Paul barnes


A Karamürsel Survivor


 

 

 

then
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


now


 

     I was an Army brat born in San Francisco, CA.  My father died in 1951 and my mother married another army officer so the moving, etc. continued.  We lived up and down the west coast, my stepfather being in the 6th Army.  We lived in Karlsruhe, Germany from 1953 - 1956.  After his tour was over in Germany,  we went to Fort Knox, KY for a year and then my step father retired and we moved to my mother's home state and city of Little Rock, AR.  I graduated from L.R. Central H.S. in 1958 (yeah, that was the year of the intergration mess). A recession was on, no jobs to be had, I didn't want to go to college, so I joined the Air Force.  While in the AF I was stationed at KAS for 18 months as a 292 and then went to Shu Lin Kou AS, Taiwan for another 15 months.

    When I went to Taiwan, the navy was short of ditty boppers so I got assigned to the navy detachment working in D/F.  Boy was that a trip.  After Taiwan, I got discharged and moved to Denver, Colo for a few months and then back to Little Rock.  Oh yeah, got married to a gal that worked in the U.S. Embassy in Taipei.  What a disaster that was.  We divorced after 7 years and had one son.  I went to work for ALCOA as a laborer in 1963.  One day while tossing 100lb bags of alumina into a boxcar which must have been 120 degrees inside, I decided that was for the birds so I started going to college.  Seven years later I ended up with a MBA and went to work in data processing at ALCOA.  I retired in 1993 after 30 years as the DP manager for three of ALCOA's plants.  After seven years of being divorce, I remarried a widow with two childern and we had one of our own.  Pat and I will be married 29 years in Nov. of 2003.  Now days, I play golf and do my damndest to try and stay out of Pat's way.

Paul E. Barnes