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Deryck True - An Autobiography

I was born on January 20, 1948 - seven weeks premature, in a rather shabby and under-equipped hospital in La Mesa, a small town near San Diego, California. This seeming disadvantage emerged as a blessing years later, when I met a fellow high school student who happened to be blind. Standard medical practice for a "preemy" in the 1940s called for incubation in a 100% oxygen atmosphere. This was later discovered to cause complete and irreversible loss of vision. My hospital never heard of oxygen.

From the age of six I spent all my youth in the Los Angeles suburbs of the San Fernando Valley. It was a great place to be a kid at the time. Lots of open fields to play in and friends to share them with. We played cowboys and Indians of course. It seems to me many of us preferred to be the Indians: dressing up with old torn sheets for headdresses and mom's discarded lipstick for war paint made us feel appropriately fierce. At times there weren't any cowboys to fight so we just whooped and hollered among ourselves, waving pointed sticks at each other.

It was these friends who first introduced me to the Halloween traditions and Trick-Or-Treat. That was when we could go out on our own, with just a brown paper supermarket bag, in home-made costumes, and be gone for hours without our parents worrying that something bad would happen to us. One year I convinced my mother to tear up a bunch of old bed sheets into strips and wrap me up as "The Mummy." Seemed like a good idea at the time. But the shroud strips started unraveling not long after I set out and by the time I returned I was trailing them far behind me - much like Imhotep of movie fame. I fear those innocent, carefree times have now passed beyond the suburban scene.

I grew up with three siblings: in order, sister Dedra and brothers Devin and Dean. We tormented each other in the usual ways, sometimes ganging up on each other. I'm afraid Devin got the worst of it. He had a temper we could tap any time we wanted. I believe there are still doors in that house with paper patches over the holes he kicked in. But strangely, there were times when we got along great. That included the wonderful vacations my family took, often camping or pulling a little Scotsman trailer up and down the state of California. Those were wonderful times. And today, we four are close and loving toward each other, as our parents had always wished.

I attended public schools throughout my primary education. Junior High school was awful (what isn't when you're thirteen?), but I had a great time at Van Nuys High School. In 1963 a friend introduced me to surfing at the local beaches. I still remember my first time. We drove over Malibu Canyon in a dilapidated 1946 Chevrolet fastback sedan with faded gray paint, bologna-skin tires, and a radiator hose wrapped up with electrical tape. The board - an antique even by standards of the day - was a genuine Hobie made entirely of balsa wood, and had a dinky 3" skeg. We tied it to the roof of the old Chevy with rope.

Next year I was old enough to drive myself. A friend and I made our own surfboards in the garage from professionally shaped foam blanks acquired at a local surf shop. Mine was 9'8" long, with a ¾" solid redwood stringer down the center, which I purchased at a lumber yard. Ah, the smell of fiberglass resin and acetone still takes me back. How many brain cells we cooked off smelling those fumes, no one can tell. But we sure had fun. That board weighed in at a hefty 38 pounds and I have it still, hanging on my back yard fence as a decoration

After high school graduation in January, 1966 (L.A. had split years at that time) I attended San Fernando Valley State College as an Economics major, seemingly following in my father's footsteps. My grades were very good - at least for the first couple of years. There I met the love of my life and future bride, Anna Margaret Burnette (Peggy-Ann to her folks). Completely smitten, it took about a year for my GPA to drop into the C+ range.

School became tedious, and it soon was obvious that I needed a break. But that was in 1968, and the Viet Nam war was in full swing. The draft hadn't gone to the fairness of a lottery system yet, and I knew if I dropped out of college I'd be inducted in about two seconds. So I beat them to the punch and joined the Navy in March of 1969. My secondary education helped me pass some difficult exams, and my apparently excellent hearing further qualified me for assignment as an aircrew sonar operator on Sikorsky H-3 helicopters.

Of course, my darling Peggy was not forgotten. In June, 1970, I took some leave and returned to L.A. to marry my college sweetheart. Our honeymoon was an automobile trip across the country to my permanent assignment at Lakehurst, New Jersey.

