Don's Profile, sharing some details about his life

This page holds many threads from my family tree data where I share my life events as "Jamie" / "DJ" etc, each of which appear here & there! You can also visit the “Whom We Might Be” story that I wrote a few years back, a recent report of my Viking ancestry (PDF or Word) or a page that shares my Bio which I built in the 1990's… Enjoy!

So, as "Baby Jamie" (my childhood name, most likely from my Dad) I’ll share that there may not have been any actual parental planning near the end of 1954 (the year prior to my birth) yet my parents clearly connected!!
An egg was en rout at that time through one of my Mum’s Fallopian tubes (at age 23) to her womb, encountering one of the bazillions of sperm wiggling from my Dad (who was then almost 32), which created me!
    (and yes, there’s *no* supporting data for this event, other than my DOB & a low birth-weight!)

I then lived with my Mum & Dad in their upstairs flat in Boscombe between late July & September in 1955…
    As a relevant thread, Bournemouth was part of Hampshire when I was a child & was politically moved to Dorset in 1974
We then moved into our house (scroll down?) at 70 Elmes Road in Moordown that my GrandDad had purchased for us; I grew up there for 14+ years until early January 1971…

Visit my 1950’s eDiary page for more details—scroll up from the end for further info!

Sharing some of my many, many childhood events, around February of 1958, Mum would sit me down in the early afternoon to listen to the Daily Radio Show on BBC 4… those opening words still resonate clearly in my head after more than 50 years: "Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin… " visit this historical website?

The commencement of an enthusiastic reader of fictional & factual books followed in 1959… Mum read books & stories to me since I was born, and I often got to the library in Winton with her—I *so* loved those boy's adventure books! The library was built by Carnegie in Bournemouth ~1959; see the library here; a snap of the reading room from the 50's is also attached to my profile

A couple of "these-are-not-mine” global events in the early 60's do need a mention here…
1st, the Cuban missile crisis that had the world on the very edge of being gone
      (see the Russian submarine story and reference data)
2nd, the JFK assassination in 1963 which is still an apparent mystery!
3rd and last, my stillborn sister Dawn arrived in August of 1963…
      about 4 months after the disaster, my Mum unexpectedly left for a few weeks with my “Uncle Peter”

Moving forwards (sourced from my 2016 thoughts, caught thinking about Dad on Father's Day), the Silk Jacket (see my profile) that Dad brought home from his visit to New York in 1963 (he had been the ship's cook in the Merchant Navy for a few years) as a birthday gift at the age of 8… Just a few days later, I managed to take it off while playing over at Redhill Common (a hot day, as I recall) and it was taken from the bush (or on the ground) where I had dropped it. It never came back… it's still burned into my brain how furious Dad was when I lost his gift :(

The Winton & Moordown Junior School delivered the School Streaming Exam to me in March of 1966; students were "graded" at age 11 to determine whether or not they would succeed with a Grammar School education

Even though my scores were certainly high enough to qualify, there just wasn't enough space in the Grammar School in our town for everyone who qualified… I ended up being sent to the "G-Stream" in the Winton and Moordown Senior School (likely due to geography as much as anything else) where I was eligible for O-levels vs. a CSE; related images are in my profile—view an article of historical interest here…

My very own room upstairs at 70 Elmes arrived as I reached the age of 13—the two upstairs bedrooms had been rented out to lodgers for needed funds & they were moved out as sufficient funds had become available

Dad moved me from the small room where I had been for several years (it went back to being a storage area)
to the back bedroom MyRoom… my very own music studio, snapped a few years later!
It shows that it’s decorated with a pebble-style wallpaper, a blocked-off fireplace, a ½ of a set of bunk-beds (originally against the wall as a full set) where I’d had more than one girlfriend visit—no actual sex, just a lot of cuddling & snogging!! My red shirt hanging on the chair, a neck-tie hanging on the wardrobe handle, the "surround-sound" system with a stack of singles (that I sadly no longer possess) which had been connected to the record-player downstairs through a small hole in the floor, with various other memories <sigh>

