A Vietnam Veteran Reflects: I Knew at Age 7 I’d Be an Engineer

by Chuck Yarling 

In December of 1952, my dad (a WW II veteran) was an Air Force 2^nd Lt. who transferred to San Marcos (Texas) Air Force Base (which has since been repurposed as the San Marcos Regional Airport and the Gary Job Corps Center). In the meantime, we moved to the housing on Bergstrom Air Force Base, which is now Austin-Bergstrom International Airport.

For some unknown reason, my dad took me to an open house at the engineering school at The University of Texas (UT) in the spring of 1953. While there, I remember we saw very large robots walking or scooting around the floor while we looking at the exhibits. Shortly thereafter, I told my dad I was going to graduate with an engineering degree from UT.

After ten more address changes, we moved to Fort Knox, Kentucky in 1961. My dad was now stationed at an Air Force radar site south of the Fort Knox Army Base.

By the time I graduated from Fort Knox High School in 1963, my 1952 goal was finalized with a plan for me to take pre-engineering courses Southwest Texas State College (SWTSC) that fall for two years, then transfer to UT in 1965 to pursue my Bachelor of Science In Electrical Engineering (BSEE).

In the meantime, my dad was transferred to Vendenburg AFB in California; my mother and sister moved to San Marcos, Texas; and I moved to a dormitory on the SWTSC campus.

For the two years I was at SWTSC, I took my courses, entered the Bobcat Band, and took two years of Air Force ROTC. Then, I transferred to The University of Texas in the fall of 1965 and began taking engineering courses; registered in the UT Longhorn Band; and transferred to their AFROTC group.

However, over the next two years, I was distressed dealing with a medical problem with my mother: getting her admitted to and often visiting her during her stay at Brooke Army Medical Center in Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio. Needless to say, this negatively affected my grades in my engineering classes.

I decided that I needed help if I was going to continue my studies. So I found Dr. Leonardt Kreisle who was the Engineering Counselor. I visited him several times up until late May, 1967, when I got the news that I was being kicked out of UT because of significantly low grades in my engineering courses.

Once that happened, I went to see Dr. Kreisle one last time. In that session he told me something like this: “Chuck, I believe that if you came back at the end of the summer and convinced this committee that you have reformed yourself, they might let you back into UT. However, you wil not be allowed to enroll back into the engineering school.

So I went home and tried to figure out what I needed to do. My first thought was getting into the Arts & Science School, where working on a B.A. math degree made perfect sense to me. It looked like I could graduate in one year.

Then I looked up the requirements to get that degree. In order to graduate next year in 1968, I found I needed several more math courses to get a math degree. However, there was also the need to take courses that were not required for a BSEE degree; but the real problem was two years of a language requirement if I was going to graduate next year. Remember, my personal long term plan was to get a BSEE degree from UT but getting a math degree was now a necessary step to achieving that goal. So that summer I started studying German which I had not studied since taking that language four years ago in high school.

To make a long story short, I took a language placement course and made a score large enough to knock off one year of German. So I was off the the races in my next two semesters with geology as my two science courses, my second year of the German language course, three math courses, one English course, and one government course. Then, of course, two Longhorn Band courses. Taking those courses over the next year led me to graduate on June 1, 1968, with a B.A. in Math.

Unfortunately, once I changed my major from BSEE to a B.A., the AFROTC requirements meant I had lost any chance at becoming an officer with them. But now I also had another problem: the most probable situation of being drafted once I graduated and was no longer in school. 

So I went to see an Army recruiter in San Antonio and told him I wanted to attend Intelligence OCS to become an Intelligence Officer. Then I finally joined the Army on August 17, 1968 and went to Basic Training at Fort Polk in LA; and Combat Engineering Advanced Infantry Triaining (AIT) at Ft Leonard-Wood, MO.

Yep, you probably saw it right away: going to AIT in Missouri meant I was not going to be an Intelligence officer in the Army – as I was promised! I won’t bother to express my unprintable thoughts at that time.

Since I was now going to combat engineering AIT necessarily meant I was going to Combat Engineering OCS at Fort Belvoir, VA, in January, 1969. However, an injury near the end of AIT carried over to OCS. With a thigh-to-ankle cast, I eventually was unable to last but a couple of weeks in OCS. Once that happened, I knew my next stop was going to Vietnam.

So I went back to Austin in June for several weeks of leave. Then I was off to Vietnam and arrived on July 3, 1969. I was then stationed at HQ Co., 26^th Combat Engineering Battalion, in Chu Lai. Because I already had a degree, the First Sergeant chose me to replace the Awards Clerk who had just left for home.

At the end of my tour one year later, I left Vietnam on July 2, 1970 and went back home to Austin. In August, I registered for the Engineering School to complete my BSEE. Yes, they let me back into the school.

