Category: Life Stories

(A continuation of my bio from post #4)

So, I’m driving back to California from having left seminary in Chicago, pretty sure I will not be returning to finish my Masters of Divinity degree (M.Div) or to become an ordained minister.  It’s been a while since I left home in California for college and seminary, five years in fact.  It is a fun drive, going by way of St. Louis and Albuquerque, places that would play a part in my future life.

As soon as I’m in L.A., it’s off to Yosemite National Park in northern California, as during my year in seminary, I had signed up with a program called “A Christian Ministry in the National Parks), an organization still in existence.  I will be on the ministry staff for the summer there, doing whatever duties I am assigned, along with a “secular job” (that was the package deal with the program).

My ministerial job was to be the chaplain at the park hospital. I didn’t even know they had a park hospital before arriving there.  I did visit people there and enjoyed the experience.

That summer my mother was diagnosed with cancer, so I headed home a little early, before my summer commitment was completed. She lived two more years, so I was glad to be home for that time. I was on my search for an airline job, and I finally landed one (pardon the pun), after having a couple of short-term jobs, working for a church friend in his bulk mailing service and as a cashier at a Mexican restaurant.

Eventually I got a job with an international airline, TWA (Trans World Airlines) I was excited to finally have the job that would allow me to see the world and give me the money to do my flight training and possibly be an airline pilot. It was a foot-in-the-door, low level job to begin with ( a dishwasher at night in their flight kitchen/dining unit as it was called).

A few of my friends there went on to become big shots in other fields, but it was sort of fun having these humble beginnings. One became a CEO or President of a cruise line and another became a founder with his wife of an international evangelistic organization.

After six months of work I got laid off.  I was qualified for airline employee travel after six months, so a friend and I decided to take three weeks and fly around the world, as TWA and Pan Am both had round-the-world routes back then. The employee service charge for the ticket was $57 and an additional $57 if we wanted to upgrade our flights to first class. So, for $114 we got our tickets and took off. We did get first class on most of our flights!

This was one of those “once-in-a-lifetime” opportunities and I grabbed it! This was the beginning of a habit that has served me well in my life, seizing the opportunity when it comes along. I had now secured the job I dreamed of as I drove away from Chicago and seminary just two years earlier.

As soon as the trip was over I was recalled to my job and I remained with the airlines for thirty-three years (the last five as an employee of American Airlines after a takeover/merger in 2001.

I did put my dream of becoming a pilot in action and got my pilot licenses. I became a private pilot, then a commercial pilot, and got my flight instructor and ground instructor certificates. I joined a flying club where club members were part owners of a fleet of airplanes which we could rent to ourselves for a very cheap rate at the time. I took friends and family members on flights all the time. A favorite trip to Catalina Island to have lunch at the “airport-in-the-sky” and have buffalo burgers. They had buffalos roaming around the island.

I did do some flight instructing work at a local airport, hoping for pilot jobs to open up with the airline. As it turned out, my airline pilot dream was not to be. The timing just was never right.  When I was ready, they were not hiring.  This was another lesson learned in my early life, that some things are not meant to be, deal with it!

I was at least doing work I enjoyed (I had advanced to airport agent work working the boarding gates and ticket counter, etc.) I met many famous people. I was traveling the world and flying in my own plane in my off- duty time.  I cannot imagine just having a “regular” job, it was not for me.  This was exciting and life was good, very good!

(To be continued with probably one more posting on my bio, then on to other topics)

(Continuing from blog post #3, I will, in the next couple of posts, finish a very brief outline of my journey on my “path,” then on to other topics.)

So, I did have a good college experience in Seattle.  I never really knew what I was going to do after college.  I thought of teaching, but after a short stint of being a teacher’s assistant in my first year of college (a fifth grade class at a local school), I realized that was not for me.  So, I ended up majoring in history for no particular reason other than I had taken a lot of history classes.

I did enjoy being away from home and loved living in the dorm at school.  When I had a chance, I would drive out to the Magnolia Bluff area of Seattle, overlooking Puget Sound and contemplate life and my future while watching the ships and ferries cross the sound.  It was a great time just sitting there in my little VW bug, absorbed in thought. I spent many hours there over my four years thinking what am I going to do with my life, but no answers came to me.  I realize now that I was really just delaying getting out into the real world and having to “do something” with my life.

The social life was good. I developed some very good friendships and ran around with a good group of people.  I did like the academic life, this coming from someone who never thought of going to college at all while in high school.  

That nagging thought kept coming to me, about what I was going to do after college.  That thought became acute as graduation neared.  By the time graduation did come, I had decided I would continue with school and go to a theological seminary in Chicago and study and possibly prepare to be a minister.  That would keep me from having to face the “real” world for a while longer.

So, it’s 1971 and I am in seminary studying for the ministry in an evangelical church.  Once again, another good experience trying out new things in a new environment. My first year there was exciting and I learned a lot and even did some preaching at a hospital connected with the church.

