another piece to the puzzle. The websites I maintain today are simply the latest chapter in that lifelong process of learning