Oral-History:T. Scott Atkinson

About T. Scott Atkinson

Born in Houston, Texas in March 1938, T. Scott Atkinson (M’67-SM’77-LS’04) received a B. S. degree in physics, with minors in mathematics and chemistry, from Texas A&M University, Kingsville, Texas in 1961, and an MBA in management from Pepperdine University, in 1980. He also studied computer science at the University of Texas, San Antonio (1987-1988). From 1961 to 1967, he was a communications officer in the United States Air Force, and he is a retired Lt. Col., United States Air Force as a Staff Communications Officer. From July 1967 to March 1968, he worked as a communications engineer with Lockheed Electronics Company on a contract with the NASA Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston, Texas where he supported the testing of the Apollo spacecraft communications sub-system. In 1973, he joined Tenneco Inc, Houston, Texas, spending fourteen years performing engineering tasks on their telecommunication systems. His last major work activity was as a senior technical support specialist for the United Services Automobile Association (USAA) in San Antonio, Texas (1989-1997). After retiring from USAA in 1997, he worked as a consultant for more than twenty years, as founder and president of ICSI Consulting Services (1997-2007); a consultant for Premier Network Services, 2000-2005; and then as an executive management consultant for nearly ten years. (2010-2019.)

In 1968, Atkinson joined IEEE and the IEEE Communications Society and became a volunteer supporting Section and Chapter activities in Houston, Texas, including Chair of the Central Texas Section (2003); Secretary of the Central Texas Section (2000 and 2001). Along with other IEEE members, Atkinson helped found the new Lone Star Section in 2019, and he served as the first treasure. Indeed, o Over the years, he has served IEEE in many leadership roles and since retiring from full-time employment in 1997, he has really become a full-time IEEE volunteer, especially in Region 5, the IEEE Communications Society, and the Life Members Committee. Thus, Atkinson’s extensive leadership and volunteer activities also include: Executive Chair, IEEE GLOBECOM, 2014, Austin, Texas; Finance Chair of the 2022 IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference, Austin, Texas; Treasurer, IEEE Lone Star Section (2020 and 2021); Life Members Coordinator, Region 5 (January 2018-May 2020); Chair, IEEE Life Member Committee (2020 and 2021) and Liaison to the IEEE Board of Directors and Liaison to the IEEE History Committee; and Past Vice Chair of the IEEE MGA Board.

In addition, Atkinson’s dedication to the IEEE Communications Society is evident by his many leadership posts, including Chair, IEEE Communications/Signal Processing Chapter, IEEE Lone Star Section; two terms as North American Region Director, IEEE Communications Society (2016); one term as Member at Large on the IEEE Communications Society Board of Governors; two terms as South Area Chair, IEEE Region 5; and service on the IEEE Communications Society History Committee and their Oral History Subcommittee.

Atkinson is the recipient of numerous IEEE awards and honors, including an MGA Achievement Award, 2019; Region 5, Outstanding Member (two times); the Region 5 John Meredith Lifetime Achievement Award, 2020.

About the Interview

T. SCOTT ATKINSON: An Interview Conducted by Maxine Cohen, IEEE History Center, June 18, 2024

Interview #915 for the IEEE History Center, The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.

Copyright Statement

This manuscript is being made available for research purposes only. All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to the IEEE History Center. No part of the manuscript may be quoted for publication without the written permission of the Director of IEEE History Center.

Request for permission to quote for publication should be addressed to the IEEE History Center Oral History Program, IEEE History Center, 445 Hoes Lane, Piscataway, NJ 08854 USA or ieee-history@ieee.org. It should include identification of the specific passages to be quoted, anticipated use of the passages, and identification of the user.

It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows:

T. Scott Atkinson, an oral history conducted on 18 June 2024, by Maxine Cohen, IEEE History Center, Piscataway, NJ, USA.

Interview

INTERVIEWEE: T. Scott Atkinson

INTERVIEWER: Maxine Cohen

DATE: 18 June 2024

PLACE: Virtual

Early life and education

Cohen:

Today is June 18th, 2024. This is Maxine Cohen, IEEE volunteer. I’m with Scott Atkinson. I want to welcome you and thank you for the time we’re going to [0:01:00] put in this morning to do this interview. I read through your stuff but I’m going to kind of follow a little bit of Mary Ann’s [Mary Ann Hellrigel] outline, so I may sort of skip around a little bit from the way you presented the stuff. If there’s anything that you want me to do differently [0:01:20] or anything you think I’m missing, please interrupt me. This is your oral history interview, and we want to make sure we capture you. That’s what we’re going to do. Just again, for the record, please state your full name and the date and place of your birth. [0:01:40]

Atkinson:

Okay. My name, full name, is Thomas Scott Atkinson. I was born in Houston, Texas, in March 1938.

Cohen:

Thank you. All right. We are going to start. I know you’ve done a lot of stuff [volunteer work] with IEEE [0:02:00] and we’re certainly going to cover that. But we want to kind of go back a little bit to people’s early history. Tell me a little bit about your mother and father. I know for some people they weren’t born in the United States. Some people they were. Tell me a little bit about your parents and what they did.

