Growing up in the System:

US Armed Force Recruiting, Times Square, New York City. Photo by PumpkinSky, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

My father wasn’t one for hectoring or lecturing.  He was a quiet man, dealing with his own demons, and sparing his family any outward appearances of the battles he fought in his head long after Word War II ended.  The war had dramatically changed what had been his hardscrabble existence of rural poverty and the damaging economic realities of the Great Depression.  But I don’t want to review his  wartime service.  I have done that already.  I want to discuss what came after: the life he and my mother built after he came home for good and married the girl of his dreams.

My father had always had a strong aptitude for building and repair.  When he enlisted in the US Navy in 1937, the recruiters recognized this and sent him to learn aircraft maintenance.  He excelled.  Throughout the war, he was stationed both on carriers and ashore wrenching on a variety of aircraft and sending them out to be shot up, straggling back with damage and needing his attention.

Before the war, he had worked briefly in a tractor factory with his father who was forced off his family farm by poverty.  After the war, he was able to get back on at the factory where his mechanical skills were prized by the John Deere managers at the Plow and Planter Works.  He worked there until the day he died, aged 59 years, and just as he was reaching his retirement window.

My mom had worked at the International Harvester plant during the war building tanks — a true Rosie the Riveter.  After the war, her rheumatoid arthritis progressed to a point she struggled with even simple daily chores.  She became a stay-at-home mom with five children while my father supported this brood with his salary from the factory.  When he left us all, his paycheck disappeared.  Fortunately for my mother, his survivor pension benefits from the factory took care of most of her living and medical expenses.

The major economic growth period that blossomed on the heels of the Second World War ensured we would never know true want. Our family, friends, and neighbors were never rich nor ever would be.  In the 50s and 60s, my company town was filled by these mostly large Catholic families with a single-income parent providing for basic, if not luxury, needs.  We had a small house, a station wagon, a black-and-white Zenith television set, and my father built the beautiful wood furniture we used.  But this world was changing quickly.

As a teenager, I had worked in landscaping, warehouse labor, and even managed a gas station at night.  But I never had any insight into what I now call “the system”.  What did I want to be in life?  How could I find a career to support me?  What process did I need to follow to be comfortable if not wealthy?  Where to turn?

I grew up hearing that college was the new way to get ahead. Instead of removing your overalls and taking a shower when you got home – like my father did – you could take one in the morning and put on nice clothes. You could go to an office building or store front, perform your assigned duties, then stop off at the tavern on the corner for a pop before you went home to supper.  It never occurred to me you could start or run a business.  It wasn’t anything I saw growing up. I saw men and women who worked jobs in return for a paycheck. Only one of my younger uncles had attended college and he wore a suit to work.  He had a very nice house and nine(!) children.  That must be “the new system”.

No one in our little family had attended, let alone graduated, college until my sister, five years older than me, accomplished this amazing first-time feat.  I was determined to take the same route because I had learned I didn’t have my father’s industrial-era aptitudes nor perseverance. When my time came, I used the money I had saved from planting trees and groundcover to take college course at the same institution from which my sister got her diploma.  That’s when I planned to make it “the system” for me.  It wasn’t to be. After one semester with a GPA akin to John Blutarsky’s in Animal House, I was politely asked to leave the campus and never return.

I went back to my landscaping job full-time, hung out after work drinking beer with my buddies at the Belgrade Tavern and fell into a pattern of restless indolence. I had not found “the system” that would work for me.  After a couple brushes with the law and some time in a childhood basement to think, I decided I just needed to run off and join the circus. Why not?  It couldn’t be any worse than a rootless life in my hometown surrounded by others who reminded me I had failed to make the jump from childhood to an adult “system”.  My sisters had found spouses and meaningful, if not stimulating, jobs. I was a failure at life.

The circus for me came in the guise of the military.  My father had made the same escape when grinding poverty and restlessness pushed him into a life that would transform him in heroic service in a world war.  I walked over to the recruiting office in town to sign up — not because of any noble call to patriotic service, but because I knew something had to change for me to find “the system” for me.

