The year 1987 sticks out in my mind because the military world shook their heads and gasped, or laughed when a 19 year old German teenager flew his Cessna 172 to Moscow, circled over the Kremlin, and landed on Red Square right in front of the Lenin Mausoleum and the Kremlin wall....

My Cousin Shows Up Again

On my 64th birthday I got a letter from my long lost cousin Wolfgang. The letter he had received from the German bureau that I had contacted had fallen behind a drawer in his desk and he found it during a clean up. I called him right away and we talked for an hour....

The End of My Employment?

In the spring of 1988 the RC management club got an appointment with Vandenberg AFB to see some of the airplanes that our FLIR detectors went into. I wanted to see the B-52 and the program manager and I were given permission to board the plane. I was appalled at the tight cockpit and the FLIR observation station of that huge aircraft. I had to climb over the center console to get into the copilot seat. My immediate thought was what a 12-14 hour flight would be in that uncomfortable an environment. During the peak of the cold war some of the flights lasted 24 hours with midair refueling....

Late in 1988 there was a big milestone of a celebration at the Thielemann's house and that was my 65th birthday. My God, I had made it to retirement age! The company had pestered me with hints about my retirement, and I had finally given them what they wanted,assurance that I was going to retire on February 1, 1989. I had arrived at the end of my professional career and was going to have one hell of a party to celebrate that important turning point in my life. I was over the hill, and gaining speed going downhill!...

Retirement

The day finally arrived, Retirement! I had been waiting for this day for 50+years. The company had set up a retirement party for me at the Holiday Inn in Goleta. At these parties it was customary to rake the retiree over the coals....

My Last "Dog and Pony Show"

I was pleased to see that many people at my retirement party....

Very few retirees were comfortable enough about public speaking to give an appropriate reply, but I had decided to exit with a funny speech....

During the course of my tenure the company had grown from 600 to 2,800 employees and it verified Paretto's law to me, which states that 20% of the people in any kind of endeavor produce 80% of the output, and that increasing the number of participants merely serves to lower the average performance.

"...Ladies and gentlemen, this is not the end of a career, I said,but the beginning of a new one. I shall heed Maggie Kuhn's rally cry, who concluded her address to the 'Gray Panthers' with, "Off Your Asses", and I am getting off mine, and you can have my chair now. Good luck to you, you will certainly need it! It was a pleasure working with all of you and thanks for coming to my party." The audience gave me a standing ovation and the president of the company shook my hand and said, "That was the best retirement speech I have ever heard."....

A Change For Us Too

For the last two years we had been looking for a new home location. We had looked in the Lake Isabella area, in Pollock Pines, Auburn, Grass Valley, Penn Valley but could not find anything that met our criteria and our price limit. A big 7.1 earthquake in the San Francisco Bay area caused a lot of people and companies to move away from the San Andreas fault and establish themselves in the areas that we were interested in. When I had my airplane we often flew to Redding, which was the maximum distance I could fly from Santa Barbara without refueling. From there we had flown over to Trinity Center along the Trinity Lake and gone boating and camping by the lake.....

We contacted several realtors in the Redding area. We flew into Redding and checked into a motel to explore the surrounding area....

Adios, leaving good old Santa Barbara.

I was sad to leave Santa Barbara, my hometown for 30 years. It was the longest time I had lived in a place. The move however was dictated by our financial situation. We simply had to move to an area, where we could buy a house outrightly to eliminate house payments. We were aware that life is full of compromises, and this move would give us the financial freedom from mortgage payments we needed.