Atkinson:

First, my father [0:02:20] was a radio technician and he worked for various radio stations here in the State of Texas. A couple of really important stations he worked for were KTRH in Houston. He was working there when I was born. Subsequently, [0:02:40] we, of course, moved to San Antonio and he worked for a station here called WOAI, another relatively well-known radio station. I grew up in an environment of radio technology so to speak. My father actually was born in Texas even though he [0:03:00] was raised in the State of Louisiana. He inherited some money from his mother’s passing, and he was able to go to radio school and that’s how he got into the radio business, achieving a Radio Telephone First Class license. [0:03:20] That’s a little bit about him. Other than the fact that he did not serve in World War II because he had his left leg amputated above the knee as a result of an accident in his youth at about age twelve. He was handicapped [0:03:40] and of course that meant that my mother and I had to fulfill a lot of the things that normally a father would be engaged in.

Now my mother was born up in Michigan and ended up moving down to Texas and [0:04:00] meeting my father at a YMCA in Houston at that time of my birth. She ultimately became a schoolteacher. When I was in high school, she went back to college and finished up her degree and got a [0:04:20] degree in elementary education. She did that in order to put my brother and I through college because otherwise they didn’t have the money to do that.

Cohen:

Was it just you and your brother?

Atkinson:

I’m sorry?

Cohen:

Just you and your brother, were there only two of you?

Atkinson:

Right. [0:04:40] Just the two of us. My brother is a year and a half older than I am. He just turned eighty-eight just a couple of days ago and he’s still doing fine. He lives in the Houston area still. He’s never lived in many other places [0:05:00] other than in Houston where he was born. He and I were both born in the Heights Hospital in Houston, Texas. It’s part of the Heights District there.

Cohen:

I don’t know Houston. Is that a special area? The Heights District?

Atkinson:

Yes, [0:05:20] back in the days of the 1930s it was more or less the housing community for those workers in this downtown area of Houston. My father’s job was in the downtown area of Houston. That’s how it happened. Of course, [0:05:40] they met and got married in Houston, so both my brother and I were born there at Heights Hospital in Houston, Texas.

Cohen:

Yes. You know it’s pretty impressive for that time that your mother did go back to college and finish her degree. I realize she did have a traditional [0:06:00] occupation: that she was a teacher. But she did go back to college because that did not happen so much at that time. So, a little bit about the community that you lived in. Was it kind of a diverse community? Was it [0:06:20] an area of Houston with working class people, a mixture?

Atkinson:

Well, that’s an interesting question. I was in Houston and my parents did not move from Houston until the 1940s. [0:06:40] In the 1940s, they moved to San Antonio when my father took a job at WOAI. But I do not remember much about Houston. Of course, when I was born, we lived in an apartment. It’s pretty much downtown. [0:07:00] Soon after that, at what time I don’t have any recollection, but they bought a house on the other side of town. It was right up against what we called a bayou which is a waterway behind our house. That created a couple of interesting things [0:07:20] relative to my growing up. One was we had water moccasins in the back yard. Things like that. But I have very few early memories there, other than my brother and I got into my father’s paint cans in the garage because we were curious as to what was in them. [0:07:40] But that’s about the only memory I have of San Antonio. The community was more or less a bedroom community for those workers for both the downtown area and. of course. the university, the University of Houston, which was nearby as well.

Cohen:

When you [0:08:00] said your father worked in radio, you had a little radio in your blood from early on. Were you a tinkerer as well? Were you able to work with him side by side?

Atkinson:

I didn’t have the same interest in technology that my brother and my father [0:08:20] were into. But when you’re around technology, things like radios, you just pick it up, you know? Because it’s there. Yes, I did tinker a little bit but just not a whole lot. [0:08:40] When I was in high school my father and my family actually lived in the radio station.

Cohen:

Oh.

Atkinson:

Where the transmitter for the radio station was located. Our little apartment was in the same building [0:09:00] as the radio transmitter. That radio transmitter was a very interesting one. But maybe I won’t go into detail on that unless you want me to.

Cohen:

No, I mean tell me a little bit about the interesting part [Laughing]. It sounds intriguing.

Atkinson:

[Laughing] [0:09:20] When a radio station called KGBS was organized in Harlingen, Texas they decided to build a transmitter north of Harlingen, about twenty miles north as the crow flies. They needed to buy a transmitter. [0:09:40] They secured a used transmitter from Mexico which was one of those high-powered radio stations that used to broadcast pretty much all over the world.

Cohen:

Right.

Atkinson:

In the hundreds of thousands of watts. [0:10:00] They bought this used transmitter from Mexico, and they installed it there just outside of Lyford, Texas. It was called a Doherty Amplifier and it had four huge final stage [0:10:20] amplifier tubes in it. But because it could operate in the hundreds of thousands of watts, U.S. was limited to 50,000 watts so they actually had to turn down the power to operate that station. It was 50,000 watts in the day [0:10:40] and 10,000 watts at night with a directional antenna.

