Bob's Journey

Family, work, 
and hobbies 
help us grow 
and live through 
the challenges 
life throws our way. 

Here is 
Bob's story:

In the Beginning

To be Continued ...

Besides my family, there has been work and hobbies. Work for me started out as a neighborhood grocery delivery boy in Seattle (that doesn’t include lawn mowing and car washing jobs). I was in the sixth grade and made 10 cents delivering groceries to apartments around the store.

My mother said I needed to get a real job, so in the ninth grade I went to work for Safeway as a box boy.  I worked for Safeway all through high school and became an apprentice checker before finishing high school. Working as a checker presented many opportunities. One such opportunity came when the manager of the Safeway computing division office. He regularly came through my check stand. We chatted and at one point he said, why don’t I come out for an interview. The prospect of getting into the computer field in 1964 excited me. The interview went very well and he offered me a position. Life has it’s ebbs and tides, one of those ebbs and tides was giving up a day time job for a graveyard shift, another was that my salary went from a whopping $2.12 an hour to $1.88. It seemed like an opportunity that should be attempted, after all, I could always go back to checking…

Bob Bolam working for Safeway

I stayed with Safeway for 5 years. I was always looking for another opportunity. I went into my boss’s office at Safeway to ask, “how does a person get off graveyard shift” (12:00 midnight to 8:30 am)? His answer was, “are you planning on dieing anytime soon”? Well, Boeing was looking for people who had computing experience, so I decided I would give them a try, 30 years later I retired at age 55. Pretty cool.

Bob's friend Terry Henderson

 

Boeing presented many, many exciting opportunities such as working on the most powerful computers in the world (except for the US government). In computing at Boeing, there were two paths. Either you went into financial computing, or you went into engineering computing. I enjoyed the engineering more; it usually came with more employment risks because if the program wasn’t funded, well you can guess the next thing that could happen.

Projects that I got to work on included such things as: 747, 757/767, (and later, 777); helping rescue Apollo 13; Space Station; computer programming; Management and project management. My work on Space Station consisted of ordering all of the computers that supported the development of the space station. That was so interesting.

As a manager, I managed the implementation and operation of Boeing’s video teleconferencing system. This satellite based system allowed Boeing to talk to its remote manufacturing sites, sub-contractors and government organizations without traveling. It truly was one of the most interesting jobs I had in my life.

I retired in 1999 as a project manager for the Renton Commercial Division. Basically, all a project manager is, a highly paid baby sitter. But, it paid the bills. 

   Visitors to our Bob's Journey - Work Life page since March 2002

  If you'd like to email Bob with questions about his journey, click on the envelope!