About My Pre-Retirement Life...

Some of you have known me forever, and some of the people I think are significant in my life have been out of touch for a while, so this is a brief autobiographical sketch.
School and Work:
After graduating from Theodore Roosevelt High School in Des Moines, Iowa in 1966, I attended Grinnell College and graduated with a BA in History in 1970.  I attended U.S. Air Force Pilot Training at Vance AFB, Enid, Oklahoma but did not graduate, and was assigned to Navigator Training at Mather AFB, just outside Sacramento, CA. I graduated and went on to Navigator Bombardier training, eventually becoming a navigator on B-52D aircraft at Dyess AFB, Abilene, Texas.  I did 2 TDY tours to Anderson AFB, Guam and flew 3 combat missions at the end of the Vietnam war.  I resigned my commission in 1975 and went back to school at Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene, to get my teaching certificate.  I worked as a janitor at St. Paul United Methodist Church in Abilene while I was attending classes. I taught one semester in the Abilene, Texas Public Schools in 1978 as a Special Education teacher at Jefferson Jr. High.  I worked nights at Jack-in-the-Box, and the third time they asked if I wanted to be an Asst. Manager, I asked how much it would pay. It was twice what I made teaching, so I went to work for Jack. I was transferred to Albuquerque, NM to help open a new store in 1979.  In 1980, my store manager told me he was really an alien from another galaxy, and he was totally serious. I found out there was a teaching vacancy at Taylor Middle School, and the next day I was teaching again. I taught several Special Ed. programs at Taylor until the new Lincoln Middle School opened in Rio Rancho.  At that time, Rio Rancho was part of the Albuquerque school system, so I transferred to Lincoln. I taught there until November of 1987, when I took a full time position with the New Mexico Air National Guard. Before that time I had been a weekend warrior, working in Personnel and as Budget Officer. My new position was Commander of the Mission Support Flight. In 1989, my good friend, Don Wetzel, got me an interview with GTE Educational Network Services in the Dallas, Texas area, and I was offered a job answering their customer support line. A year later, ENS upgraded their main computer system to a reconditioned Sequent S-81, and my boss told me, "George, you are good at making things work, so you are our new UNIX system administrator." After looking up UNIX to make sure it didn't involve amputation of any body parts, I accepted the job, and ENS paid for a number of classes at the Sequent factory in Beaverton, Oregon. I am proud of the work I did for ENS because I ran hardware that was both a production and development system simultaneously. In 1994, the parent GTE company decided to close ENS, just as we were on track to be profitable in 1995.  I interviewed with Oracle Corporation, and took over as the Sequent System Administrator. The position had been vacant for over a year, so there was quite a backlog of work, but I was single and didn't mind long days or working all night, so I got the backlog cleared in about three months and reduced configuration request response time from 2 weeks to 24 hours or less.  I got a programmer's bonus share that quarter, and bought a 23 foot Santana sailboat, which I sailed on San Francisco Bay from the Coyote Point Marina. In 1999 I went to work for West Interactive in Omaha, Nebraska, mainly because the cost of living in California was so outrageous. In addition, IBM bought Sequent to get their patents to Non Uniform Memory Access or NUMAQ technology, and I realized that my time at Oracle would be limited when IBM killed the Sequent product line.  I did a lot of the pre Y2K UNIX work for Oracle, and wrote a lot of the policies, so West hired me to make sure their preparations were adequate.  West fired me shortly after Y2K came and went without an issue.  I worked for First Data in Omaha, and then got a call asking me what it would take to bring me to Charlotte, North Carolina. It seems Electronic Data Systems (EDS) had a major client running Sequent hardware.  I gave what I thought was an outrageous figure, and 2 weeks later I was driving a U-Haul to Charlotte. I worked for EDS from  October 2001 until I was laid off in January 2007.  The client bought Sun systems, and it was much cheaper for EDS to hire someone in India or Brazil than to pay me, even though I was fully qualified on Sun systems.  I briefly worked as a consultant for Wachovia Bank, but apparently the manager who put in the request had moved on, and no one could find anything for me to do, so at the end of 3 months, my contract ended.  I was not able to find any UNIX SA work, so  I did substitute teaching in the Cabarrus County, North Carolina schools while I worked to qualify for a North Carolina license. In 2008 I was hired to teach any elementary students assigned to a school for kids expelled from their home school, usually for some criminal act or serious violation of district rules, like bringing a gun to school,  in the Charlotte school system. I had one 4th grader to start with, and taught him on the stage of the multipurpose room.  The next year I had my own room and as many as 11 kids, all 6th graders, in my class. When I reached 62, I was ready to retire, and have never regretted that decision.
Significant Relationships:
I married Kathleen Cory Avise in May, 1969. We were friends in High School, and our youth minister's wife pushed us at each other Christmas vacation 1968. We had two birth sons, Kristofer  Kane Avise-Rouse, in December 1969 and Kelly Kyle Avise-Rouse in January 1971. We adopted two children, Kymethe Kory, and Kenneth Kevin.  Kate and I were primarily casualties of the Vietnam war, and divorced in 1977-78.  Kate passed away in 2005.  I married Earlene Louise Maharg in June 1978. We had one son, Jason Martin Wolfe in November 1984.  We divorced in 1988.  I married Gwen Marie Helm in June 1996. She already had 3 great kids, Tansy Marie Wolfe Perlman (Tansy changed her last name to mine the day after her 18th birthday, so I must have been an OK step-father), Adam Michael Wait, and Danielle Brooke Wait Leffler.  Gwen and I divorced in 2008.  I married Mary Grace De la Torre on November 30, 2010 at Paranaque City Hall in the Philippines.
Health Issues:
I kept getting sick and the doctors couldn't figure out what was wrong. I had my left kidney removed because they were sure a growth on the main artery was renal cell carcinoma, but it turned out to be benign. I had my gall bladder removed. Nothing helped. Finally, I got so sick they were able to diagnose the problem, acute pancreatitis. I was on no food for a week, and then took 8 pills before every meal for 2 years. I changed to a low fat diet, and have been fine ever since.
I was diagnosed with Prostate Cancer in 2007, which, by the way, was a terrible year for me. I was on hormone suppression therapy for a year to get the prostate down to treatable size. That was a TRIP! I got to experience the joys of menopause first hand. Guys, don't ever joke about hot flashes. They are NOT fun. Neither is wanting to cry when there is really no reason, and wondering if you are going crazy. Then I flew to Nassau, Bahamas for High Intensity Focused Ultra Sound treatment. Basically it microwaves the prostate 2mm at a time. Fortunately, I was asleep for the 5 1/2 hour process.  I chose this treatment because it is least likely to have undesirable side effects, and since I met Grace, I have been VERY glad I made that choice.  I have been cancer free, according to my quarterly blood tests, since July 2008, and had that confirmed with a 12 needle biopsy in September of 2010, here in the Philippines.

So now you are pretty much up to date with the "Long and Winding Road" that led me to the Philippines.