Cohen:

Wow.

Atkinson:

We had an antenna farm of six 200-foot-tall antennas in that twenty-six-acre plot of land out in the middle of nowhere actually. It was right in the middle of a farming community but that’s where I [0:11:00] spent four years growing up in high school there. Of course, I helped my father out occasionally, doing various things. One of the most interesting ones that I did while I was there one day, I was home, my father was working in the radio station. [0:11:20] The rest of the family were gone. I don’t know where. We were in a hurricane.

Cohen:

Oh.

Atkinson:

The winds outside were blowing eighty, ninety miles an hour. The transmission from the radio transmitter out to the antennas was an open transmission line [0:11:40] and it had insulators on it with the two wires carrying the --

Cohen:

Those glass insulators?

Atkinson:

Oh, yes.

Cohen:

Okay.

Atkinson:

Yes, about six inches high, each one. Two of the insulators had broken in the storm because the [0:12:00] dust and the water on the insulators caused the insulators to fail. The station went off the air. My father came and got me, and he says you’ve got to go out there and change those transmitters in the eighty-mile an hour wind. I did. I propped myself [0:12:20] up on the pole with the wind on my back to hold me to the pole and I changed out two of those insulators so the station could get back on the air. The rain and the wind were so strong I couldn’t really see what I was doing the rain.

Cohen:

About how old were you [0:12:40] Scott? During that time?

Atkinson:

I was probably about fifteen, maybe sixteen years of age.

Cohen:

Okay, all right.

Atkinson:

Yes. But it’s one of those memories you can never forget because the wind and the rain were hitting me in the face so hard that I couldn’t see. The water [0:13:00] and the wind, I couldn’t really see very effectively -- of what I was doing. I pretty much had to do it all by hand. I was fairly adept at using my hands to build things and what have you. My father was kind of a jack of all trades [0:13:20]. We did all sorts of things growing up to mixing concrete, to pouring walkways, to building sheds to just a lot of physical kind of things that we did together growing up.

Cohen:

Right. Then he had two strong boys [0:13:40] to help him.

Atkinson:

That’s true.

Cohen:

That sounds like that was good. You don’t have to answer this if it’s uncomfortable, with your father having his leg amputated, at that point was there a prosthetic or was he just in a wheelchair?

Atkinson:

No, he had an artificial leg that [0:14:00] he had to get constantly adjusted to fit right. It worked on the principle of a suction.

Atkinson:

It worked on the principle of a suction.

Cohen:

Oh.

Atkinson:

Yes, you would put a sock on the leg and then you would put the leg up over the sock. It would stay on [0:14:20] as a result of suction. He could walk pretty well that way. But when it came to climbing ladders ---- or driving a vehicle, it was a little cumbersome to try to do but he could do it. Other than the part of climbing ladders, he didn’t climb [0:14:40] ladders. My brother and I had to do that kind of work for him.

Cohen:

Some of the prosthetics and stuff has come such a long way. I mean so then you truly were disabled with a lot of things.

Atkinson:

Yes.

Cohen:

But it sounds like he certainly made the best of his [0:15:00] disability.

Atkinson:

Well, let me go back a little way.

Cohen:

Yes.

Atkinson:

After he worked at WOAI, he left in about 1946, which is after the war was over, he purchased a small, independent telephone company up in North [0:15:20] Texas, so we moved up there. My father ran this independent telephone company for three years up there in a little town called Woodson, Texas. At that location, and doing what he had to do, my brother and I [0:15:40] climbed the pole and used the ladders and things like that to do wiring and all those kinds of things. I did a lot of that as a kid. That was my entrée into the telephony world. [0:16:00] I’m going to jump ahead here a little bit.

Cohen:

That’s okay.

Atkinson:

When I volunteered to go into the Air Force, they asked me questions about what my life was like. I told them that I held a radio telephone [0:16:20] license [and] that I worked in a telephone company. That’s why I became, literally, a telecommunications engineer. In the Air Force, they called it communications. I became a communications officer in the U.S. Air Force, [0:16:40] and those things all led to my eventually being more or less a project coordinator and manager in the arena of telecommunications. That was my career. That’s what I did [0:17:00] in my whole career, my thirty-five-year career. I was always doing something with telecommunications. Of course, I had side interest in jobs, some of them just not even connected to technology at all but those were short-lived.

Cohen:

Yes, Scott, I know we’ve been in the bio… [0:17:20] Oh, what did I have here… something else that you had, the communications engineer but you also had -- now, I can’t find the spot where you wrote it. You had Tenneco. It sounded like [0:17:40] you did something that was more office work.

