Work Ethic

   Dad had the strongest work ethic of any man I’ve ever known. Taking the same Station as Unc I’ll use Brunswick, but the first time there not the second, as an example.
   Dad had four children in 1956, Ray, Ric, Rob and Sheri. He was a Chief Petty Officer in the Navy and had been for all of six months or so. He also worked part time at a gas station just off base. It was a Shell station owned by Dave whose last name escapes me. His duties on base were very time set and it allowed him to commit specific time to Dave. While working for Dave he met Mr. Zaymore. Mr. Zaymore was developing a housing development in Lisbon Center, a small town nearby and needed a surveyor. Dad had never done any surveying before but since it was just a matter of math took that job also (Dad was a math wiz, he could do stuff in his head I still can’t do on paper).
   Dad wound up buying the first finished house in the development. I took this picture of that house on a trip to Brunswick about 12 years ago. There was no garage and our side yard went all the way to the highway.
   That he worked & worked & worked didn’t keep him from having hobbies or spending time with us. One early hobby was leather craft (I still have some of his tools) and there are still examples of his purses in the family. His hobby in this house was building & flying model airplanes. The kind where you build a frame and cover it with paper and very toxic ‘Airplane Dope’ that stiffened and strengthened the paper. Hours of labor in the basement. There was a young guy in his squadron that helped. I remember the day of the first flight. The engines on these little planes made a real high pitched racket and Dads friend was good at getting them started. The plane was controlled by strings attached to the plane and to a handle. Dad was at the controls in the middle of the yard and his friend got the motor screaming at its highest pitch. The friend releases the plane and it starts off across the ground. Dad pulls back on the appropriate string and the plane leaps into the air – racing into the sky in the blink of an eye. It then raced down as fast and SLAMS into the ground at Dads feet. Months of labor for seconds of flight. That ended Dads airplane building & flying hobby.
    I can’t remember all of the ‘side jobs’ he had but I do remember he was always doing

There's another Dad at 1st station Brunswick story in the Archives. March 22 2008.