The Fred W. Guymon HISTORY Page
Frederic W. Guymon,
I was born in Kansas City, January 19, 1946, 11:15 pm, but only lived there 18 months.
I guess that makes me a Capricorn/Aquarius, right on the cusp. We moved to St. Joseph, MO
when my dad, Ralph Herbert GUYMON, took a new job. My mother is Helen Marie (BAKER) Guymon.
My dad's parents lived in Kansas City, MO, and my mother's parents lived in several small
towns around Kansas City, MO, and they died while living in Harrisonville, MO.
We moved to St. Joseph, Mo. when I was 18 months old. We had a house out near some warehouses that my dad worked at. My dad used to go 'frogging' near there. There was a wood pile, that I played on until one day I picked up a snake, thinking it was a pretty piece of wood. I remember laying in a field, near a lake, watching fire owrks on the Fourth of July. We then moved into town. The school there was huge, at least to me it was. I think I remember going to the bottom of our street, and getting on a city bus to go to Vacation Bible School. I was no older than six at the time. Times have changed, haven't they.
In June, 1953, we moved to Oak Ridge, TN when my dad took a job with Union Carbide,
well after the Manhattan Project. He was a Nuclear Engineer working on developing
Reactor Designs and Maintenance Planning until he retired.
Oak Ridge was a great town to grow up in. It was, and still is, a small but
very cosmopolitan town of about 30,000 people.
It had a mountain river, the Clinch River, running
around the town's East, South, and West sides until
the Tennessee Valley Authority decided to build
a dam on the river. Then Oak Ridge had a small lake that wound around it,
that we all used for skiing and fishing.
Oak Ridge is nestled between the Cumberland Plateau and
the Smokey Mountains Ranges, about 20 miles from Knoxville.
There are mountains, rivers, creeks, lakes, caves, and parks all over East Tennessee.
We took advantage of as many of them as we could.
I attended the Oak Ridge High School, Class of 1964, ORHS Alumni.
I attended Virginia Polytechnical Institute Fall Quarter of 1964,
Corps of Cadets Rat Class of 1968. I then transferred
to the University of Tennessee, in Knoxville. After receiving my Draft Board Physical, I joined the US ARMY in September of 1965. Basic training at Fort Jackson, SC, and then AIT, Communications
Center Specialist (Teletype) at Fort Gordon, GA. I then received orders to go to the Far East.
When I got to Oakland, CA, I thought I was going to Viet Nam. When I was finally given orders,
however, I was sent to Camp Page, Korea instead,
226th Signal Company in Chun Chon, Korea.
I returned to the USA after 14 months in Korea, To Fort McClellan, Anniston, AL. It was one of the
WAC training centers at the time. I was the 16th noncom assigned to a Teletype Radio Station
that served as backup for the normal land-line teletype CommCenter. We were falling all over ourselves,
because it only took two people to run the station. Six months seemed like six years because we
had nothing to do.
I was then transferred to Fort Bragg near Fayettville, NC. Now I was busy. Six months there went by in no time.
We were erecting new steel buildings, and we had riot training on a regular basis. Fort Bragg was
one of the centers that sent troops out during the riots that were spawned after Dr. Martin Luther King
was assasinated. None of us wanted to go, but we served anyway. We also had some fun (?). Our company was used for volunteers (like
in the Army volunteers) to provide enemy agents for the Ranger training that went on at the post.
I hear that they did not like our guys capturing some of the Ranger guys.
I received an early release from the Army to return to the University of Tennessee. I worked at Union Carbide, in Oak Ridge, during a Summer session, and found out EEs did for a
living. It was okay, but not what I expected. While in school, I worked part time at the local Radio Shack. I decided that I needed a break from school so applied for fulltime work at Union Carbide. I guess I got used to the steady income, and felt I needed to get on with life, because I did not go back to school.
Union Carbide offered me a full time job, at the same time that Radio Shack offered me a store to manage.
Radio Shack was kind of squirrelly. They would not tell me when or where I would be. I chose Union Carbide.
While there, I met and married my wife, Shirley PHILLIPS, and had two great kids, neither of which, came with an instruction book.
I also discovered my true calling. I loved to
program computers. I do ponder my decision of not finishing my EE degree, but those are the choices we make.
I worked at Union Carbide as a Designer, developing the construction drawings for a bunch of projects,
some of which I am not allowed to talk about even today. Then, satisfied that I was going nowhere, fast, in the
company, I accepted an offer to work for Fluor Engineering in Houston, Texas.
We moved to Houston in May of 1981, and I have been with them ever since. Since that time, we changed our name
to Fluor Daniel. My official job was the same, Design, but I started writing computer programs on my own time
to support our Engineering efforts on projects. Finally, I moved from Engineering into the Information Systems
group where I still work today. We have been 'Down Sized', 'Right Sized', 'Outsourced', 'In Sourced', and now
we are forming our own Company, Fluor Signature Services, who will supply outsource services to Fluor Daniel
and other companies. A new adventure to enjoy.
I will likely review this history, and make some modifications to it as time goes.
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