Atkinson:

Well, true. That goes along with what I ended up doing in my career. I was affiliated with technology, [0:18:00] but I spent most of my time behind a desk on a telephone. But I was working in a field of technology. We can kind of go back as to how that all developed. After the telephone [0:18:20] company we moved to the Rio Grande Valley of Texas and my father worked for various radio stations there before joining this radio station where he last worked which ultimately was called KGBT out of Harlingen, Texas. At that time of course I was in [0:18:40] high school there. Once I completed my high school there at Lyford, I entered Texas A & I University in Kingsfield, Texas. My father always dreamed that his boys would go to school and become physicists, [0:19:00] so I majored in physics. Interesting little story about that. I came up to Texas A & I and I registered to become a physics major. My brother left and he went home because he was going to school there at the same time. I met a couple of guys that were [0:19:20] majoring in electrical engineering. They convinced me to become an electrical engineer. I went and changed my major to electrical engineering. My brother came back to school, and he chewed me out really big-time and says you can’t do that. You’ve got to be a physicist. So, I had to change my major back to physics.

Cohen:

Did your father know you [0:19:40] strayed from the path for that short while?

Atkinson:

No, he didn’t. All this happened within a short time of like three or four or five days. [Laughing]. But I stuck it out. I got my four-year degree in physics. Then mathematics as a [0:20:00] a minor and chemistry also as a minor.

Cohen:

Oh, wow, so you carried a pretty full load --

Atkinson:

Oh, yes, it was pretty good.

Cohen:

You were going to school full-time. You weren’t working or anything. I mean your mission was going to school at that point.

Atkinson:

Well at college I held [0:20:20] two jobs. One is I worked in the library. Secondly, I was a laboratory instructor in the Physics Department. After I was about a junior because I had taken [0:20:40] numerous courses in physics that I was eligible to become a lab instructor for the beginning physics courses. Other than that, I did have a break. I had to actually drop out of school [0:21:00] one year because my parents told me that they couldn’t afford to continue paying for two kids in this college at the same time. My job was to drop out so they could pay for my brother completing his degree.

Cohen:

Right. Because he was older, let him finish. Then you could go back.

Atkinson:

Yes, now here’s [0:21:20] a little deviation in my career path. My mother says I think I can get you a job teaching school. I thought, okay, let’s give that a try. She actually got me a job teaching high school. I had only been out of high school for three years.

Cohen:

Oh, my goodness.

Atkinson:

Here I was without a degree [0:21:40] back teaching physics courses –[and] mathematic courses, in high school and some of the kids in high school were seniors that knew me when I was a senior.

Cohen:

[Laughing] Right, when you were a kid as well. Not sitting on the other side of the desk. Right.

Atkinson:

Yes, the high school I was teaching in was only four miles from [0:22:00] the high school I graduated from. I mean I was in the same community where I had been growing up. It was a little bit of a strange scenario. But one of the teachers there got me aside one time and he says, Scott, let me tell you about being a career, a teacher. [0:22:20] He said you don’t want to go there.

Cohen:

Wow.

Atkinson:

That was an interesting bit of feedback on career advice, but he was right. I never could see myself as a schoolteacher. Now my brother [0:22:40] became a schoolteacher to avoid the draft. When I finished my degree, I was already listed as 1-A for the draft. Rather than be drafted I decided that I would check out the options of what I could do in my career. I found out [0:23:00] that the Air Force offered a commission for college graduates, so I applied. Of course, they wanted to know all about my background, and I gave them that and they said, well, we can offer you an opportunity to go to [0:23:20] Air Education Training Command Officer Training Program. So, that’s what I applied for, and I got accepted. When I got accepted, they guaranteed me that I would be a communications officer which was [0:23:40] right down my alley. Although I had applied to be a pilot and a navigator, my third choice was communications, and that’s what I got.

Cohen:

That’s what you got.

Air Force

Atkinson:

Yes, I went into the Air Force. I went through Officers Training School in February of 1961, [0:24:00] graduated in May of 1961 as a second lieutenant, [and] transferred to Biloxi, Mississippi where I went to twelve months of communications electronics training to become a full qualified… Excuse me [0:24:20] my voice is...

Cohen:

No, I’m making you do all the talking [Laughing].

Atkinson:

Well, that’s okay.

Cohen:

That’s what it’s about, right.

Atkinson:

Let me have a sip of my coffee.

Cohen:

No problem.

Atkinson:

Oh, my coffee cup is an interesting one.

Cohen:

United States Air Force.

Atkinson:

Yes.

Cohen:

Oh.

Atkinson:

I remember my career fondly. [0:24:40]

Cohen:

Scott, when you were doing all this, when did you end up finishing your college degree? Was that after you were in the military?

Atkinson:

No, I had finished. I had to have the college degree I had to be a graduate.

Cohen:

Okay, you had to be a college graduate to go into the program.

Atkinson:

That’s correct.

Cohen:

I know some people did it like years ago, the ROTC program or something in conjunction, but okay.

Atkinson:

Yes.

Cohen:

So, you graduated and then you went into the military?

Atkinson:

No, I graduated from college on January 30th, and I went into the military [0:25:20] February the 13th. I reported to Lackland Air Force Base here in San Antonio. That’s where the Officers Training School was located at that time. I graduated about fourth from the bottom of the class. [Laughing]

Cohen:

[Laughing].

Atkinson:

[0:25:40] Excuse me. There’s a reason why that happened. All the years leading to that point, I had avoided anything having to do with the military. I never dreamed that I would go into the military. My father was highly opposed to his sons going into the military.

