Dale Walters, P.E.
Like everyone else, I had no idea where life would take me when I left La Jolla High in the summer of 1964. I had made many friends in La Jolla, PB, Mission Beach and Point Loma after moving to La Jolla from the Bay Area in 1962. California, and San Diego in particular, were different places then; with less than a third of the 2014 population. How lucky we all were to have experienced life in Southern California before the boom and, for those of us who stayed here, during the boom times of the next 40 years.
I left La Jolla, went to San Diego State, managed to get myself drafted, spent two years in the Army, got out, came back, and like so many of us, started out all over again. I count my life in two parts; before the Army and after the Army. The best part of “before the Army” is my wife Sue. We met at San Diego State and will be married 44 years next February 20th. As far as the Army goes, I volunteered for Viet Nam, went to the NCOC Academy at Fort Benning, Georgia, graduated in the top of my class, and as fate would have it, ended up writing field training curricula for 6th Army Advanced Infantry Training at Fort Ord. I always credit knowing how to type with saving my life.
I got out of the Army in November 1971 and started a concrete construction company in North County. The company was successful. Sue and I started a family. We were blessed with four children, two boys and two girls. When construction fell apart in 1982, I returned to San Diego State University and graduated in 1984 with a degree in Civil Engineering. Three years later I was a registered P.E.; Civil Engineering opened up the world for me.
Sue and I raised our family in Escondido and stayed there for 33 years. We moved to Rancho Mirage in 2002 and are currently in the process of moving to North Dakota where I plan on finishing up my economic career working with my oldest son. Two of my children followed me into planning and engineering. My second son followed my father’s passion for science with a PhD in physics. My second daughter followed in Sue’s family’s footsteps in education. We have six grandkids, three boys and three girls. The target date for full retirement is July 4, 2017. I’ve always joked that my middle initial, “A” is for “adventure”; who knows where Sue and I will end up?
I had never given much thought to my cohort until seeing everyone, whom were all 17 and 18 the last time we met, so uniformly 67 and 68. A wealth of similar times and similar experiences, each of us, as one of my old business partners used to say, “exactly the same, only different”.
Sue and I had a wonderful time at the 50th and if the fates allow we’ll be at the 60th. While we had the chance to catch up with a few folks, there were way too many people we either missed or only got to fleetingly reacquaint with. Thank you Art for taking the time to put this little bit of collective history together for the Class of ’64 to help fill in the missing pieces.
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