I served with Pak 8 - 1963 to 1965. After leaving the University of Minnesota, where it was 20 below zero, I was stationed to the Island of Sandwip ten miles off the coast of Chittagong where it was 110 degrees in the shade. My offside was Md. Saddique, who still lives in the city of Chittagong with four daughters and one son. I worked on the "Handbook of Construction" and started three cyclone shelters on the island a few bridges and school buildings. I have copies of the three handbooks of Construction, Building Design and the Manual of Standard Bridge Design if any one wants them.
You never understand at the moment how an event or person changes your life forever. The good Peace Corps doctor in Dhaka said I had Sprue and my teeth were in terrible condition. He sent me to Bangkok to recover before returning me to my parents and friends in Philadelphia. Wow! A paid vacation in heaven. Dino's the Peace Corps bar on the corner on Soi 27 and Sukimvit was well stocked with pretty girls, cheap beer and Kao Pad [Thai fried rice]. I asked my dentist to spread my appointments out as far as possible. Three months later I left a happy and healthy man.
The Pan Am office in Dacca was kind enough to let me plan my return ticket with 17 stops be tween Dacca and home. I wanted to see it all; India, Burma, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore with the next stop Vietnam??? President Johnson announced that he was sending 125,000 solders to Vietnam to stop the dominoes from falling.
On arrival in Saigon I only had money to stay a few days. The rest of Asia would have to wait. As a Catholic I had been putting money into the collection box for years, it was now time to get something in return. I went to the Queen of Peace Church and asked Father Crawford, a missionary priest, if he could put me up for a few days and I would be moving on to Philadelphia. As it happened he was born in North Philly three miles from my house but a generation ahead of me. Father knew that the engineering companies in Saigon were manning up to work for the incoming army. He arranged an introduction and I was working for Pacific Architects and Engineers [PA&E] on Monday morning at $2000 dollars a month. That collection money was the best investment that I ever made.
My first job was to work with the US Forces to master plan their base structure. I got a top secret security clearance, a helicopter and free access to fly almost anywhere in South Vietnam. I met my future partners Tom Henry and Charlie Kirkwood in other divisions of PA&E. We believed if this company could make it so could we. We set up a company, Applied Technical Services [ATS] and signed on with the US Navy to repair their river boats. These were 30 foot high speed patrol boats that got shot up on a regular basis. In two years we had 200 people, two dry docks and a marine railway working 24/7.
I shared a few beers with Dale Evens from Pak 8 who was working with another engineering company in Saigon. Tom Henry and I settled into the top floor of an apartment house next to the Saigon Central Market; maids, cooks, drivers — life was good. The only real problem was that the Viet Cong were using our tall apartment building as an aiming point to fire their rockets at the Central Palace a few blocks behind us. Our dining table was on the roof patio. We watched the nightly fireworks with the Jolly Green Giant, a C130 airplane with Gatling Guns firing 3000 rounds a minute at the Viet Cong who were firing their rockets over our building at the city. We survived and sold ATS in 1972 to move on to Singapore.
In 1973 the Army I helped move into Vietnam was now leaving. Nixon had made peace with China who then cut the rail lines from Russia to Hanoi leaving the North with little to fight with. As the US Army pulled out Tom, Charlie and I set up a business to purchase surplus equipment the army was leaving behind. As each base was evacuated the US Government Disposal Office would auction off everything left on the base. This included Caterpillar bulldozers, trucks, electric power generators, air compressors, tools and misc equipment. We bought 3500 tons over two years moving it to Singapore and reselling it to the South East Asian construction companies. The income from this business funded our next business General Diesel Supplies, a franchise from General Motors for all of their diesel products.
As luck would have it, the price of oil jumped from $1.25 a barrel to $30 dollars a barrel. All the oil exploration companies were moving to Singapore at the same time as our surplus equipment was arriving. We set up a shop we called "Max Factor" after the famous Hollywood makeup man to clean up and sell the equipment. What we bought for .05 cents on the dollar was now selling for $1.10. If an oil company ordered new equipment it would take six months to deliver. We had it available on the spot. We sold those companies in the early 80's.
We had learned enough from the oil companies to move up stream into oil exploration, drilling and production. Tom, Charlie and I started Pennsylvania General Energy in 1980 in Warren, PA. We now have 130 people and 1100 wells in the area. [www.penngeneralenergy.com]
The three of us started in Asia forty-five years ago and continue to work together, a rare partnership.
I serve as a Director of Operation Smile, a nonprofit volunteer group that performs free cleft lip and palate surgery for children in forty countries. Last year we helped 14,000 children with a staff of 130 people. [www.operationsmile.org]
I also serve as a Director of the Research Center for Bioelectrics at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. We study the effects of high energy electric fields on cell function with a staff forty professors and students. The center has completed work on melanoma tumors and are now working on liver tumors. We have Department of Defense contracts to study wound cleaning and healing and pain control. [www.odu.edu/engr/bioelectrics]
Juliette and I were married in 1972 in Saigon. We moved to the USA in 1986 settling in Virginia Beach, VA. She worked as a translator for Operation Smile in the 90's and is now a Director of "The Children's House" a Montessori school in Saigon run by the Daughters of Charity. We have three sons, James [38] is a lawyer in Portland Oregon, Michael [35] is a nightclub owner in San Diego,CA and Pieter [32] is in the real estate business in Norfolk Virginia.
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