My active duty time there was thankfully routine for the most part, unlike that of some friends who carried rifles in jungles far from home. But I successfully defended the coast of New Jersey from nuclear attack by Russian submarines for three years. I can say, without fear of contradiction, that not one atom bomb fell on the state the whole time I was in (though there were those who felt that might have improved the place).

The most significant action I saw in the Navy was thankfully a positive one. In June of 1972 Hurricane Agnes struck the Atlantic coastal states with a fury, devastating parts of Pennsylvania with terrible flooding. My squadron was called upon to rescue civilians from rooftops and perform other disaster relief duties. We were apparently successful enough to earn accolades from above, and I received a personal citation and the Air Medal for meritorious achievement in aerial flight. Of that I am quite proud.

I was honorably discharged from active duty in December, 1972, and Peggy and I drove cross-country again to make a home in the Valley and return to school. By that time SFV State had changed its name and its credentials and become California State University, Northridge. Between the G.I. Bill and the U.S. savings bonds we accumulated in the service, we had enough to live on while completing our college degrees. I got straight As for the remainder of my college career.

In September of 1973 I put my Economics degree to work and landed a job as assistant manager for a branch office of Crocker Bank. I hated it from day one, and it became apparent that I needed another, and radically different, career path. On November 12, 1974 I reported for work with the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, training for a career as a high-voltage electrical substation operator.

The work at DWP was interesting and challenging, and paid quite a lot more than any prospects I had at the bank. My training included a stint at Hoover Dam where I learned to operate the turbine-generators. Later I applied that skill to working at the Castaic Power Project - a hydroelectric pump-storage facility with generators three times larger than the ones at Hoover. Eventually, my skill and seniority led me into a position as trainer, and later manager, of substation operations. In that capacity I took an early retirement in 1998 to pursue other interests, including co-authorship of "The Cow Spoke French" with my father.

My "salad days" at DWP were filled with numerous other interests and activities, of course. In 1975, Peggy and I had our first child, a boy named Colin Burnette, who was and is our pride and joy. He's now a professional chef, Cordon Bleu graduate, and looking forward to a rewarding (and hopefully lucrative - but who knows?) career. His wife, Jay, currently works in academia at UCLA. Then in 1978 came our beautiful daughter, Kelly Jane, who by unanimous agreement takes after me in ways both good and bad. She's currently a personal assistant to a very famous PGA golfer and leads an extremely interesting life. To say that I dote on her would be a gross understatement.

For many of my principal earning years, the days were filled with much more than electrical operations. I moonlighted as a part-time teacher of computer software at a local junior college, worked as professional photographer at weddings, and did an enormous amount of volunteer work at our local Unitarian Church - serving in most all the lay leadership positions, including congregational president. There were times when it seemed I had but a handful of hours in the week that were uncommitted.

And along the way, Peggy and I had a few personal challenges to face. Both of us were diagnosed with cancer: she in 1980 and me in 1983. This gave us both the opportunity to take turns sharing the pain and supporting each other in time of great need. Having two small children at the time was hard. I remember working the graveyard shift so I could be home during the day and take care of housework and kids when Peggy was laid up. I got pretty good at laundry and after awhile didn't have to wear pink undershorts. Though the prognosis was rather bleak at times, we both survived and are, I hope, stronger for the experience.

Nowadays I fill my time puttering around with hobbies, occasionally working as consultant or trainer for small electrical companies in the L.A. area, and just enjoying family and friends. My latest challenge is setting up the website and online store which you are now exploring. Both Dad and I like to imagine that this new edition of our book, in trade paperback, will be a commercial success. But if it isn't, that's OK too. It was a labor of love to create the story of his most exciting life experiences, and document some rather important history. Mere words cannot contain the affection and respect I have for my father. My fervent wish is that he feels pride in me as well. And I fervently share his loss and pain at the passing of my mother this year. As her marker reads, she truly was "Our Anchor and Our Wings."