Roger von Seeburg's Stories of Oxford and His Later Career

Trouble:

I’m not sure if this was my first trouble at Oxford or not, but as my mother told the story, my dad’s best friend taught me a poem and said I should recite it in class the next day. The poem went like this:

The woodpecker pecked on the schoolhouse door

He pecked and pecked until his pecker was sore.

Well, I did recite the poem in class and my mother received a phone call from the teacher telling her what I had done and my mother was angry. Not sure who she was more angry with, me or my dad’s best friend.

My second trouble was when a teacher (teaching reading) asked me if I wanted to learn to read . . . my response was: “No thank you, I don’t care to learn to read.” This of course was an occasion for another phone call to my mother.

Both of these took place in the first grade, I believe.

Broken Leg

I believe I was in the Third Grade when I broke my leg. I was playing tackle on the front lawn with my oldest brother. One would pitch the ball to the other and then try to tackle the other. Well, my brother pitched me the ball and I started running, tripped over a stone in the lawn and went down rolling over onto my back with my right leg bent at the knee and my right foot on the ground. As luck would have it, my brother also tripped on the same stone and landed on my right leg. I knew immediately that my leg was broken because I heard the bone crack. Got a ride to the hospital (Herrick I believe) in a Berkeley Police Ambulance with the siren blaring. The doctor at the hospital said the leg wasn’t broken but after an X-Ray came back into the examining room very sheepishly saying I was right, it was broken. A cast was applied from my mid thigh to my toes and I spent the night at the hospital. The cast wasn’t a walking cast so I got around by scooting backwards on my hands and rear end. I believe that I spent some of the time with the cast back at Oxford. I believe it was Mrs. Swain’s class.

Mrs. Whittey

Mrs. Whittey lived across the street from where I lived. That meant that I really had to behave myself when I was in her class. As I recall she was a strict disciplinarian but was also a very nice lady with a heart of gold.

My Dad

Some may remember that my dad died when I was nine years old. I think it was April 1952.

Post Elementary School

As I recall, after I graduated from Oxford, I attended the first semester of Junior High School at Garfield. Then my family moved to Oakland and I attended Frick Junior High School. In 1959 I attended Freemont High School and graduated in June of 1961.

Post High School

After graduation, I went to work for State Farm Insurance Company in Berkeley, CA. About a year later, I went to work for Kaiser Engineers, in Oakland, CA. In 1963, I moved to Chicago, IL where I attended DeVry Institute of Technology. While going to school, I worked at a Grocery Store for about nine months and then returned to Kaiser Engineers in downtown Chicago. I spend about 6 hours a day as an electrical draftsman while I continued my studies at DeVry. In October 1965, I graduated from DeVry with an Associates Degree in Applied Science, with Honors, in Electronic Engineering Technology. I accepted a job with General Electric Company, Computer Department in Phoenix, Arizona and started working in mid November. I continued my schooling by taking evening classes at Phoenix Community College and graduated with an Associates Degree, with Distinction, in Electronic Engineering Technology in 1969, and transferred to Arizona State University where I completed a Bachelor of Science Degree in Electronic Engineering Technology, Summa Cum Laude, in July 1972.

I continued to work for General Electric Computer Department until it was sold to Honeywell in late 1970. I was actually laid off in Oct. 1970 and rehired by Honeywell in the Product Marketing organization. In mid 1973 I was asked to transfer to Sacramento, CA to work on a large proposal effort for the State of California. In March of 1974 I was transferred to the Oakland, CA office and moved to Walnut Creek, CA. In late 1975 the Oakland office was merged into the San Francisco office and I started working there. In 1977 I was asked to join the Regional Staff in San Francisco as a Product Manager. This required about 60% travel covering the Western United States, From Kansas west to Hawaii and from the Mexican border to Canada and including Alaska.

In early 1980, I transferred back to Phoenix, AZ as an Engineering Manager of a software development group developing end-user application software. In mid 1981 I became manager of a Software Technical Integration group where we coordinated hardware development plans with three different operating system development organizations. This is more properly called a Systems Engineering function. In 1985 I took over one of the operating system development groups and we rehosted the operating system onto two NEC Hardware platforms and two new Honeywell Hardware platforms. In the late 1980’s, Honeywell sold a portion of their computer business to Bull in France, who purchased the balance of the computer business in 1990.

In 1990, I moved into the Hardware Engineering area where I was responsible for managing the Program Managers, and the integration of new peripheral products into the operating system and hardware, including the development or modification of hardware channels. In 1998 I moved to the Mainframe Engineering group and was responsible for all of the Input/Output Central functions including channels. My team developed the first architectural change in the Central System I/O in 15 years which resulted in a significant increase in the throughput of the I/O system (the number of bytes of information that could be transferred per unit of time) and also increased the connectivity to the I/O system (the number of individual channels that could be installed in the I/O central.

In early 2001, I was caught in the downsizing (which had been going on since 1985) and for the first time in 35 years was out looking for work again. This of course is along with many thousands of other high tech people who are also looking for work. I’m still looking, but I have retired from Bull that gives me some income, although not sufficient to cover our monthly expenses. Hopefully, I will be gainfully employed early in 2002.