Gene Dennebaum (Aka: Denny)                                                                                                            12/29/2008

In Country: Aug '69 to Aug '70.

Arrived Sp4, Rotated home as Sp5. MOS: 31S30 Tactical Crypto Repair.

After I got back to the world in August of 1970, I completed my 3 yrs at Fort Hood Texas. Still doing crypto maintenance for an MI battalion developing sensing and other classified stuff. Couldn't wait to get out.

I took my R&R to Hawaii, spent the time with my girl. Married her when I got home, we had two boys. Chris will be 30 in September, Matt 28 in June. Their mom and I divorced in the late 70's.

I attended Drexel University in Phila in '71 as a EE student, that was a mistake. I couldn't sit still and there was too much fun to have with the six friends sharing our rented house. So I was working on a concrete crew and enjoying life when one day I woke up with an incredible pain in my chest. At the hospital, I learned it was a punctured lung. They stuck a tube in my chest and stuck me in a ward. The guy I was working for fired me and I was on welfare. NICE WORK GENE!

So after recovery, I got serious. Calling on my digital electronics training from the Army, and the teamwork experience I had with you guys, I went looking for a job. In 1972, a head hunter connected me up with a Cupertino, Calif company named Measurex. They make digital sensing and controls equipment, mostly for the paper industry. They moved me from Phil, Pa through upstate New York, then in '75 to the mountains of New Hampshire. I'm still here. I was one of their senior technical specialists responsible for new system installs and custom or advanced application of their systems all over the eastern US. I left Measurex in '85 to work for a paper company. They also kept me on the road in mills from Louisiana to Maine. While working for them I moved from controls to Information Systems and managed a group of guys responsible for networks, servers and phones.

So in '99, when the company who owned the mill was facing bankruptcy and offered a voluntary severance package, I said "I'll take that". Now that was 1999... you remember Y2K. I immediately offered my services to help them remediate their systems. They hired me and away we went. I never stopped working. I currently offer my services to a different local paper mill. Much of my work today involves Total Quality and Continuous Improvement methods and systems. I do custom application development and enjoy the challenges of working with a wide range of people. Keeps me on my toes.

I met my wife Annette in NH. Her first husband was a Measurex employee and moved into the area with their two kids in '77. We married in '83 and she has put up with me ever since. Amazing... the patience of some people. We have no children together, that's ok. The four we have between us are quite enough. So far, it's Annette's kids that have brought me the pleasure of grandkids. Dawn has two girls and Todd two boys.

So no more business travel, no airports, no motels and no insane pace. We have a "Camp" in the woods at Nash Stream Bog. We have dogs, I do some fly fishing and as much bird hunting as possible. I love to cook and experiment in the kitchen and we spend lots of time with the grandkids. Life is much better.

Now that I'm older I have pastimes. (Which means I sometime have time to burn.) One of my obsessions (pastimes) is digital pictures. (Some of you will remember my first greetings to you after 30 yrs as "Hi there, got any pictures?")  Another pastime is websites. 2ndclsu.com was the first site I've ever built and I learned a ton through doing it. We now host websites for the 2nd, 6th and 7th CLSU's, the CLSC-V as well as my business and personal pages. If you want to see a bunch of pictures of my life and the things in it, follow this link to My Personal Pages and check out the photo galleries. The site changes all the time. I use it for family stuff and sharing images with friends.

So there you go, that's My Story... and I'm stickin' to it.

Here's a picture of me ('02) with my grand daughter Rachel.