In July 1968, my brother arrived and my work as a youngster started… many sunny summer days, spending time learning about the world of work—compliments of Dad, I suppose. I worked in the kitchen for a while at The Sea-Witch Hotel at 47 Haven Rd, Canford, Poole—a 30-minute bike ride from 70 Elmes Rd (see my profile); they changed at some point to the Loch Fyne Seafood & Grill Restaurant

I also worked with my Dad, helping to maintain gardens in Bournemouth, and I spent Saturdays at the family Tape Recorders shop in Bournemouth (which moved to the main street in Boscombe a few years later), learning about electronics; Uncle Reg taught me about transistors & such, circuits & the resistor codes with a mnemonic rhyme like "Betty Brown Runs Over Your Garden But Violet Grey Walks Gold Silver None"… view more info here?

    As I captured details of this 50-year-old record in late 2018, they weren't really stored in my head,
        just from some threads that relate to various sources; many of these are in my profile

I became 14 on a Friday in July of 1969, with no recall at all as to what kinds of gifts might have been given to me by Mum & Dad or my Uncle Peter, and whether or not there was a party… it was likely that I was just out, making trouble. My “good behaviors” started to slip away further & faster as I found myself getting up to a whole lot of no good over at Redhill Common, in Kinson & at other places in and around Bournemouth…

To end my collection of youthful idiocies, I was expelled from the Winton & Moordown Senior school in mid-September 1970… the 2nd kid to be expelled (Jules Stravinsky was the 1st) from 5G for being a problem child.
Am guessing that my Dad knew not what to do when this happened… perhaps the final straw on the camel's back for him? Who will ever know… ?

On Monday, December 15th, 1970 I was taken across town (at the young age of 15½) by my Dad to the British Army Recruitment Office at 244 Holdenhurst Rd in Bournemouth, just 10 minutes from my childhood home at 70 Elmes Rd where he signed me up for a stint in the Army; visit my eDiary for some history?

I was then posted to Soltau, living in the barracks for a year+ (with a girlfriend or 2, my 1st actual sex!!) before Jane & I met and were married; our 1st car was in May of 1976, where Jane's income at the barracks made it available

Then, in August of 1976 my 1st major life-changing event arrived… I was out playing soldiers in the woods (with Sgt. Gary Coude) near Stadtverwaltung, about 50km SE of Hanover in Bad Salzdetfurth, Hildesheim, Niedersachsen, Germany, where I ended up taking a swan dive from our 432 (trying to release coolant from the overheated radiator), fracturing both elbows & wrists… this changed the rest of my natural-born life. I ended up at BMH Hanover ~6 weeks after the accident (in October 1976), where I had surgery & other treatments

I was then moved to BMH Greenwich (at the Royal Herbert Hospital), in January 1977 for further repairs. Jane & I spent ~3 months in a small upstairs room at Jane's parents' house in Eastleigh while I drove up to London & back every few days. View more details in my 1970’s eDiary?

On October 10, 1977 I received my medical military discharge at the Catterick Garrison after the Army had spent 18 months attempting to repair my elbows; was tagged at 30% disabled with their inadvertent failure…

The Army then granted me my 2nd life-changing event: a 6-month period of Government-funded retraining.
I learned how to repair mainframe-computers as a field engineer at the Control Data Institute (77 Wells St, London) between September 26, 1977 & March 31, 1978. Those "innate intuitive technical skills" allowed me to graduate with a certificate that shows all aspects of the learning as straight-A's, at the top of my class…
See some background?

Jane & I then got into our 1st place outside of the military, a middle-floor flat at 103 Central Hill in Upper Norwood, West Norwood, London between October 12, 1977 & March 1978; we lived there for ~6 months while I rode the Tube to the CDI in London. An interesting note: I caught the full address for this flat from a letter sent to me by Kim Nott in 1977; I'd retained the envelope and found it in a storage box of photo's in perhaps 2014!

