Growing up in rural western Pennsylvania offered limited opportunities for the future but I fortunately enjoyed a satisfying engineering career. Three memorable events led to that outcome. The first resulted from a bicycle trip to visit a classmate who was not home so I visited another. Bill showed me his ham radio set and I was absolutely captivated. He graciously gave me a 1958 copy of The Radio Amateurs Handbook which taught me about vacuum tube electronics. A few years later the high school counselor suggested the engineering school at Youngstown State University as an alternative to an...