I had never considered myself a cosseted child, but my first exposure to the military ripped away the blinders. Now I had to toe the mark without a supporting cast of friends and family. In basic training, I was expected to earn my way and gain the respect of my peers and superiors.  For a while, I toyed with the idea of treating it with the same disdain I had applied to my semester of college.  But an insightful drill instructor pulled me aside to give me a no-bullshit, tough-love lecture about the choices available to me.

I will never forget Sergeant Campbell’s life changing guidance.  He explained the military system, and how I could use it to get what I wanted while being a dedicated and valuable member of the service. He outlined the many paths that fell under the purview of the US military – that it wasn’t a one-size-fits-all environment, and I had what it took to succeed.  If only I wouldn’t be a selfish and spoiled little prick.  After his talk, I was able to phone my mother home in Illinois. She backed up his words by telling me this was my last chance.  if I failed at basic, I was not welcome back in the family home.  I had to make my way in the world and now was the time.

I didn’t fully understand “the system” until I decided to pursue college courses with more than a little encouragement from my new wife.  When I initially wavered, I was able to kick the can down the road a few months by promising my pregnant wife I would wait until after our first child was born.  She adopted a serious, probing look and admonished me from her hospital bed the day after our first child arrived: I had promised her and now was the time.  The next day, I went to Base Education Office, discussed the issues, and signed up at the university offering classes for military personnel.

In addition to the insane workload of active duty coupled with being a new father, I often felt overwhelmed with school work, but something significant happened soon after.  My boss submitted me for an Airman of the Quarter recognition and I was selected. The write-up noted that not only was I doing a great job running that old core-memory Burroughs computer system, I was also actively pursuing an undergraduate degree.  I suddenly got a glimpse of “the system” that would work for me. So that was it?  I just have to go above and beyond the others to receive these dopamine bursts?  This was “the system”.

The author at tech school, Sheppard AFB, TX, 1977

I milked that system for many enjoyable and fruitful years.  Airman of the Month was followed by NCO of the Quarter and Junior Officer of the Year plaques for my wall.  The BS degree was followed by commissioning and a stint as a student pilot.  Then came a full three-year MBA on top of running data centers as a company grade officer.  The work experience coupled with academic pursuits then brought from the military into a rewarding civilian occupation that would last the rest of my working life.  It found “the system”, and it worked for me.  It was a system that accommodated an affordable pay-as-you-go education process where my wife and I each achieved a graduate and post-graduate education by putting each other through night schools. This reinforced and supported increasingly responsible jobs and allowed us to live comfortably and save for retirement.

So, is this a life lesson for everyone?  Ahh, heck no.  It’s not even really relevant anymore. I am the last person who should offer any one career advice.  What became my “system” isn’t even extant for the most part.  My father would be amazed had he lived to see his unskilled and lazy son fashion a life out of a completely new data-centric model divorced from his Industrial Era skills and work ethic.  I am similarly amazed as I watch my two daughters pursue their own “system” to forge their working lives.  One went the college route to find her career and the other pursued a trade school that resulted in a good work life for her.

When the government decided to support the goals of those seeking a college education or trade school, they did so in that familiar heavy-handed way that had secondary effects any high school student should have foreseen.  They underwrote student loans in an egregious way that upset the entire cost/value balance of the educational system. To appease the bankers who would carry these loans, they made sure the loan couldn’t be discharged in bankruptcy.  The colleges got their money up-front even before providing a service. The banks got to hang the debt around the necks of their customers for life.  Not surprisingly, education costs have exploded while the value of the resulting diplomas has been substantially diluted.  Once you leave with your sheepskin, you can’t go back and get a refund when your “system” doesn’t result in a lucrative career.

My own civilian career grew from the seeds of what would become known as cybersecurity.  My recent experience with workforce development efforts has shown how ineffective it is trying to apply the old system to new realities.  We have what my fellow professionals sometimes call a “jobs gap”, but it really is just a failure to adequately define a job description and the necessary foundational skills.  There are still too many people of my experience (we don’t like to say ‘age’) trying to apply their “system” to today’s problems and today’s jobs. 

The system I used has evolved and ultimately disappeared. It’s time we help our next generation build something better.