Mentors

There are several people whom I consider my mentors. On the ceiling of my garage, I have a few things that remind me of men who taught me how to do mechanical work. The C-Clamp was given to me by Louie Spencer. Louie was always there when you needed him. In his later years, I would help him with things he could no longer do, like welding repairs. The last time he came by the garage, he had a bush hog that needed welding. He brought an old C-Clamp to hold the large metal pieces together while I welded them. When we were loading up his trailer, I saw the C-Clamp on the floor, so I picked it up to hand it to him. He said, “You hang on to that, it’s really old, probably over 100 years old, and I know you will appreciate having it”. When Louie died, I hung that old C-Clamp in the ceiling as a reminder of him.

One of the other things hanging in the ceiling is a wrench. While working on one of my projects, I was digging through my toolbox, looking for a specific size wrench, when I pulled this one out. I noticed that it is inscribed with the name Bruce Barr Stapp. Seeing this brought tears to my eyes since Bruce had a huge influence on my life. Bruce died a few years ago. I miss talking with him. I worked for Bruce for eight years on his tug boats and barges. I knew him long before that. Bruce was not an easy guy to get along with, but he was always fair to me. He expected your best work when resources were at a minimum. I learned how to make the most out of the least. I decided I needed to hang this wrench up with Louie’s C-Clamp. I wanted to hang it so that it was up there like rigging. We had to wire barges to boats, so this rigging sort of represents how to rig something where it will never fail.

Another man who I consider my mentor for my career was a guy named Mickey Palmer. Mickey was a video engineer who worked on many large and highly visible projects, starting with the design and construction of the NBC studio across the street from NASA in Houston during the Space Race. When the latest news of what was happening during the Gemini and Apollo missions was broadcast from Houston, the video feed most likely came from the system he designed and built. Mickey taught me a lot about video systems design and integration. Mickey also restored old cars, which was the common thread between us. He liked Ford and Mustangs, so we also had sort of a rivalry going since I was into Corvettes. One time, he stopped by to pick me up for lunch, and I asked him what he was driving. He would not say. As we walked to the parking lot, he finally tossed me his keys, and I noticed they were GM keys. I was shocked that he was driving a GM car, since he was so vocal about not liking them. He stopped in front of a yellow Corvette and asked if I wanted to drive or if he should. I could not stop laughing since he had always made fun of my Corvette. In his later years, he was responsible for the Houston Rodeo video system that fed and recorded the rodeo. I lost track of Mickey in the late 1990s and often wondered what ever happened to him. I miss calling him to find out about his latest project.

A few years ago, I was unemployed when Martin Starnes called and offered me a job with his company, FourJ Enterprises. FourJ installed A/V systems mostly in churches. Working with A/V was a culture change, since my background was in broadcast TV, but Martin was patient in teaching me how to do things. We traveled to Florida many times for installation projects. Those long hours on the road, I got to know Martin well. We told our stories, sometimes many times. It was interesting how some stories seem to evolve, even the ones I told. I left FourJ in 2006 to move on to other things, but I always looked back at my time there with fondness. Martin developed cancer, and I was able to share my cancer experience with him. Martin passed away in early 2016. Since he taught me how to work with uni-strut and how to hang speakers for optimal audio coverage, I made a uni-strut thing to hang from the roof of my garage as a tribute to Martin. I was given a hat he wore, and I attached it to the uni-strut.

As I look up at the ceiling of my garage, I see the tributes to the men who have had an impact on my life. I like to think that as I work in the garage, they are all hanging out with me.