After the Military


I went into the Air Force at age 17 without a high school diploma.   At age 37 I retired from the Air Force with three years of college, a great electronics background, and a lot of supervisory experience.  The Air Force was very good to me.   But all good things do come to and end when their time has past.

My post-military time has been almost uneventful.   Shortly after retiring from the Air Force I accepted a job with Honeywell Medical, which was sold ten years later to PPG as PPG Biomedical Systems.   For many years I worked as was a Field Service Engineer, servicing everything from ICU monitoring equipment to mass-spectrometers, and traveling extensively throughout the United States.   In 1990 I accepted an exempt position and moved in-house at the Kansas City PPG facility (Lenexa, Kansas), where I remained until 1996,

In 1996 the Kansas City facility closed and was moved to Jupiter, Florida.   I had told the company that I was not interested in making the move to Florida.   A short time later a good severance package was offered to me with a reduced retirement, which I could start drawing at age 60.   On the day that offer was made I called my wife and told her to think about giving notice at her job, and we would go to the lake for the summer.  I was 55 years old.   Well, it all came to pass, and we did move to the lake for the summer.  We quickly discovered that lake living was not all that bad.   So we never went back to Kansas City.   We kept our house in Kansas City for eight more years, but finally burned that bridge and sold the house in 2005.   We had not stayed in the Kansas City house one night in those eight years, and the cost of maintaining it was significant.

Our lake house was actually more of a cabin than a house.   It was about 1000 sq feet, consisting of two small bedrooms, a kitchen and a living room.  The basement was unfinished.  Over the years we have added a 330 sq foot bedroom and a nice second bath, a 1500 sq foot deck, a raised screen room in the back, and completely remodeled the older parts of the house.   It is still a cabin in my eyes; however it is a very nice cabin.   I now strongly suspect we will be for the remainder of our lives.  We like the lake and the easy living here in the Ozarks.

After living here on the lake for a few years I began to get cabin fever during the winter months.   So, I went to work at the Polk County Sheriff's Office, for the winter, as a dispatcher.  Well, that ended up lasting four years.  I absolutely loved the job, for reasons I still don't completely understand.   I dispatch mostly at night and on weekends from the jail.  I was frequently the only one there, except for 30 or so prisoners. I also did bonding and booking, along with other infrequent duties.  I liked it so much that I would probably still be there, were it not for a new 911 center that was built.   In those four years I learned much about law enforcement and met some of the finest people anywhere.   While it didn't pay very well, after a few months I probably would have paid them to let me work there.

These days I do my amateur radio thing in the winter months, and bass fish in the summer months.  I also spend many hours attending to our seven cats.   Lynne travels three or four times a year, in and out of country with a group of old high school friends.  I usually stay home and care for out cats.

Life has been really good to us.   We are now enjoying slowing down.  Well, I am enjoying it.  Lynne is still going full speed.

Winston Rogers
December 15, 2008