Cohen:

That’s interesting.

Atkinson:

The reason is that my uncle, my mother’s brother, was in the World War II military and he came back and told my father all these horror stories about World War II. [0:26:20] So, my father was, boy, he was really strongly against anything like that.

Atkinson:

When I joined the military, my father told me, he says, son, you just made the worst mistake in your life.

Cohen:

Oh, my goodness. Wow, that was a pretty heavy-duty thing to hear from a father.

Atkinson:

[0:26:40] Now, back to what my career was. It ended up being the very best thing in my life. My father could have never understood that.

Cohen:

Wow.

Atkinson:

He thought I was a buck private and [0:27:00] all I did was kowtow to the officers and all that. But I was an officer. I was in the elite class of military individuals. Let me carry on for the career [0:27:20] aspect here.

Cohen:

Yes, go ahead.

Atkinson:

After graduating from the Communication Electronics Schools down at Keesler Air Force Base in Mississippi, I was assigned to Japan. While there I married my wife, Margaret Ann Young, in the U.S. She and I met in the last semester in college. [0:27:40] We dated every night for thirty days and at the end of the thirty days were engaged.

Cohen:

Ah, wow. [Laughing] You saw something you wanted, and you went forward with it. So did she.

Atkinson:

Well, that’s another interesting story that maybe we’ll get into later.

Cohen:

Okay.

Atkinson:

[0:28:00] We were married in August before I left for Keesler. But then I was assigned to Japan, to Itazuke Air Force Base, Japan. They made me the base communications operations [0:28:20] officer. I went from being a totally green guy, not hardly knowing anything about the military to being responsible for 166 men, operating three communications centers, two telephone exchanges a MARS [0:28:40] station crypto account. It was one of the most prestigious positions on the base.

Cohen:

Wow.

Atkinson:

I was a second lieutenant. I had really great NCOs reporting to me. They pretty much ran the show [0:29:00] under my guidance. Of course, I reported to a major who had had previous World War II experience and he was an alcoholic. That’s kind of like another story.

Cohen:

[Laughing]. I bet, right. I don’t know how much engineering part is in that story. Then [0:29:20] your two daughters were born in Japan.

Atkinson:

Correct. They were.

Cohen:

You were there for quite a while.

Atkinson:

My wife was already pregnant with our oldest daughter when we left Mississippi. I went off and arrived in Japan in [0:29:40] June, but she couldn’t travel with me because you can’t travel concurrently unless you have a house to move into when you get to your destination.

Cohen:

Ah.

Atkinson:

So, I got on base. I was living in the temporary quarters. I couldn’t get her [0:30:00] clearance to come even though she was pregnant at the time. I got cozy with the housing officer of the base. The interesting thing was his wife was back in the States and pregnant also with their fourth child. [0:30:20] He had a house, but he had no wife there. He says, well, I’ll loan you my house so you can bring your wife over. He did. He loaned me his house. I was able to get the orders cut to have Margaret travel to Japan. [0:30:40]

Atkinson:

She was able to get there before they had cut off travel due to the length of her pregnancy.

Cohen:

Right, because you are too far along.

Atkinson:

I got her over there. We had the house. There were a lot of complications as a result of that. But we ultimately ended up getting a house and the other fellow got his [0:31:00] family over there shortly thereafter as well. We lived out in what we called the boondocks of the south of the base. I had to drive in every day to the base to work. The base was split. The housing base was [0:31:20] in one area, the actual airfield was in another area. I worked at the airfield. My office was at the airfield with the 1955th Communications Squadron. Our squadron had about thirteen officers and I don’t know, 200 or 300 enlisted types. [0:31:40]

A very interesting experience and certainly one that helped me grow and mature in managing and leading other individuals. That life kind of became accustomed [0:32:00] to me because I was doing that for three years and I was a key player of all the telecommunication’s activities on that base. The unfortunate thing was… and let me see how to say this… I was offered a [0:32:20] regular commission as a first lieutenant at that time. I accepted a first lieutenant regular officer commission and that basically meant I had a guaranteed twenty-year career, if I wanted to stay in. [0:32:40]

Cohen:

You were, what, about three years, four years in at that point?

Atkinson:

I had only been in probably two to three years at that point in time. That was a very prestigious deal to be offered a regular commission. [0:33:00] Generally speaking, a lot of officers had to jump through all kinds of hoops to become commissioned. There it was, I was handed it on a silver platter. I thought, well, I don’t know whether I want to stay in or not, but I’ll take it because I [0:33:20] didn’t want to turn it down because it might have been a godsend for me.

Cohen:

Right.

Atkinson:

After spending three years in Japan, I was due to rotate back to the States. I could have extended for another year, but my wife [0:33:40] already had two daughters. [Laughing] She says I’ve got to take these kids home to show them to the grandparents.

Cohen:

Right, yes. Travel wasn’t so easy for other family members, right? It must have been hard because you had your military family as support, but you didn’t have your [0:34:00] regular blood relative family as support.

Atkinson:

That’s true. I went in and I declined to stay another year in Japan.

