T.Lee’s Life Story – Prologue
Whenever an event happens that is so important to the world that it may happen only once in a person’s lifetime, American newspapers will often describe this type of event as "The (news) Story of a Lifetime!" For this blog, I have chosen this title, half in seriousness and half in jest, because this blog…
T.Lee’s Life Story – Chapter 1, My Childhood
Let’s start out by first defining what I mean by childhood. A person’s childhood may refer to different age ranges depending on the focus of the conversation. In terms of maturity, I don’t consider a person to be a mature adult until he or she is at least 25 years old. However, by American law,…
T.Lee’s Life Story – Chapter 2, My College Life
In Chapter 1, you learned that I grew up under humble circumstances and that my parents were poor and uneducated. Nevertheless, my parents provided my brothers and me the basic necessities of life, and we never went to bed hungry. Though uneducated, my parents fully understood the value of education and had always impressed upon…
T.Lee’s Life Story – Chapter 3, My Navy Life
Chapter 3 begins my Navy years. I have just graduated from college with a Bachelor of Engineering degree in Electrical Engineering. I am 22 years old and just starting to consider myself a man at this stage in my life…but not quite. I still have no real, adult working experience yet, but I am about…
T.Lee’s Life Story – Chapter 4, Westinghouse
Continuing my saga, I have just left the Navy and accepted my first civilian job with Westinghouse Electric Company. It is August, 1980, and I have moved to Zion, Illinois, to work in the Westinghouse Nuclear Training Center (WNTC). I am an expert in Navy nuclear power technology but a novice in commercial nuclear power…
T.Lee’s Life Story – Chapter 5, My Contracting Life
Let’s see where we are on my timeline. Chapter 5 begins that part of my life when I began “renting” myself out for hire on an hourly contract basis, usually for one year at a time. Doing this kind of work is called “contracting”. Due to the short-term nature of some of the contracts, I…
T.Lee’s Life Story – Chapter 6, Working In-House at a Utility
Recall that a utility is a company that owns a nuclear plant. Headhunters do NOT own nuclear plants. As a contractor, I worked for headhunters. In this chapter, I will take a job as a permanent employee working directly for a utility at their nuclear plant. Nuclear plants are easily recognizable by the tall, dome-shaped…
T.Lee’s Life Story – Chapter 7, My Non-Nuclear Career Change
In April 2003, at age 50, I decided it was a good time to change careers. For the first time in my life, I was unemployed (for an extended amount of time), and I have to admit that it felt good not having to get up early every morning to go to work. I took…
T.Lee’s Life Story – Chapter 8, Westinghouse Again
Chapter 8 of my life brought me full circle. When I left the US Navy in 1980, I began my professional civilian nuclear career with Westinghouse. After working at Westinghouse for 10 years, I quit Westinghouse in 1990 to do contracting work for higher wages. In 2010, 20 years later, circumstances caused me to return…
T.Lee’s Life Story – Chapter 9, Contracting Again
At the end of Chapter 8, I quit Westinghouse to return to the contracting world. Chapter 9 discusses my contract jobs after leaving Westinghouse.
T.Lee’s Life Story – Chapter 10, Retirement
This post will describe the final chapter of my life — my retirement — the inevitable end that we all come to sooner or later. At age 65, I became eligible for and enrolled in a government-subsidized medical/health insurance program called Medicare. My wife had some good fortune in the stock market with Tesla stock,…