Tuesday, July 6, 2010

THOMAS HOLFORD

Thomas and his wife Carolyn are living in Corcoran, MN. They have one child, Eboni and three grandchildren.

Tom is currently "Employed as a Pr. Manufacturing Engineer at Honeywell Aerospace in Minneapolis, MN. since July 1987".

So what has he been up to all these years in our neighboring state? "I earned an A.S. in Automotive Technology from Madison Area Technical College in 1974. I started working for Oscar Mayer the same year as an Automotive and Truck Technician. I lived in Verona at the time. In 1985 it was time for a career change so I quit my job, married my girlfriend Carolyn, and moved to Menomonie, WI to attend U.W. Stout (the MIT of Wisconsin). At Stout I earned a B.S. in Manufacturing Engineering and an M.S. in Management Technology. In 1987 we moved to Minneapolis where I accepted a position with Honeywell Aerospace where I have worked in various engineering and leadership positions ever since. We design and manufacture navigation and control products for defense and aerospace customers. We are the world's largest producer of ring laser gyros and RLG based inertial management units.

I am an avid outdoorsman and travel throughout Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, and the Dakotas each year in pursuit of fish and game with Carolyn and our trained Labrador Retriever Chip. We also enjoy fishing and and hiking in the mountains by our family's cabin in La Veta, Colorado. Our home is in Corcoran, MN west of Minneapolis."

How about some favorite memories? "I don't get back to Madison very often, but I have always thought of Madison as one of the most beautiful cities in the country, and I enjoyed growing up there.

In school my favorite classes were math and science (go figure). My trigonometry teacher had a positive influence on my future interest in engineering........can someone help me remember who it was ? Anyone in my class - help me out. I was also greatly influenced by Joel Maturi and he is now athletic director at University of Minnesota here in the Twin Cities.

I also fondly remember Mixed Chorus and smoking in the boys room !"

Hope you can make the trip !

1 comment:

Mary Kay Johnson said...

the math teachers that come to mind are Mr. McGivern, Ms Ramsden and Sr. Alana(at least I think that is her name) Sr. Ralph also taught math.
Hope that you can make the reunion weekends one of the times you travel to Madison--Lake Wingra may not be the greatest for fishing...but it does add to the beauty of MAdison!!!