So... when you were raised, what did your father do for a living? (55, federal)

[DubbleT]

My dad started out as a punch card operator, finished up as a programmer for an aircraft engine plant.
I still remember the boxes of used punch cards he'd bring home for us to play with.

[maciesmom]

My father was a military officer. We moved frequently for his job. I recall, during the fall of Saigon watching TV news as helicopters were pushed off a ship into the sea after running out of fuel from evacuating Saigon. My dad was aboard that ship. He served over 30 years then had a second career in the private sector.

[pathrunner]

My stepfather, who entered my life long after I became an adult, was an aerospace engineer. He never went to a day of formal education regarding it. He just learned on the job, like so many did back in the day. He started being a contractor and worked all over the country: Alaska, South Dakota, Washington, but owned a home in Southern California and worked for all the former aerospace companies there: Aerojet, General Dynamics, Boeing, McDonnell-Douglas, etc.

[brightdoglover]

Jewish grandfather was a tailor, the other grandfather died working on the docks.

My father drove a taxi. Very smart man but never used the GI Bill.

[pathrunner]

Originally Posted by brightdoglover

Jewish grandfather was a tailor, the other grandfather died working on the docks.

My father drove a taxi. Very smart man but never used the GI Bill.

I have found that a lot of taxi drivers are whip smart. I once worked 2nd shift for a law firm in San Francisco for awhile. By law they had to provide transportation home so 5 nights a week I would ride in a taxi. Met some very interesting people that way.

[Nodpete]

My dad was a dynamiter in an iron mine. He told my brother and me that he would make sure we never got a job in a mine. It was hard work, wet, cold and dark. And didn't pay much.

[Nightengale212]

My now late father was career Navy and joined in 1940 and retired in 1965 with the rank of BMC and saw combat in WWII, Korea, and Vietnam. Two months following his military retirement he took a job as a janitor for a large insurance agency and worked his way up over the next few years to building maintenance supervisor. He worked at this company which he loved more than the Navy for 32 years retiring at the age of 74. My father passed in 2010 at the age of 87, and the president of his company as well as many colleagues attended his funeral as he was very much liked and respected at this company.

[Ken_N]

My father worked for Bell Telephone/AT&T in NYC all his life. He was also in the Navy in WWII and then the Navy Reserves.

[Wileykid]

My dad was an electrical engineer. During the 60's, he was part of a team that designed some of the first cruise missiles. He went on to do other things that he could not talk about, and ended up on the design team that worked on the computers that ran the rocket engines for the space shuttle. I remember in the early 70's when they were testing the engines, after a test, he would come home with a 6" stack of computer printout to figure out what went wrong when they had problems.

[Bungalove]

After my Dad sold his gas station when he left the Air Force, he became a wholesale pharmaceutical rep. He may have done something in-between those two jobs, but I was too young to remember. He was an excellent sales rep though, and knew a lot about medicine and medical conditions. One of his long-term clients was a closed order of nuns, who communicated with him by notes sent in a rotating shelf in a wall. They sent lovely mass cards at his funeral, even though he wasn't Catholic.