If you live long enough, you will experience days when you feel depressed and that you are no longer in control of your life. It is like taking a fall and knowing it will hurt, but you do not wait until you hit the ground to begin worrying about how bad it will be. If you simply trip on a crack in the pavement, you may end up with only scratches or you could have broken bones or even a broken neck and die. If you fall off a two-story roof, you could still have the same possibilities; however, you will have more time to think about hitting the ground. We live through many “falls” in our lives that do not involve physical injuries.
We begin thinking about our tomorrow and what we want to experience at an early age. As a child, we wanted to go to the park with a friend to swing higher than ever before. That first date and that first kiss, it will be wonderful. We want to make good grades to get into the college we want to attend. Each accomplishment is used as a stepping stone to get closer to our next goal. We use our success to build our confidence to set higher goals. These are characteristics that God includes in our DNA.
I had to deal with disappointments growing up just like almost everyone else, but I had years of mostly success with a lot of work. My high school grades were good enough for me and my college classes were fine. After my first year in college, I was hired at Gulf Oil, and it was one of the first places I applied to. I got experience working there and it helped build my confidence to set higher goals. Some events prompted me to consider changing employers, but not due to the company. I had a new job working at NASA before I had given my notice at Gulf.
For a few days, I was employed at both locations. I learned so much at NASA and proved to those I worked for at NASA how good and dependable I was. That success gave me a larger-than-life ego and my confidence level was strong. When the long hours, driving distance, and stress levels began to wear on me and our married life, I applied at Texaco. I met one of the top managers in the Data Processing Department (IT) when he was on a tour of the computer facilities at NASA. He talked to me in the hall and gave me his business card.
The next day after I had applied at Texaco, I got a call from the HR at Texaco asking if I could come and have a physical at their clinic in their building. I was told I would be offered a job if I passed the physical. I learned later that I was the first person they had hired for a job in that department from outside of the company. By the time I had been there 90 days, I was considered the “expert” in computer operations. My two years’ experience at NASA had taught me much more than the employees who had worked at Texaco for years. I was 23 years old and had people with 25 years of experience at Texaco learning from me and taking directions from me. My ego did not shrink under those conditions.
I became a key employee and even more so when they installed their first IBM360 computers because I had experience with the first IBM360 that was installed at NASA before they were delivered to companies elsewhere in the country. I was the only operator who had even seen a computer that could process more than one program at the same time. They would assign different computer operators to work with me so that I could train them on the IBM360-65 which was running the operating system that was developed at NASA where I worked with it.
After two years of working rotating shifts of two weeks days, two weeks second shift, and two weeks grave-yard shift and needing to change my schedule for critical situations, I asked for a chance to move into one of the programming departments. I had taught myself FORTRAN and SPS when I worked at Gulf, and I had completed an Autocoder class at the University of Houston. I had written a few programs in Autocoder while working at NASA. I developed a tape management system to keep track of the tapes using tape reel numbers with filenames. That was being used in one of the computer centers when I left NASA to work at Texaco.
The Texaco Director of DP told me that they only hired people with degrees for programmers, they could make an exception, but the main problem for me, I was too important to lose in the Operations Department. That was like getting kicked in the gut. It hurt and made me angry. On one hand, he said you are great at what you do, and you are making our entire staff better; however, we cannot help you with your career and work hours.
Eva and I had several discussions about what I should do. I talked to my Dad about taking a chance at seeking a programming job at another company and my Dad even talked to his boss at work. Dad was on the side of “stay at Texaco for job security and benefits.” His boss said trust your son to decide what is best for him and his family. At that time, we had one child and Eva was a stay-at-home mom. It made no sense for me to quit at Texaco, but I kept feeling I could do more if given a chance. My past success said I could. I decided to contact some employment agencies to see what options would be available while still working at Texaco.
I got a call to go on an interview for a programmer job at IBM. I found out in the interview that the job was with a client customer and not IBM. They would not tell me the company name; however, I took a test that IBM developed to see if the customer would be interested. I got a call from the company, Carnation Company (milk and ice cream) asking if I was interested in applying for a programming job. The job was a programmer trainee with less money than I had made in years, the building was a dump, and the benefits were a lot less than Texaco’s. There would be no overtime or shift pay and insurance would not be included for the first 90 days. If I took the job, Eva would have to go back to work, I might hate the new company, and they might not see my value the same way Texaco did.
I had never struggled with a decision like that before. The more I considered the risks involved with that job change, the more I started to not like staying in operations at Texaco. There may have been better options that might have come up if I turned down the Carnation job, but something inside me said “Take the risk”. The management at Texaco said they understood why I was leaving and he told me to call him if it did not work out like I expected, they would hire me back. Actually, that made me feel worse about leaving Texaco. It had been a good company to work for and I knew I would miss many of my coworkers.