Cohen:

Were you able to go, when you came back to the States, did you go to the Texas area?

Atkinson:

No, [0:34:20] I was assigned to be an Air Force liaison officer to the California Air National Guard. A side comment: the worst possible assignment that they could have given me.

Cohen:

Really? Why?

Atkinson:

[0:34:40] Well, it’s almost a long story. When you’re a liaison officer to the Guard and you’re on a Guard base the Guard people only train two days a month.

Cohen:

Oh. [0:35:00]

Atkinson:

You’re there with twenty other individuals during the week. You’d have absolutely nothing to do.

Cohen:

Oh, my goodness.

Atkinson:

I always say, what I did was I came in in the morning. I went and got myself a cup of coffee. I sat down. I read the paper. I chit-chatted with [0:35:20] a couple of other people. I tried to kill time until noon [when] I could leave the base and go home and have lunch with my wife and kids. I’d go back to the base. I would sit around. Talk to the officers. There was only one other commissioned officer on the base. [0:35:40] Everybody else was enlisted. So he was a lieutenant colonel and at that time I was still a first lieutenant but I was promoted to captain fairly quickly thereafter. But he and I did not get along at all because he thought I worked for him. [0:36:00] I had to continually remind him that I worked for the Air Force, not the Air National Guard.

It was really kind of funny. My assignment was to Langley Air Force Base, Virginia with temporary duty at the 148th Comms Squadron Air National Guard in Compton, [0:36:20] California. My boss was not even in that area. Actually, my direct boss was up north of San Francisco in one of the bases up there. I had to periodically drive up there to sit down and have a chat with him. [0:36:40] Of course, I had a guaranteed five-year tour there and this was during the Vietnam War era. This was the 1967, 1968 timeframe. When they were drafting people to go to Vietnam right and left. At least I was [0:37:00] not going to be sent to Vietnam for that period of time. I might have been better off had I gone to Vietnam. This is what they did. They assigned me that position. After two years in that position, I decided this was not for me. I went to [0:37:20] put in my paperwork. I was going to get released from the service. They finally released me. I moved back to Houston, Texas with my family. My next move was I got a job working for NASA through a contractor. The contractor was Lockheed [0:37:40] Electronics Company.

Cohen:

I just want to go back for one second. How many years then? Then you were no longer in the military. Right?

Atkinson:

Well.

Cohen:

How many years was your military service?

Atkinson:

I’m going to have to answer that in two parts.

Cohen:

Okay.

Atkinson:

[0:38:00] When I got off of active duty in May of 1967, no, yes, 1967. I came to California in June of 1965. I got off of duty in May of 1967. I had six-and-a-quarter years [0:38:20] of active duty. As soon as I got off active duty, I applied to become an Air Force Reservist.

Cohen:

Reserve, right.

Atkinson:

So, I was starting a different type of time with the military. Now I was a reservist [0:38:40] and trained two days a month and two weeks during the year.

Cohen:

Right, yes.

Atkinson:

I did that for sixteen years. I ultimately qualified for retirement after spending a total of twenty-two years in the service.

Cohen:

Okay, got it.

Atkinson:

But I went into the Retired Reserves [0:39:00] and ultimately, they gave me credit for thirty-seven years of service connected.

Cohen:

Oh.

Atkinson:

This is a guy that never, ever intended to go into the military.

Cohen:

Hah, that’s thirty-seven years. Interesting.

Atkinson:

I like [0:39:20] to call myself the reluctant soldier because I never intended to make a career out of the military.

Cohen:

[Laughing].

Atkinson:

But the six years of active duty taught me a lot of things about how the military functions and works. Those things I [0:39:40] didn’t have a problem with. The problem I had was with some of the individuals in the military like that commander of that Air National Guard unit in California. It was people like that that really left a bad taste in my mouth [0:40:00] about the service. Here’s the bottom line. I could have got out of that. All I had to do was just go to my boss and say, look, I want out and I would have been subject to reassignment anywhere in the world. Why didn’t I do that? Okay. Good question. At that time, as a commissioned officer, [0:40:20] two-thirds of the positions were overseas which meant you would spend twice as many tours overseas as you would in the United States. [0:40:40] Of those two-thirds overseas, half of those would be what we call remote, meaning no families. I had my family at that time, and I just felt like I was more of a family man than I was a committed Air Force guy. [0:41:00] I chose to get off of active duty because of that.

Cohen:

I think we all make decisions at various times. But I know for somebody like you, you still had a full career. It sounds like you were able to capitalize on your training [0:41:20] you had in the military that then helped you in work. Then you stayed in the Reserve, so like you said, you retired with thirty-seven years. I mean that’s pretty substantial.

Atkinson:

Well, I made it halfway up the ladder. You start off as a 01, as a second lieutenant; 02 is a first lieutenant; 03 is a captain; [0:41:40] 04 is a major; and 05 is a lieutenant colonel. I made it halfway up. The next step would have been full colonel. Brigadier general, major general, lieutenant general, general. I knew I was never going to get higher than lieutenant colonel. [0:42:00] When I became a lieutenant colonel, my boss who was a full colonel, said I’m going to retire. I said this is a good time for me to retire as well.