In order to supplement my VA and Texas veteran education benefits, I found employment as a repair technician at a number of small fixit shops working on a variety of home electronic devices such as radios, CB equipment, phonograph machines, etc.

Six years later, after eleven years of college, I got my B.S. In Electrical Engineering on May, 22, 1976, a promise I made to myself 23 years ago when I was seven years old!

I went to the Engineering Recruitment Center to find a job. So after a short perod of time, I had one interview, one job offer, and I reported to Beaumont Texas and started working in September 1976 for Welex Corporation. an oil company who supplied trucks and equpment for drilling oil wells.

Over the next four months, I became disenchanted with my job. I was recruited to repair the drilling equipment but it never happened because I was kept doing everything else around each site to which we had been sent to drill wells.

So near the end of January, 1977, I put all my belongings into my car and drove back to Austin. Along the way, I stopped into the Houston corporate office of Welex and told then I quit, why I quit, and gave them an address for them to send my last check.

After looking for a job in Austin, I was hired by Accelerator’s Inc. which was perfect for someone with my background in repairing systems. So my new job was to design a controller system for their new ion implantation system, an accelerator machine used to implant a number of ions into silicon wafers as part of building integrated circuits.

Unfortunately, about a year later, the company started manufacturing the implanter that I helped design, so all of us designers were “let go.” Fortunately, Motorola bought one and offered me a job.

During my seven years at Motorola (1978-85), I eventually became a process engineer that made me an expert on how to ensure any ion implanter was fully prepared to safely deposit specified ions into silicon wafers so that those wafers would continue processing through the manufacturing facilities of semiconductor plants all over the world.

In 1985 I had the opportunity to go see the world. So over the next seven years (1985-1992), I worked for international companies such as Applied Materials, Varian Associates, and two small companies. In 1992, I formed three companies and worked for myself until 2001.

EEESPEC, a consulting company, was an abbreviation of Electronic, Educational, and Entertainment Specialties. Over the years I contracted to do work all over the U.S. and overseas. This included me teaching four different courses that I created and were contracted out with my membership with the American Vacuum Society. These courses were taught all over the US as well as Canada, Taiwan, and Sweden.

Ion Beam Press, a book publishing company/ The reason was to publish books that either I wrote, my co-authors and I wrote; or I contracted selling books written by other authors.

And finally, I started Semiconductor Technology Institute, a training company where eighteen different courses in three different topics in the semiconductor technology field that were taught by nine instructors who were experts in their field. I taught several of the courses within this third company that I formed.

I previously mentioned 2001. The recession of spring 2001 brought an end to all three of my companies. It turned out that in a recession, most industries and corporations cut off all expenses to outside vendors such as mine. My girlfriend at the time gave me an ultimatum by saying, “Chuck. Get a real job or else.” So to keep her happy, I got started looking.

As the summer was coming to a close, I found a new job in August as a math teacher at St. Michael’s Catholic Academy, a private high school. It was a glorious time as I quickly found I was extremely satisfied teaching high school Algebra 2.

Then came May in 2010. I was called into the office by the principle and was given notice that my time there was over. It turned out that they could hire two new college graduate teachers for the price they were paying me.

Having the mindset of an engineer since I was seven years old, I looked around and found my next career – as a tutor. I found a number of companies wherein  parents logged on to find tutors they required. For their children who were struggling with their courses. After a notification to me via email, I could then apply to be the tutor they needed. WyzAnt was one of those companies, and after a short period of time, I was qualified to tutor over 20 subjects.

Today, I am still tutoring a wide variety of elementary, middle and high school, college aged, and adult students in a wide range of subjects.

So, in conclusion, I have two important things to say.

One: I can tell you that I have never regretted that I spent eleven years of college and two years in the Army to get my BSEE degree. I had a wonderful career as an engineer and I eventually became known as an expert in my field. I wrote over 70 articles published in technical journals, conference proceedings, and trade magazines. I also wrote four books on various aspects of ion implantation; and I traveled all over the US and internationally to five different countries. Yes, it was worth the time I previously mentioned that eventually led to a 25-year career as an engineer!

And two: after becoming friendly with some of my students, we might get around to talking about their future, and I always tell them: “If you have a dream of what you want to do in your future, never, ever, give up your dream. And anyone who tells you otherwise, is not your friend! Fire them and find those who will always support you andyour dream. You will eventually find yourself satisfied you kept your dream and will always be glad that you did!

And then I would brief them a short version of the story contained herein!

_________________________

This first appeared in The Havok Journal on February 29, 2024.

Chuck Yarling 

Spec 5, US Army

HQ Co., 26th Combat Engineering Bn.

Chu Lai, Vietnam (1969-1970)

As the Voice of the Veteran Community, The Havok Journal seeks to publish a variety of perspectives on a number of sensitive subjects. Unless specifically noted otherwise, nothing we publish is an official point of view of The Havok Journal or any part of the U.S. government.