At Carnation, I took an IBM Self-study course in COBOL and took an ALC Workshop class at IBM to develop more programming skills. Within the first six months, I developed several programs in COBOL and made many modifications to the Payroll System that was written in ALC. I had made so many improvements with several systems that I was promoted to Programming Manager and was given a raise. However, the raise was not as much as I was led to believe when I was hired, and still not making as much as my base pay at Texaco when I left.
Eva had gone to work at Humble Oil to help with our bills due to the reduced income for me. I was happy that I had proved that I could be a programmer and not just a great computer operator or operations supervisor. After a few more months, I had much more success with projects, but began to wonder if things would ever get much better at Carnation salary-wise. Then one night I got a call from one of the agencies about another programming job. The company was not far from where Eva worked. I made an appointment to go after work. I picked up Eva and she sat in the car while I went in for the interview. That interview discussion was so interesting that after two hours I realized the time and Eva was in the car. Doug (the person interviewing me) apologized and went to the car with me to apologize to Eva. He told me to think about what it would take salary-wise for me to take the job with his company. As I was driving out of the parking lot, Eva said “What just happened?” I said, “I think I just got a job offer.”
My morale had been down because I had internalized my worth to the money I made. If it was increasing, I would be more successful. Making less money to improve my career in the long term was a hit to my ego. The new job was with First Continental Mortgage which also had a Computer Services company that provided processing for multiple client companies. I developed computer systems for several types of businesses and also for the mortgage company. A little less than a year later, Doug resigned from First Continental and bought much of the outside service bureau business to start his own company.
This was during the period when the country was dealing with rapid inflation and there was a federal wage/price freeze. Companies were restricted from giving salary increases or raising rates or prices. I was promoted to take over the job that my boss had been doing and he was a Vice President, so my title was changed to Vice President of Data Processing for the mortgage company and President of Custom Computer Services. That allowed them to increase my salary and add other benefits. During my time there I completely redesigned and developed the Mortgage Loan System and all of the subsystems, upgraded the computer hardware and operating system. I was the first person to develop a system that could process the FHA/235 Loans that Congress had created to give mortgage loans to people who could not afford a house. I got calls from other mortgage companies wanting to know how I was handling the FHA requirements. My ego was as large as ever and then when I realized that the problems were mostly resolved and my workdays became routine, that led to boredom on my part. I had climbed the mountain and was part of the Senior Management Team at an early age. I had vendors who liked to take me to lunch, and I had time to work regular hours.
Eva knew I was bored with my job, and I think she might have been concerned about some of those business lunches and what I might have had to drink. She never talked about my drinking because I did not drink much around the house or go out drinking. I did not come home from work late or anything that would indicate a drinking problem. I had plenty of projects around the house, but not much excitement about my job anymore. Without me knowing, she found an old resume of mine, added information about my current job, and mailed a copy in response to a blind ad in the newspaper for a job she thought I might like.
One day I got a call at work from a guy wanting me to meet him for lunch. I did not know him, but he told me that he knew I had done several things including hardware and software upgrades and he wanted to pick my brain on some ideas. I met him for lunch, and he asked me a few questions and I realized he knew more about me than it made sense. He then showed me a resume with my name on it and it had my current job information. He said he received the resume along with other responses to a blind ad that was run in the paper. It then dawned on me that Eva had created the new resume and mailed it. The meeting with Bud that day was like the interview I had had five years before with Doug when I took the job with First Continental.
I had mixed feelings when I left First Continental because I had many friends there and so much success; however, I got bored and I did not see that much more to be done. When I began working for Gulf States Toyota, I discovered there were a lot of problems and a need for improvements. My title was Manager of Information Technology, and I reported to Bud who was the Director of Information Technology. Bud did not have any previous experience with computers, but he was hired in California by a friend who was the General Manager of Gulf States Toyota in Houston. The General Manager was a friend of the sole owner of Gulf States who lived in California. About seven months later, Bud sold his house in Houston and decided to move his family back to California. He had bought an Oil and Gasoline distribution company in California.
At that time, Toyota sales were booming, and GST (a five-state Toyota distribution company) was adding a lot of new products being installed at the Port Operations. In those days, all vehicles were brought to the US on ships from Japan. The cars for the GST region were brought into the Port of Houston. When Bud was leaving GST, he told the General Manager that I was already doing the majority of his job and that I was more qualified than he (Bud) had ever been. I got promoted in title, salary, and benefits without any real changes to what I had been doing except I began meeting with the dealers and traveling a lot more. I totally redesigned every aspect of the Vehicle Processing System including automated Port Operation Processing that reduced personnel costs, reduced errors, and speeded up the processing time. Some of the improvements that I implemented with the new systems brought about changes in the auto industry. I could write an entire book just on those developments.
