Dad: Construction management/field engineering/estimating, mostly for large office buildings. At one point I’d accumulated 3 hard hats from our Saturday visits. Best one was standing on top of a 24-story building that wasn’t finished, just sheet metal over steel with a cable around the perimeter. It was nighttime, and rainy. He was a philosophy major in college, but fortunately was also good with math.
Mom: Mostly medical office support. She owned her own business for about 10 years, doing billing and collections for physicians and a few lawyers (she and Dad got into PCs early and cranked out paperwork in our basement). She’s also an artist, but hasn’t stuck with it consistently.
Father - As I understand it, he was an up & coming executive-track guy at the local power company until WW-II. That changed him forever. After the war, he built a business in vending machines, sold it, ran a yacht club, went to work for someone else filling vending machines as a “temporary job” and did that until he retired.
Mother - Prior to getting married just after WW-II started, she was a waitress. During WW-II, she did that same job at my grandmother’s restaurant. After the war, she helped my father with his business & shortly after became a SAHM.
Dad was an aerospace engineer and ultimately became Chief Scientist of Rocket Science (I think that was his title) at a major aerospace corporation. He designed several components of the space shuttle and hold their patents, and was sent to Russia and the Ukraine several times on friendly information-trading business trips.
Mom was a very demanding high school English teacher. She initially got a Masters in history–her biggest passion–only to discover that’s what most coaches teach. So, she got the Masters in English, too.
I teach 6th grade math and science, but writing, literature, and grammar are my passions…so I suppose I have taken after a little bit of both of them in my career path.
My dad grew up during the great depression. After graduating HS he worked at a factory making terra cotta building tile. His older sister went to nursing school, but there was no money for him to go to college. His father and grandfather were carpenters and after serving in WWII he became a cabinetmaker, then a framing carpenter when custom cabinetry became out of fashion. He and my mom both worked at the Hoover Co. during WWII, before he went into the Navy. They made war materials. He had to move from Ohio to Arizona in his early 40’s, due to health problems.
After the war, my mom was a SAHM until the children were older and then she worked at Motorola, growing chips.
Dad (now retired, mostly):
Police Officer for 30 yars
Managed a shopping center
Executive Director for local arts countil
Wal-Mart, in the hardware department
Teacher (English, art) at Colorado’s largest prison (ot his BA in English at age 66)
Now he substitute teaches at three area high schools.
Mom was a wife and mother most of her life, but did clerk for several years in the local Hallmark Store.
He was a philosophy major in college, but fortunately was also good with math.