Cohen:

Yes. [Laughing]

Atkinson:

He and I retired simultaneously. He’s still alive. But he’s up in his mid-90s now and lives up in Austin, Texas. I hear from him quite often. [0:42:20] We had a good time together. How I became a lieutenant colonel is a very interesting story if you want to hear that one

Cohen:

Yes, let’s take a few minutes maybe to do that.

Atkinson:

Okay. I was a major at the time. I [0:42:40] changed categories in the Reserves from a Category A to a Category B. I was assigned along with a number of other officers to support a civilian agency of the City of Pasadena, Texas. The colonel, who was director [0:43:00] of operations at the base where I was assigned was sort of head of our group. While I was there at the City of Pasadena, we wrote pretty much disaster recovery plans for the city. I participated in that process. Then the city came along, and they knew I was [0:43:20] working at Tenneco as a communications engineer project manager so to speak. They asked me to do a communications study for the City of Pasadena. Well, okay. The company that I worked for [0:43:40] supported that because that was military, they supported the military. They said, fine, go ahead and do it. I did the study, analyzed their radio communications systems, primarily. I recommended some changes in the structure of their system. [0:44:00] They asked me to present the results to the City Council, which I did. They liked it. Then they came back and said, well, now that you recommended it, would you put it in?

Cohen:

Put it in.

Atkinson:

I said, okay, sure, I’ll put it in for you, so I put it in. The next thing I know they’re [0:44:20] giving me the keys to the city. They wrote me up for being the Outstanding Reservist of the Year Award.

Cohen:

Wow.

Atkinson:

My boss, my colonel, wrote me up for an Air Force Commendation Medal [0:44:40] and I got that. Then he turned around and ran and wrote me up for a Meritorious Service Medal. I got that. All of the time I spent in the military up to that point in time, the jobs that I did and everything and the outstanding accomplishments of the units that was assigned to, [0:45:00] I got zip.

Cohen:

[Laughing].

Atkinson:

Nada.

Cohen:

Right.

Atkinson:

Nothing. Yet here I am in the Reserves part-time.

Cohen:

Reserves.

Atkinson:

All I did was do a study of a communications system for the City of Pasadena, and all of a sudden, they’re giving me an Air Force Commendation Medal. Unbelievable. [0:45:20]

Cohen:

That is. [Laughing]

Atkinson:

Then to top that, they gave me a Meritorious Service Medal. Because of those two medals, the next promotion board that I was for, there was only one lieutenant colonel position available in the whole United States. [0:45:40] I got it.

Cohen:

You got it.

Atkinson:

Simply because of those two medals.

Cohen:

Those two medals. At that point was your father still alive? I mean did that turn him at all that the military worked for you?

Atkinson:

Yes, he was still alive. [0:46:00] I don’t know if he ever understood it. He knew I was in the service. He knew I had stayed in the service, but he and I never really had much of a conversation about it. My father, interestingly, was a very antisocial person. Now. [0:46:00] My mother was pretty much just the opposite. I took after my mother. My brother took after my father. My facial structure and everything come from my mother’s family. My brother, just the opposite. He comes after my father’s family. [0:46:40] So, I was --.

Cohen:

I wanted -- oh, go ahead. Yes. I want to go back a little bit to some continuing education for a moment. You’re finished with your bachelor’s degree. Did you ever end up with a graduate degree as well? [0:47:00] Was that while you were in the Reserves or was that part time, full time?

Atkinson:

Not totally sure about the timing there. As I told you in my career development, I got a job at NASA working [0:47:20] on the spacecraft communications subsystem. I was part of a testing group to test the various components of the Apollo communications system. [0:47:40] While I was there, I got to meet a number of the astronauts and work with them which was kind of interesting. Because the Apollo projects at that time were very technologically advanced. [0:48:00] I was able to see some of the first digital television ever.

Cohen:

Wow.

Atkinson:

It was created there as part of the Apollo project. But I realized that having been out of the technical world [0:48:20] the hands-on technical world, in the military I had never put my hands on any piece of equipment. I was an officer. All of my enlisted people, that’s what they did.

Cohen:

They did it, right.

Atkinson:

They operated, they maintained. I never touched it. I was really [0:48:40] literally six years out of college and never utilized the knowledge that I gained in college. Here I was working as a communications engineer on some of the most sophisticated communications technology of the timeframe. I was working side by side with some [0:49:00] guys that just graduated out of college with electrical engineering degrees and I couldn’t hold a candle to them, technology-wise. I felt like I was a fish out of water. I kept that job from July of 1967 through March of 1968 and [0:49:20] decided that this was not my career field. I bummed around for a few years not having a real good career choice. But then I did land at job at Tenneco, Incorporated, which was the fiftieth largest corporation on the Fortune 500 [0:49:40] list at the time. I took a position called Communications Engineer, but it was more or less in the realm of administration and management

Cohen:

Okay, so it’s managerial type.