What I have shared up to this point is an effort to lay out a highly successful career path. At GST, I was provided a new company car every six months (of my choosing) with no maintenance or fuel expenses and great benefits including bonuses that were not small. I was traveling on business, sometimes on the company jet. Best of all, I was allowed to do big things for the company which also gave me personal satisfaction. My ego was fed often.
When I started working at GST, we were still living in our first house which was located near Bush Airport. GST was located at that time, in the Bellaire/Gessner area. The freeways (59 North and 59 SW) did not even connect then. You had to drive through downtown to get to the other end. Driving times could be like driving to NASA some days. We started looking for a house closer to work or at least a shorter driving time around July 1975. Eva was not ready to move to a different area or had not found what she wanted but we kept looking. We watched the cost of new houses rise rapidly during 1975 and 1976, so we found a builder we liked in Jersey Village and contracted with him to build our new house.
We had been a single-income family since Eva quit working at Humble in December 1969. We knew that our new house would be finished in late that year or early 1977. We had no idea how long it would take to sell the house we were living in because of its location and other factors. That meant we might have two house notes and other dual expenses for an unknown period. Scary as that was, we had decided to crawl out on another limb and all of the “what ifs” that involved. They say “success breeds success” but not without risks. Eva knew I liked my job and wanted to be closer and there were some other reasons that we wanted to move from where we were living. Inflation was a big problem and mortgage interest rates had increased since building our first home in 1965. Eva and I were only twenty-two years old when we got our mortgage on our first home, and it was built in a subdivision where you select your own builder and your house plans. We had bought a corner lot and the lot next to it for our house. We had to have the lot paid off to use it as part of our down payment at closing so that is what we did then. We had a twenty-year mortgage, so we still had about nine years remaining on it when we were getting the mortgage arranged for the new house. I bought a new pickup truck in 1976, and we sold our other car because I had a company car. We paid off the pickup when we signed the contract for the new house thinking it would be one less payment to be considered when getting the mortgage. By January 1977, mortgage rates had gone up so high that Texas had to change State Usry laws.
Eva and I were both thirty-three years old, we had a single income and only my base salary could be considered. We had an existing mortgage with no pending sell date. I have worked in the mortgage business for five years, so I keep looking into options with some of my contacts. I learned that if I could make a twenty percent down payment at closing, I could get an 81/2 percent mortgage rate for thirty years instead of 10%. That meant $13,000 plus the other closing expenses to be paid at closing. We were already nearing the completion of our house and did not have that much in the bank, but we did not want to sell our other house for a much lower price than it was worth. When I was talking to my Dad to get his advice, he asked me how much I needed and how long I would need it for. He said he could loan me some money to get me through until the house was sold. He made me promise not to discuss it with anyone other than Eva.
I had never borrowed money from him other than $250 for college expenses during my second semester and that had been paid back. I borrowed $8,000 and gave him a signed contract for the $8,000 plus 10% interest to be paid when the house was sold or sooner with available funds. I usually receive my annual bonus in July after the company year-end closes. A couple of months later, we learned that Dad had lung cancer and surgery was not an option. My loan from Dad was discussed with other family members and it became an issue. I still had both houses to pay for and my bonus was still in the future. With few options, I arranged an interest-only loan with my bank using my pickup and my whole-life insurance as collateral. I gave Dad one check for the $8,000 and another check for the 10% interest for the time it had been borrowed. That was the only time I ever saw my Dad cry. Neither of us had wanted to cause any problems.
If I had lost my job or my ability to continue working at that point it would have been a terrible financial problem with few options. In July, I did get a good bonus from GST and with some money we had saved, I was able to pay off the loan at the bank. Our first house was sold and closed in September, allowing us to pay a large amount of money towards the principal balance on our mortgage. We used part of the money to add 28 feet to our garage and the Ray household was happy.
After we had moved to Jersey Village, we got involved in church there and Eva joined the choir. We became friends with the Pastor and his wife, something I would have never expected. I attended classes that helped me grow in my faith and my walk with Jesus. Our family life changed in many ways, all for good. Our daughters adjusted to the new school and gained new friends. The roses smelled great. So many positive things were happening at work.
With the help of some IBM Specialist personnel, I got approval for the development and roll-out of a Dealer Services System for the GST Toyota Dealers along with the supporting systems required for the distribution side. That involved major hardware upgrades in a new computer center. What could go wrong? The size of the new projects got the attention of the outside accounting firm. They had been included in the presentation of the project plans that I and IBM, presented to management and they had also approved the plan. However, in a separate meeting that I was not in, they suggested that the company hire a senior-level person to be the lead person with the Dealer Committee and Senior Management. They suggested that I was too valuable to the project and day-to-day operations to be moved to the new position. When learned that, I felt like a fish that had been gutted. I had worked for so many years on successful projects and it was all my brainchild and someone else gets the benefit.
