This past Tuesday we were given a very interesting talk by one of our long time members, Eric Solash. He used a series of six stories from his past as illustration. Before the second world war, his father, and co-workers, who were lawyers whose firm helped out the International and Longshore and Warehouse Union in New York City, decided that they wanted to enlist in the Army. His father did not want to be stuck stateside, so he did not tell them he was a lawyer. After the war ended he decided not to go back to practicing law and joined his family in their umbrella sales business, that was doing very well , as a traveling salesman. He worked all up and down the north-eastern US, from Chicago and New York, to Nashville and Richmond. One of his customers, Levine Department Stores, offered him a better job as a store manager, which he accepted, and was sent to the southwestern US, from Santa Fe, to Austin, to Waco, Odessa and finally on to Albuquerque.
As a result. Eric, a little ‘Yeshiva Bucher’, from New York, grew up all over the southern US, and finished his schooling in Albuquerque in 1961. It was again a time of military draft, and one of his three best friends unluckily had a low draft number, so he was drafted right away into the Army. Two others, who actually wanted to enlist, joined the Marine Corps, shortly afterwards. Eric decided to take his parents advice to continue his education and enrolled in the University of New Mexico with an educational deferment. The only problem was that he majored in partying and minored in drinking, so that soon his only remaining option was the military. He looked at his choices, and decided that since there were no fox holes in the ocean, he would enlist in the Navy. They tested all their recruits in boot camp and then gave them three choices of occupation, Eric’s three were all the same, Electronics Technician. Out of a class of one hundred fifty, at the end of his thirty-eight week RADAR training, seventy-eight graduated. The deviousness of the Navy became apparent when they offered Eric, and the other the top four students in his class, a placement in Adak, Alaska, on almost the last island in the Aleutian chain. They then gave them an option to sign up for another two years of service, and be sent for advanced computer and electronics training in Dam Neck Virginia. Of course, they all took the option. Unfortunately, they soon learned that the training only pertained to nuclear submarines, so guess where they ended up serving? So, he had joined to navy to see the world, and everything he got to see was through a periscope. His underwater tours ranged from sixty-two the seventy-eight days, where he worked in the navigation section. They performed regular trial launches of nuclear missiles, which were so realistic they only knew it was a trial when the ship did not lurch as the missile fired.
As he neared the end of this enlistment, his fairy godmother finally came through and he was assigned to a ship in the Brooklyn naval shipyard that was a research test bed for advances navigation gear. He started going to Cleveland on weekends with a co-worker who had family there. He soon had a girlfriend, got out of the Navy, married and went to Cleveland to attend University and become an engineer. He worked nights at McDonalds, where he was robbed twice at gunpoint. He quit after the second time. He then went to work days for the electric Company and went to school at night. Unfortunately he was soon laid off and he and his wife decided that he should look for work in the San Francisco area. After sending out sixty-three resumes, he was offered a job with IBM as a field engineer, working days in their western office, and he could finish school at night. They sold their car for airfare and moved west. Unfortunately, the offer came with a hitch, once he finished his training, he was assigned installing and then serving as the midnight shift technical support in Denver for the IBM 370-168, for the Air Force Accounting and Finance Center. After several years, this put an end to his first marriage, and also his association with IBM. He returned to the bay area, and soon found work with IBMs biggest competitor, Digital Equipment Corporation. He served as technical support helping out other field engineers. One of their assignments was to install the very first computer based library system, in of all places, Edmonton Alberta. It was based on a DEC computer, so as the only unmarried tech support person he was assigned. He then noticed a very nice librarian in Edmonton, and soon was volunteering to make any needed tech support trips to Edmonton. He says that the second time around for both he and Valerie was a charm. He invited Val to San Francisco and asked her to marry him. She accepted and they decided that they should live in Edmonton. He resigned his position, and started his own consulting firm in Edmonton and never looked back. He has worked on many different contracts for companies in Edmonton with large computer systems.
His final story was how he ended up joining Rotary. His wife had been promoted to head librarian at the downtown branch, and after a while decided to apply for a position at a smaller branch with fewer staff and a much shorter commute., the Mill Woods branch. One of her senior assistants was Linda Granholm. Linda‘s husband Hans, was on the board of Arch Enterprises, along with several other Rotarians, Art, Terry, Ivan, Diana, Barbara, Larry, Dennis and others. Arch needed some help with computer problems, so Linda asked Val if Eric could help them out. Eric manage to get two workable computers out of three, and gave them a cable that they needed. He then became their computer tech, and Hans soon asked him if he was interested in joining Rotary. That was the last time he could have said no.
It is now thirty-eight years since he moved north and his two adopted children have four children of their own. He and Val enjoy spending time with their grandchildren, doing crafts, visiting museums and travelling around Alberta and BC. He says he is the duty Sherpa for Val‘s art shows and set ups, and also does her framing. In addition, he gets to do yard and garden clean up. He also keeps out of trouble by serving on the board of Arch Enterprises and is also the current president of the South Edmonton Senior‘s Association. In addition, he has also been known to help out other rotarians with misbehaving computers. I know that everyone really enjoyed his talk, and maybe some other day, he could tell us some of his many other navy and tech support adventures.