About Gerald Retired physicist, age 66, had to retire with a medical disability due to incomplete recovery from a brain tumor removal at age 50. I always wanted to retire at age 50; but be careful what you wish for, because sometimes God grants your wish. I did my Undergrad, as a physics major, at the U of Illinois, graduating Summa Cum Laude, in 1966. Married, and then moved with my wife to Philadelphia, to do graduate work at the U of Pennsylvania. Unfortuneately, the year before me, the U had wanted 25 physics majors, to run undergrad labs, etc. unfortuneately, only 7 matriculated; they were in very bad shape! So they learned from this, and in the following year (my year) the U accepted 75 physics majors; and of course if you understand Murphy's Law and all of it's corelaries, you know what was going to happen, AND IT DID: all 75 of us showed up!!! What happened next was shameful (not for me, but for the U of Pennsylvania) They proceeded to flunk out half of us, including myself and one of the friends that I made who had come from Cambridge U in England. I did what I had to do, and accepted a local High School position, teaching Physics. I enjoyed the interaction with the students, and to this day I still see some of them socially. After 13 years, I took a local summer course on solar and other forms of alternate energy. This allowed me to get out of High School teaching (which is almost impossible any other way for a High School physics teacher). I did get a job with a local engineering company, but then the 2nd whammy: Yes, solar works as promised, but at the time the payback was 50 to 100 years; and businesses are only interested in changes that have a payback of 2 years or less!!! Not good!!! So I wiggled again, and started working in the engineering field of Heating, Ventilating, and Air Conditioning,. or HVAC for short. Boring!!!, but I did get a Professional Engineer degree in Mechanical Engineering. I did HVAC for about 10 years, until I was thoroughly bored, and then by almost a miricle, one of my friends from the Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA) of which I was a member with, at our local Chapter, offered me a job with him (who headed the F-14 section) at the Naval Air Development Center (NADC) in Warminster. Since I was really interested in building my own airplane at that time, I jumped at this chance. I really enjoyed working on top of the line military aircraft, but again after 8 years or so, I grew bored with the beauracrecy, and fell into doldrums, or so I thought. It seems that I had a slowly growing brain tumor for about 20 years, and it was affecting my work; and it was growing bigger. When my doctor found it, he told me that I was VERY lucky, for if it hadn't been discovered when they did, that I would have been DEAD in about 3 months!!!! The operation was a success, and here I still am 17 years later. And that briefly, is the story of my professional life.

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