Whilst riding the Tube, I recall a moment where I simply got lucky… I think I was wearing a long brown coat and was being pushed near the door (not at all crowded in the tube) by what was likely a thug… his friend said "he's big" so perhaps that was why they didn't want to kick the sh*t out of me. Guess we'll never know!

Before I graduated from the CDI, I had started searching for work, and successfully interviewed with Burroughs Corp at the HQ of the Midland Bank at Staples Corner in London (off of the Edgeware Rd, at the North Circular Rd)

This was in early 1978 (Jan or Feb) with Tim Bowler, who assessed my mechanical abilities to disassemble & reassemble (successfully!) a huge printer transfer box which was full of rust & dust (!), with Pete Tinson (my shift boss), and others; they all liked me enough to offer me a job as a Computer Field Service Engineer with 12-hour shifts, on a 4-4-6 day/night rhythm… my new world!

Starting there in April 1978, I found the time to learn about writing code to drive devices (using Algol for "SPO-CANDE") while maintaining the mainframe CPU's & associated intelligent peripherals, with many accomplishments in my 3½ years there

Jane & I found and moved into an upstairs flat at 89 Fairfax Road in Haringey (which is near the Alexander Palace, which burned to the ground in 1979) to be closer to Staples Corner (just 20 minutes away). We brought our 1st house (an end-row terrace) at 19 Albany Road in Upper Edmonton in August 1978… a recent Google street view shows that it has been destroyed & rebuilt

In October of 1979 I was sent to the Burroughs training center in Paoli, PA for a 6-week course on the B-7700 computers… this was my 1st trip to the US and it sadly led to my 3rd life-changing event; many, many memories / none are yet shared

I chose a couple months later to depart from my life with Jane to the US of A, and, having chased paperwork etc for several months, arrived at JFK, New York, on a Thursday in July of 1980… I was hauling a pair of very heavily filled large suitcases, the contents of each had been carefully filtered prior to my departure (which, retrospectively, was really unhappy) that held my entire life. Picked up at the airport by my then wife-to-be & her sister, we got to see the Statue of Liberty more than once as she drove us to her home to Philadelphia. My immigration ½ was later held in Washington, District of Columbia (actually at the Baltimore office)

We lived for a year+ (between July 11, 1980 & November 1981) with our son in a 4th floor apartment in Silver Spring, Montgomery, MD, chosen as part of my Burroughs transfer from the Midland bank in London to the basement of the World Bank HQ at 900 19th St NW, Washington, DC 20006

I managed to leave Burroughs in November 1981 for Fairchild (in Germantown, MD), after stepping on some toes at the World Bank HQ… we then lived in Sterling Park, Loudoun, VA for 2 years, a rented split-level house where our 2nd son was born

I'd had an interview at a job fair in September where I met Ted Stathis, who hired me as a non-graduate of Computer Science in any formal way. I came in as a Software Engineer & stayed for 3½ years successfully designing/implementing embedded real-time control applications: an Avionics Recon Control Subsystem, a MIL-STD-1553 Bus Control & Monitoring Unit, the 16-Mbps Satellite TDMA Comm Encryption System & a Remote-site Diagnostics Package for a large network, and others. As Lead Engineer for teams of up to 8 SW engineers, I was responsible for overall systems & software design, the timely delivery of high-quality product software, all of the planning & coordination of my team members' work, training & technical reviews of team members & other engineers, and configuration management of all project software

While working at Fairchild, we purchased our 1st US house in November 1983 in Germantown, MD; a newly built end-row townhouse with a basement & a communal pool, and spent ~2½ yrs there

In March of 1985 I started an independent business in the basement of our home, Creative Logic Software, LLC, leaving Fairchild at that time. I spent $4,000 & change on a brand-new IBM PC for my consulting business, with (literally) 250k of memory, a 132-character printer (for printing reams of code), no HDD at all (just dual floppy drives) & a text-only monitor. Pretty hard to believe, looking back!

