All About Tom

Do you know me?

If you are checking this page because you think you might know Tom Sawyer from the past, here are a few clues to help out. Click on any picture to enlarge it.

 

Grade School
Yes I was the geeky guy who grew up in Northeast Portland, Oregon, and attended St. Charles elementary school graduating in 1959. That’s me, 5th from the right in the bottom row.
   
  High School

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Yup, I hung out in the Amateur Radio club and Math Club during my years at Central Catholic High School where our class  whooped ass around the state in the National Math Contest in 1963
   
  College
You might have suffered through the class I taught in “Elementary Computer Programming” at the University of Portland in 1966 or 1967. The Computer Center Director, Peter Knoblach,  had bigger agenda items to deal with (“What we gotta have, is…”) and turned part of his teaching load over to an untrained Junior/Senior.
   
  Graduate School
 
You might have suffered through any of the freshman math classes I taught  at the University of Minnesota  during 1967-69 where the Math Department turned over most of the undergraduate teaching load to untrained graduate students.
This was a very stressful job so a good many of us had to relieve it with daily games of “Volley Wad” over an improvised net strung across the TA offices in the Main Engineering building.
   
  We’re in the Army, Now! 
 

We might have met in 1969-71 during my two years in the U.S. Army. We could have gone through basic training together at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

We might have trained together in the Advanced Infantry Training program at Fort McClellan where we carried baseplates, tubes and bipods over the hills of Alabama in the mortar platoon.

We could have run into each other in Vietnam when I was a keypunch operatorr with the 1st Infantry Division in Di An.
Or, we might have crossed paths at the 25th Infantry Division headquarters at Cu Chi  where I was still keypunching away in the Administrative Machine Branch (AMB).
Or possibly we met at Fort Hood, Texas, in 1971 while I was serving  with the 1st Armored Division, still doing computer related work as the army struggled to implement an UPSCR (Uniform Personnel Status Change Report) system that never quite seemed to balance to the company Morning Reports.
   
  Working for a Living 
  We could have met at The Pillsbury Company where I held a variety of jobs in Management Information System (IT to you youngsters) over the years from 1972 to 1986. 
  Or we might have met at Dayton Hudson Department Stores where I was the manager of MIS Planning from 1986 to 1992. 
  We might have met while I was at Pioneer Power in the years between 1992 and early 2003 when I retired to take up travel, fishing and golf (or, as Linda would say, became a full-fledged Internet Addict!)