I enlisted in the U.S. Air Force as a Crash Rescue Firefighter, and upon discharge I was hired as a crash rescue firefighter at Otis Air Force Base here on Cape Cod. Later, I became an EMT and worked in two different fire departments on the Cape.
After 30 years as a firefighter, I was hired as a fabricator/welder at #WHOI. I’m going into my 17th year at the Machine Shop, where I run the Omax Waterjet cutting machine, which cuts out parts for different vehicles and instruments using highly pressurized water.
One of the highlights of my career was going along with the REMUS crew in search of Air France Flight 447, which had vanished in the Atlantic en route from Brazil to France. I was able to see how our role in the Machine Shop contributed to the mission and how our fabricated pieces fit into the project. We found the plane and then the black box could be recovered. People who had lost loved ones in the crash even wrote to us, thanking the members of the search team for bringing closure to their loss.