Comments: Do you have any monumental stories about your life since High School that you would love the Class to know about?
How to sum up thirty years in a few paragraphs, here we go. After graduation, I went to the University of Illinois and after a few changes in majors I finished up with a degree in Russian/Middle East History and Political Affairs in 1983. Married shortly after graduation, commissioned in the Navy the next week and then off to Road Island for school, all within a 2 week period. For the twenty plus years I was stationed up and down the east coast, gulf coast and even had a short tour in Kansas. My time in the Navy was challenging with many long hours but a lot of rewarding work. During that period I had the opportunity to visit many of the major historical and archeological sites in the US, Caribbean, South America, Europe and the Middle East, to include: mid-night Christmas mass at the Vatican (yes the Baptist went), Jerusalem/Bethlehem, Nighttime Jack the Ripper Walk in London on Halloween, ruins of Troy, Pompeii and the Pyramids/Valley of the Kings. Around the fifteen year mark of my career I came to the point it was time to start passing up on accepting orders to sea tours (not what the Navy wanted) in order to spend more time with the family with shore tours.
So over the over the next 6 years I started the process of homesteading in preparation of retirement. I was able to get return orders to Tampa, Florida. We now live within an hour of Disney/Universal; 30 minutes to Bush Gardens or the Beach; a ton of pro-sports teams; and if it isn’t cloudy I can see the shuttle launch from the other side of FL from the house. I retire one day and then the next day started a civilian career, first as a contractor and then as DoD Civilian. Now I’m working at US Central Command (the command that runs the Military activities in the Middle East) in the Exercise and Training Directorate as the Programs Division Chief in charge of the managing the Commands funds for exercises and the programs that track the military to military events that we do. It still involves a lot of travel to the Middle East but it’s no longer 6 month deployment.
Both kids were very active in the community and in High School. Jessica earned her Gold Star award in Girl Scouts by training and setting up a program in nursing/children homes that would make sure cards for special occasions (birthdays, holidays, anniversaries) would be available for the residents. James earned his Eagle Award in Boy Scouts by rehabbing and restoring two compartments on the USNS American Victory (WWII Victory ship). Each of them finished up High School on the honor roll. Now both of them are now in college (Senior and Freshman) and of course both are working toward Doctorates (Anthropology and Forensic Medicine).
If you want to contact me just drop a note at pugwinston@yahoo.com
