I was born in Detroit, Michigan on August 29, 1924. Not in a log cabin as some have thought, but in a perfectly ordinary hospital! My father operated a flying school, at that time, located at the corner of Plymouth and Middlebelt roads. A few years after my birth, my sister Joyce was born (March 3, 1928 to be exact). My father died of pneumonia on February 5, 1933 and shortly thereafter, my mother took my sister and me to her mother and father’s home in Dundee, Scotland. We did not remain there very long and in 1934 we were once again on the Atlantic Ocean heading for the new world. This time we were bound for Toronto, Ontario, in Canada where my Uncle Will (my mother’s brother) lived. We remained here until after the war (I will not bore you with an uninteresting 3 years in the military) when we again relocated. This time we were off to Southern California and the land of sunshine! I attended UCLA for two years and then took off for a year and went to England, where I met my first wife. After our marriage, my wife and I moved to Berkeley, CA where I attended Cal. I graduated in June 1952 and almost immediately my wife and I, and our eleven month old son Christopher traveled to England. We remained there for a little more than 3 years, added to our family with the birth of my daughter Rosemary, then returned to the States. While in England, I had been employed by Caltex Petroleum (UK) Ltd..Upon returning I began employment with Standard Oil Co. of California, one of the parent Co’s. of Caltex. In 1964, Socal sent me (and my family – which now included four children, Brian & James having been born after our return from England) to Iran on an assignment with The Iranian Oil Co’s. a consortium of U.S., British, French and Dutch oil companies operating in Iran. We remained there for 4 years before returning to the U.S., and resuming my job with Socal. Shortly after this my wife and I were divorced. I was remarried on October 19, 1973 to Rita Schmidt whom I had met at an oil industry study group in New York City. In 1982 Chevron (the newly adopted name for Socal ) once again sent me on an overseas assignment. This time it was to London, a very choice assignment! We hoped we would have been able to retire from Chevron while I was on this assignment, but fate decided otherwise. Chevron sold the company (ie Chevron Oil Europe) to Texaco and we were once again on our way back to the “New World”. I retired from Chevron on July 1, 1986. Life goes on!!!
Desmond passed away in 2005.
