About the Name

Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things which have been accomplished among us, just as they were delivered to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent The-oph’ilus, that you may know the truth concerning the things of which you have been informed. -- Luke 1:1-4

Relax, I know I’m not writing the New Testament here, but I will try to follow a few things closely. — Dick Sandlin

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Personal

Thursday, August 27, 2009

Who is this Dick (Ricardo) Sandlin?

The name on my birth certificate is Dickie Sandlin, with no middle name.  May the souls of my beloved parents rest in peace and Lord, don’t punish them for giving me a dumb name like that.  I didn’t know the truth of it until I was 18 years old in Ft. Worth, Texas and joining the US Air Force.  They wanted a birth certificate, so I, Dick Sandlin, dutifully sent off for one.  Imagine my shock when I learned that my name was “Dickie”.  I already knew that I didn’t have a middle name.  Luckily for me the Air Farce gave me one, “NMN”, which of course stands for “No Middle Name”.  I still occasionally get junk mail addressed to “Dickie NMN Sandlin” and I know right away which list it came from.  My middle initial wasn’t “N”, as you might expect, it was “NMI”, which stands for (you guessed it) “No Middle Initial”.  So, mail addressed to “Dickie NMI Sandlin” gets tossed quickly, too.  It actually worked out well, for mail filtering purposes.

So, by now you know that I was in the Air Force.  I joined with a “guaranteed” placement as an Electronics Technician, but near the end of Basic Training at Lackland AFB in San Antonio, Texas, I was called in for a “placement interview”.  (And there never was any lack of land at that base; we marched and ran all over every inch of it, too.)  My interviewer was an officer who congratulated me on my high scores in language aptitude and offered me a placement in the Defense Language Program.  I thanked him for his consideration, but pointed out that I had a guaranteed placement in electronics.  He pointed out to me the small print in the contract that I had signed that said “or as needed by the Air Force.”  That’s how I became a Russian Linguist, or as my AFSC (official designation) said, “Airborne Voice Intercept Processing Specialist”.  The Russians were the bad guys back then and their designation, I later found out, was “Yankee Spy”.  Being a native Texan, I was very insulted at being called a “yankee”.

The USAF was a lot of fun, however, and I was sent to lots of interesting schools for the first two years of my hitch.  I went to Syracuse University to learn Russian; San Angelo, Texas to learn Yankee Spying;  Reno, Nevada for Arctic Survival School (the prison camp was the best part); and Numazu, Japan for Water Survival School.  After that I was stationed at the 6988th Security Squadron at Yokota AB, Japan.  We had loads of fun flying around in the back of very special C-130 airplanes and listening to the radio a lot.  It turned out that the Russians had some really great classical music.  Obviously, I can’t tell you anything about Yankee Spying, since that was all classified, but we did a lot of work for the NSA (No Such Agency).  I was priviledged to visit Viet Nam a few times during those days and lived in a tent on Da Nang AB.

The missions that we flew out of Da Nang were more tedious than scary, but I do remember watching Mig-21s taking off from Hainan Island with some trepidation.  My foolish pride forces me to break the faith and tell you that we listened in on the North Viet Namese missile nets and often were able to warn our friends in the sky that launch was imminent or had already happened.  When we returned to Da Nang the pilots would usually ask if anyone wanted to come forward to watch the landing.  I always did and I grew to love flying while watching us spiral down from 1000 ft. AGL (above ground level) in what they called an “assault landing”.  The idea of a big, lumbering C-130 doing a falling leaf imitation so close to the ground was fascinating to me.  I tried not to think about the purpose of it: to avoid enemy ground fire.

Returning to the USA, I immediately started private flying lessons and got my pilot’s license in 1968. I also went to the University of Texas at Arlington on the GI-bill, where I eventually struggled through to Bachelor of Science and Master of Arts degrees in Psychology.  One day I was walking into the Student Union Building on campus and almost collided with a very pretty young lady named Connie Cook who was riding a bicycle.  After we were married a while later, she admitted that she had done it on purpose.  That proved to be the most significant nonaccident in my life.  We are still together after 37 years of wedlock and loving it!

After earning my Masters, I went to work for Callier Hearing and Speech Center in Dallas as Lab Manager for Dr. George Gerkin, a noted research scientist.  My job was to train cats to participate in research tasks.  We rescued cats from the Dallas Pound and kept them happy in our lab for a few years while they helped us learn about how hearing works in the brain.  Eventually, Callier Center became part of the University of Texas at Dallas.

As research at Callier Center began to slow down, Connie suggested that I should interview with Texas Instruments at their Hiring Fair that was going on in Dallas at the time.  (Can you believe that, a hiring fair?  Times have certainly changed haven’t they?)  I was reluctant, since my degree was nontechnical, but I did have a lot of experience with computers in my research, so I tried my luck with TI.  Imagine my surprise when it resulted in six interviews and four job offers all in one morning.  The thing that really sealed it for me though was that TI had a great flying club.  I was happy to work at TI for 22 years after that, until I retired in 2000 with a comfortable package.  During my stay at the company, I got a lot of experience in Software Design in many languages.  It turns out that language aptitude extends into the world of computers, as well.

After retiring, I set up a consultancy under the name of Sandlin Data Systems.  I worked for lots of different clients in various jobs, mostly writing programs in FoxPro, a language that is very well suited to managing databases.  With a bit of chagrin, I watched my retirement package drop to about a third of its original value as the stock market performed a gradual slide before crashing with a dull thud.  Looking back, I wish that I had put it in a sock under my mattress.  I guess that my depression-era father was right in his financial advice after all.  At the same time, Connie and I lost our access to group health insurance and we began paying a fortune for really bad coverage.

Even as our financial picture started looking pretty bleak, Connie inherited a small bump from her mother and we decided to spend part of it in her memory by taking a wonderful cruise from Florida, through the Panama Canal, to Seattle. (Connie’s mom loved to cruise more than anything.)  One of the stops after exiting the Canal was in Puntarenas, Costa Rica.  We both loved the place and Connie became instantly facinated with the tiny nation that is nestled between Panama and Nicaragua with coasts on both Atlantic and Pacific oceans.  After leading a couple of birdwatching trips back to Costa Rica later, she announced that she wanted to live in Costa Rica, to which I dutifully replied, “Yes dear.”

I finally became eligible to draw out some of the money that I had put into Social Security all those years.  This qualified us to apply for residency in Costa Rica as “pensionados”.  We took the big leap by renting out our house in Dallas and finding a beautiful place to rent in Costa Rica. We have made a lot of good friends, received our residency, signed up for the National Health Insurance, and gotten our local drivers’ licenses.

I took on the nickname “Ricardo” because it is easier for our friends here to pronounce. The rest is yet to come.