Jim Fleming: a short bio:

Raised: By wonderful Grandparents on a farm in mid Missouri Ozarks. Did chores and ran my small game traps before walking 1.25 miles to a road where my schoolbus would come (grades 1-12). We lived off the land, our kitchen stove and winter heating fuel being wood. My first major birthday gift was a beautiful...wood axe. These were happiest years of my life.

Age 18-23: Highschool valedictorian came with a mini-scholarship to Univ of MO at Columbia. But Grandmother died, so I had to feed myself. Rented a room at a rooming house and got a job at a local shoe factory. There, in 4 years at that sweathouse, I progressed from freight elevator operator to Heel-fitter, best-paying non-mgmt skilled-labor job there.

Age 23-26: Mother at age 50 in St Louis had a heart attack, so I moved there to help her recover. There, I lucked into a night shift job at headquarters of that shoe factory, wiring then new IBM punch-card accounting machines. I could work nights, and I could work hard. So I progressed quickly to Night Shift supervisor, then to company's new "Brain Room" (an IBM 705 Generation One mainframe computer), moving from Operator to nightshift Supervisor & Programmer.

Federal Career. Tiring after 4 years on night shift, I took Federal Civil Service entrance exam and was hired by DoD as computer programmer. In next 12 years, I moved up ADP's career ladder: Analyst, Specialist; 1st-line Supervisor; 2nd-line Supervisor. Mother then had a fatal 2nd heart attack, so I applied for and was hired at Fort Ritchie, Maryland...an alternate Pentagon hardsite near Camp David. There, I provided off-site programming support to Joint Chiefs of Staff at The Pentagon near DC. In next 18 years, I installed LAN's at temporary Military Command Posts in Saudi, Bosnia, Somalia, etc.

Retired--from all that now. Hallelujah! Currently catching my breath; finding time for personal interests; giving back a bit to Community via volunteer activities. Slowly learning how to "wind down" after a fast track career pace. Smelling God's beautiful roses daily. Hoping to thin down to Thoreau's "Simplicity" level soon, maybe even RV size. But don'tcha know, some lifetime keepsakes are still too precious to ever pitch.

LAN=Local Area Network (of PC's)
DoD=Department of Defense (US Army, AF, Navy CG, Marines, Reserves
ADP=Automatic Data Processing (i.e., computers or IBM accounting machines)