About Wayne
I’m an Air Force brat born in Georgia, USA and raised in a dozen locations across the US and in England.
I did manage to spend my last three years of public schooling (1966 – 1969) in one high school in Jacksonville Florida,
where I learned to sight-read choral music and met a young lady who taught me to love and to play guitar.
She showed me that a life devoted to science and the military would probably not satisfy my soul.
During the three years after high school, I spent one semester as a music major and worked a bunch of jobs
in electronics, driving trucks, wood working, shipyard sheet metal, etc.
because I couldn’t afford to go to college and be lazy and spacy too.
Then I spent a couple of years playing guitar and singing for a living.
When I saw that I didn’t have the self-discipline to make it in the commercial music world without some formal training,
I joined the Navy for the G.I. bill.
That was six of the best jobs I ever had, from 1975 to 1985, and it took me to Hawaii
where I fell in love with and married a wonderful woman from Canada: Charlotte Slater.
Neither of us wanted to lose our surnames, so we formed the Slater-Lunsford Co-operative.
That makes Slater-Lunsford a Hawaiian name. Really.
After ten years in the Navy, I left with a family and a bunch of certifications and still no music degree.
Because of Charlotte, I joined the Roman Catholic Church and soon became a music minister.
That forced me to learn and practice more musical technique and discipline than I had ever had before,
and brought my musical spirit back to life.
After about ten years in various parishes wherever we lived,
Charlotte & I saw that our spiritual needs would be better fulfilled in the International Church of Christ,
and that is where we worship today.
My last and best job in the Navy had been teaching electronics, so I spent the years from 1985 to 1997 teaching and training to teach, but there was little money and much frustration in the public schools where I found employment. I finally got fed up with it and took a job as a Technical Writer in aerospace.
That’s me standing in front of the wing, 4th from your right.
That means that technically I write, but not really. I will write out a procedure or a description when necessary, but since a picture is worth a thousand words, I take a lot of digital photographs. Then I discovered that video goes thirty frames per second, so the equivalent would be 30,000 words per second, or 1.8 million WPM (Words Per Minute) at which rate NONE can type without a computer. Which is my favorite tool, for writing, image processing and video editing, plus database development, web development and communication.
My steady day job and my experience with music and technology have enabled me to stay involved with the Folk Music world which I have loved since the ’60’s.
DesertSong Productions, the organization I co-founded in 2004, is finally gaining momentum and becoming an effective agent for change
in the Antelope Valley’s acoustic music scene.
And THAT is how I landed here.
July 6, 2009 at 3:02 pm
Wayne,
Really nice to read your wordpress weblog. I was a student at NATTC Millington in 1980 and went on to do some Avionics work with radars when I got stationed at MCAS El Toro for most of my Marine Corps years. The Air Station has since been overtaken by the money-ruled Irvine, CA community.
I ended up getting out, moving back to Seattle, getting married and joining the Army as a Watercraft Technician in 1987. We spent 5 years with me sailing Army Watercraft out of Pearl Harbor before we moved to West, “By God” Virginia. I spent 10 years in the Army Reserves as Wire Systems Installer and now I finally found a job I really like as a Freight Inspector for FedEx.
Your ongoing history of occupations and experiences inspires me take a deeper look at mine. I am a long-standing musical buff, with over 3000 albums, and have a broad interest including classic rock, early folk scene and reggae from the Bob Marley era. I never could play an instrument, although I have an upright grand piano and a nice guitar.
While in California I met a woman born and raised in Anaheim and we have settled out here in Martinsburg, WV, in a 100 year old farm house. Life is always a bit out of kilter for us with my 3rd shift hours at the freight terminal but we truly enjoy gardening, astronomy and our favorite past time of ornithology.
Drop me a note if you have the chance.
Jim Rupert
July 21, 2009 at 6:49 am
Hi, Jim. Nice to hear from you. NATTC was an interesting place, wasn’t it? I taught there until 1985, while you were haze grey and under way. I’m glad to hear you found a good job, though that 3rd shift tends to make one crazy most of the time. Your home sounds like a wonderful place– almost magical to someone like me, who lives in a tract house in 120° summer heat on the high desert. It’s taken me a while to get back to you because I’m busy as a cat kicking sand, with my day job, DesertSong and 3 grandsons, but we should stay in touch.