As I say, I enjoyed the year there but as the year ended I had decided that maybe I needed a break from all this.  I had been in school for a long time. So one day I talked to the dean and informed him I was planning to take a break from seminary to think things over.  He seemed to understand but told me, “Wally, I know you will be back. This is where you are supposed to be, this is your path!”

One memory that is burned into my mind as if it just happened yesterday was of that day I was driving away from Chicago in my VW bug packed to the ceiling with all my belongings. I looked out my window as the Chicago skyline faded into the distance and the thought really hit me… WHAT NOW! This is it, I now have to really face what am I to do with my life, no more hiding in the academic world.  This is it!

At that very instant, I realized that I wanted and needed to get out and travel and see the world!  That was it, the thought hit me like a bolt of lightening out of the blue. The next thought was, how am I to do that? What type of employment would allow me to fulfill that desire and goal? I knew I wanted to fly, be a pilot, but that would take time and money for training.  Ah, I thought. Maybe I should work for an airline.  Travel and see the world while I train and become a pilot. Yes, that’s what I will do! Bingo, all those years unsure of what I wanted to do finally had some resolution in my mind.

It’s amazing how a thought like that just hits you out of the blue in an instant, and you know it is the right idea. So, I’m going to try to get a job with an airline and travel and get on with my dream of being a pilot which I had since the age of six.  The pieces of the puzzle (of my life) are finally coming together! 

                                          _______________________________

(If the comment section is not working, you can click on the title of this blog and a comment box will appear. I will get the comment.)  

Have you ever been “put-down” in your life. Well, dah… who hasn’t? How do you handle it?  I’m sure some people get hurt and hold on to that hurt for a long time (perhaps a lifetime).  Well, thinking over my life (I’ve been working on writing my memoirs or autobiography) , I thought of three put-down I’ve encountered that really affected and changed my life (good changes).

One that was very early in my life was the first airplane trip I ever took when I was around six years old or so.  My mother, father, and I were going from California to Florida so my mother could have some dental work done by her brother.  We drove to Dallas to visit with my father’s sister and from there we flew to Florida.  It was a Delta Airlines DC3 aircraft, which was the modern aircraft of the day. I had no idea what “flying” was, so it was a new adventure for me. As soon as we took off, I was looking out the window and had an astounding experience of flight… I turned to my father and said something like, “wow! this is amazing, I can’t believe we are up in the air.” Wow! I’m going to be a pilot when I grow up!, to which my father  immediately responded, “no you’re not! No son of mine is going to be a pilot, no son of mine is going to fly airplanes. It is too dangerous, you are never going to fly airplanes!”

I can’t tell you how I felt at that moment. Somehow, within myself, I made to commitment at that very instant to be a pilot when I grew up. I never lost that thrill and commitment I made that day. Many years later I did take up flying, getting my private pilot’s license, then my commercial pilot’s license as well as my flight instructor’s certificate and advanced ground instructor’s licenses. I eventually had a thirty-three year career with the airlines and did flight instructing and commercial piloting from a local airport while I worked for the airlines. I even ended up taking my father on several flights in my airplane, never mentioning to him how he tried to squelch my dream of piloting on that day many years before.

A second time I experienced a life changing put-down was in high school. Now I was not a top performing student in high school. I got by and was an average student. But nearing the end of high school I was denied taking a class, given  the reason I could not take the class with my friends was because it was a college preparatory class. I signed up to take English Literature along with my friends but was told I was not qualified. My counselor called me to her office (ironically, her name was “Miss Hope.”) and explained to me that that class with Mr. Harada was a college prep class and that I was not “college material.”

I was astounded once again. I had taken many difficult classes in school and always did well or average. I never flunked anything. I never even thought about going to college, I just wanted to take the class, having never been restricted before by the school. I was upset. I went home and told my father. This time he was on my side and wrote a letter to the counselor and demanded they let me take the class if that was what I wanted to do.

My counselor finally relented and I took the class. I remember that I did just fine. What stuck with me was the thought that they tried to prevent me from doing what I wanted to do, telling me I was not that smart to even think of a college education.

So, in the end, one day about a year after graduation, I decided I was going to go get a college education, so I did. I took the SAT exam and applied to a college in Seattle (I wanted to get away from home and I knew three people at this Christian college in Seattle). After graduation from college I went to graduate school, a theological seminary in Chicago. At college I got better grades than I ever did in high school, and in grad school I did even better!

So, the third put-down is related to this college thing. When I graduated from high school I told my father I was considering going to college. He immediately responded, telling me that no, I was not going to go to college. He said everyone in our family went to college but nobody ever graduated and it was a waste of time and money. Once again I disobeyed my father and that made a huge difference in my life. My higher education was a high point of my life. I wouldn’t change that for anything.

So… I learned to never take “no” for an answer if I knew there was something I needed to do to be who I was to be. 

Wally

Just a reminder…I am still working to learn how to set up this blogging website and currently have no comment section working. I have heard from someone they were able to comment by clicking on the title of the blog. I will continue working on this project, but I am technology challenged and a slow learner in this computer stuff.