Then, in July of 1986 I was able to gain a contract (using CLS) with the X-ray team at GE Medical Systems in Waukesha, WI and went on to a full-time role there, spending 23+ years with the General — Black-Hat Computer Wizard, Manager, Compliance Champion, and many others…

My CLS business website (while no longer active) still shares some significant information, and some related activities over the intervening 30 years are also captured in my work history, for your enjoyment!

I moved our family in February 1987 from our home in Germantown MD into a rented house in Brookfield, WI near to my GE work & in May 1988, brought and moved into a house in Oconomowoc, WI a 100-year old Cape Cod with a really nice lake view (!) & access to many things. We stayed there until early 1994, when that 14+years-long disastrous relationship finally ended & I moved out

My 2nd son, Alex sadly passed away in January of 2002 and is remembered here and with a tombstone from his mother in the Oconomowoc Cemetery

My current spouse Sandy & I began our new lives in 1994 and were married in March of 1997, celebrating our vows on a patio of the Loewes Hotel on Coronado Island, San Diego

We rented half of a jointly-occupied 2-family lake house at Lake Keesus for the summer in 1996, and around my birthday we purchased & moved into a house near Sussex, a large 4-bedroom house on an acre. Nice woods, basement, etc where we had our lives for many years…

We then built our new 3-bedroom house on 1.5 acres in the same area & moved into the house in late 2004…

After 10+ years there, I was renamed as "Grampy Don" by Maxwell Bridges in November 2014 and we then moved south for our grandkids to a place that's near Atlanta, Georgia… we're still living there as of the writing of this report!

Please visit my eDiary for the latest news updates?

Some final thoughts about myself… today’s Anthropic Principle states that we, as living, conscious observers, must necessarily find ourselves in a place with conditions suitable for life, or else we wouldn’t be here to observe those conditions.

Today’s Global "Belief Systems" actually drive each individual towards (or away from) religious perceptions, all of which are learned before you’re knee-high—I grew up in a seaside town in the Southern England (view place info above ?) with nothing but negative views from my Dad about religion…

Passing on from my local senior school (without graduating) to a northern-England military school in 1970, and eventually on to America, my travels have blessed me with perspectives on such things as religion, life & historical things from my meeting, knowing & loving the many, many people in countries around the world

Best in life? To be outside with Mother Nature whenever possible, walking/biking/driving a convertible, camping, fishing, etc… also helping with the wife’s delightful gardens (that were) around our little house on a hill in south-eastern Wisconsin — we live today near Atlanta, Georgia where our gardens are a delight!

When being outside is difficult, relaxation is achieved by watching movies, history, nature or geographic shows on our cable-based TV system (DVR included), by scanning & sharing global news from my PC (Google news) in the early am, sometimes by simply reading and listening–Ray Kurzweil’s work continuously entrances my views, as do observations about certain people that are leaders in parts of America, yet lie to your face on a daily basis!

I am also passionate about working with computers in many ways, from fixing, fiddling (& fighting!!) with various aspects of them to teaching folks about them, as well as creating tools/applications & web-sites; my (now closed) Creative Logic Software, LLC business shares some examples of this…

To close out this page (yes, many “bits of my life” were skipped—visit my tree page for more?), as the direct author of every person in my family tree (some were inherited, some imported), many branches show my 90+ generations in their names (see an example), as well as the places of their events, their notes, the sources & citations (all downloaded), with many obtained quotations, episodic comments, pictures and such (and yes, for *each and every* item) the "Three of Me" would like to share that We Sure Do Like To Write!!

Regards, Don (along with George & Nod) who may be "DJ" in these pages…

Feel free to share your thoughts, comments or criticisms etc via eMail? Cheers!

Some relevant advisories:
    (1) My family tree data is All Rights Reserved © April/1988 – date Don Shave
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Created with RootsMagic Genealogy Software in April, 2016 & last updated in November, 2024
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