Barry (General Manager) called me into his office and explained that my job would not be affected in any way, my staff would still report to me, and all of my benefits would be the same. The new person would just take care of the additional interface and reporting tasks. I left the meeting feeling better, but not totally convinced. I was not involved in the hiring process and had not met the individual until he came to work the first day. He was given an office at the other end of the building and not in the IT part of the building.
I found out from IBM contacts that the guy had been a salesman for a computer services company in his last job. Within a few weeks, he had talked to many of my staff and made remarks that the project was going in the wrong direction and that non-IBM minicomputers should be the platform. Other department heads had met with me to tell me the ideas that the new guy was trying to sell to them, and they were concerned about potential problems going forward. GST was only one of many companies that the owner had, and Barry was involved with some new companies they were buying. Barry was out of the office a lot and two of the VP department heads wanted me to discuss the problem of the new guy with him.
I did not want to talk to him on the phone, so I kept trying to get an appointment with him when he was in Houston. I had been around long enough to know anything was possible when talking to Barry about anything. I could not sleep the night before our meeting, and I thought about everything I wanted to tell him. I thought about all the great successful projects and how much better the IT services have been under my leadership. It took only about ten minutes for me to know I had made a mistake by saying a word. Barry did not care how many people in the building had concerns, he took my being in his office as questioning his hiring the wrong person for the job. While I knew it was possible, I believed I was a valuable employee who only wanted to help the company, and he would think that too.
I went back to my office, wrote my resignation, and had my secretary type it and deliver it to Barry’s secretary. That day I cleaned out my office and Eva came to pick me up from the office. Before I left the building, my staff and three other department heads had been in my office to tell me how shocked they were. I had never been fired from anything in my life. I had never been told by anyone that my work or my efforts were not satisfactory. Less than two months later, one of my IBM friends called me to tell me that the guy had been fired at his three-month review. When he met with Barry, he said he should be made a Vice President of IT. The story is that Barry told him he could not walk in my shadow and told him to clean out his office.
I had never been out of a job since college. For sixteen years, I had nothing but positive growth. I had been the breadwinner and sole income earner for most of those years and then overnight I was unemployed. Within a few short weeks, my Dad was told he had cancer. I was ashamed to tell my parents that I was out of work at first, but I asked about buying their older car so that Eva and I both had a way to get around.
I sent my updated resume to the employment agencies I had used over the many years when I was hiring staff. I tried to stay positive, but I shifted back and forth from angry to poor is me for weeks. I learned that those IT Management positions that I applied for, well they wanted a person with an MBA or a Computer Science Degree. I learned that the companies that had positions for lower-level manager jobs would not interview me because I was qualified for their job. I started taking accomplishments off my resume and changing my titles to things less challenging. It was a dark and humbling experience for me.
I took a job at Industrial Towel and Uniform Company as a Programming Manager working under a person who was “all hat” and nothing real. He knew nothing about computers except he had been a salesman for a service bureau in Amarillo Texas. An IBM friend asked me if I would consider taking the job, he knew I was over-qualified. At least I had a place to work and get out of the house.
During that period, I spent a lot of time with our Pastor, and we talked about a lot of things going on in my life and the world in general. He helped me with dealing with my Dad’s condition and with his passing. He also helped me understand the impact on our larger family issues. It was a period when the church became our family and had a major impact on our lives. The Bible says in Romans 8:28 NIV “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who[a] have been called according to his purpose.”
I began for the first time in my life to see that God had been helping me for years and I never noticed or considered that my success was anything other than my brains and hard work. I started really reading my Bible and God began to show me things I had never considered. I am not saying that God caused me to lose the best job I had ever had, but until then He did not enter my thoughts at work. I would have to say that there I worshipped the position and the dollar. You can hear and understand a lot more things when you are on your knees. It was the combination of those events that knocked me to the floor. Losing the best job, and good income, and interrupting my lifelong family life, leaving only my immediate family and church family helped change my life. My favorite verse became Philippians 4:13 NKJV I can do all things through [a]Christ who strengthens me.
There is much more to my story since that time with both success and some disappointments during the more than 40 years since then, but I hope this story might help someone going through a period that has you feeling like a failure. You may think tomorrow will only be worse than today. It is a trap to let your current situation control your outlook or your self-worth. God never gives up on us, but we must begin that discussion to hear what He is trying to tell us. The problems in our lives sometimes are necessary for us to get on a path to real success and a meaningful relationship with God.
Just do not quit trying!
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