Atkinson:

Not highly technical. My job was to [0:50:00] help the company with their communication systems. I interfaced with a lot of people from Southwestern Bell and of course all along I’m learning a lot. Tenneco was a great, great company to work for. [0:50:20] I spent fourteen years working for them. I went all the way from Communications Engineer up to Network Manager. I helped build their nationwide network. It was a VOIP data telephone type network.

Cohen:

That was pretty sophisticated [0:50:40] at the time.

Atkinson:

Right. Also, I was a communications consultant to the company and I travelled extensively around the United States visiting all of the company locations. Doing an inventory on their system and recommended [0:51:00] updates to their systems as appropriate. I changed out a lot of telephone systems during those years. A couple of my clients, so to speak, were Newport News shipyard up in Virginia, Philadelphia Life Insurance Company up in Philadelphia. Tenneco [0:51:20] Chemicals had offices all over the U.S. Packaging Corporation of America which manufactured all sorts of paper products and cardboard products to Tenneco West which was the largest landholding company in the State of California. I traveled [0:51:40] all over the U.S. visiting these locations. These company locations and working with their communications systems, I did that for fourteen years. At the end of that time, I was kind of burned out. I decided it was time for me to leave. [0:52:00] So, I left Tenneco, and I took a job as Director of Telecommunications for a large mortgage company in Dallas. I went up there and, to make a long story short, the day I walked in I got chewed out by the boss saying my budget was thirty days late. [0:52:20]

Cohen:

[Laughing] Right, you just walked in, okay.

Atkinson:

From there on out, every single day I worked for that company I got chewed out for something. Either I was supposed to have, I had done it, did it, they didn’t like or something some of my workers did it.

Cohen:

Wow.

Atkinson:

I had about fourteen people reporting [0:52:40] to me. I had a voice side. I had a data side. I can understand one reason why I got chewed out. My telephone group took down their entire worldwide [0:53:00] network accidently.

Cohen:

Took it down accidentally?

Atkinson:

Accidentally, but they did take it down. Of course, the boss, the executive vice president, he comes into my office screaming at me, your guys took the whole network down. [0:53:20]

Cohen:

Wow.

Atkinson:

How it happened is a little bit of an interesting story. They ran cables under the floor, the computer room floor. Somebody, when they last connected those cables, they come up from the bottom up into the equipment. You’re supposed to lock them down. One of those [0:53:40] things. It had been put up, but not locked down.

Cohen:

It was loose?

Atkinson:

My guys were pulling a cable across underneath the floor and it knocked that connector down. Boom. Shut the whole place down.

Cohen:

Everything down.

Atkinson:

But I got blamed for it because it was my guys that pulled the cable across the floor. [Laughing] [0:54:00] I did that for a while. Finally, I decided that was no good. The company and I both agreed simultaneously, this was not working out for either one of us.

Cohen:

Right, it’s not a match.

Atkinson:

They gave me a nice severance package and I was glad to leave.

Cohen:

So that’s when you went to San Antonio.

Atkinson:

No. [0:54:20]

Cohen:

Oh, you went to -- okay.

Atkinson:

I went back to Houston because I still owned a house in Houston.

Cohen:

Okay.

Atkinson:

But rather than move back into our house in Houston, we rented a house and still had our house up for sale. Finally, we ultimately sold the house and then we decided to move [0:54:40] to San Antonio back in 1987. Now I’ve been here over thirty years in San Antonio. That was the best move we’ve ever made. San Antonio is the most fantastic place to live that I can think of. You know? We get some winds, not hurricane strength winds. [0:55:00] Rare tornado. The only thing that we get weather-wise is we get rain. The fact is tomorrow we’re expected to get maybe up to six inches of rain.

Cohen:

Yes. I saw there’s some storm system going across the --.

Atkinson:

Yes. It’ll flood the city.

Cohen:

Yes. That’s when I have you [0:55:20] enrolled in the University of Texas program on computer programming. Is that during that time?

Atkinson:

That is correct. See, when I graduated from college in 1961, there was no such thing as computers

Cohen:

Right, of course not, yes.

University of Texas at San Antonio, United Services Automobile Association

Atkinson:

We worked on slide rules. Of course, in the military I never touched anything. [0:55:40] At Tenneco, I finally did get my hands on a Compaq PC. I struggled with it because I didn’t understand computers.

When I came to San Antonio, the first thing I did, since I didn’t have a job when I came here, I had just come on my own, [0:56:00] I enrolled in the University of Texas at San Antonio, and I started taking computer science classes. So, I took twenty-one hours of computer science classes to learn computers. By then I was fairly adaptive. Because of those twenty-one hours of computer classes, I was offered a job at a company called United Services Automobile Association (USAA) which is a very prestigious company in the military financial world. I got hired initially [0:56:40] as a computer programmer, but within thirty days I realized I was not a computer programmer. They posted a job internally for a telecommunications expert. They call it a technical expert and I applied for and got that job. So, that [0:57:00] started my career at USAA.

Cohen:

USAA.

Atkinson:

Go ahead.

Cohen:

No, I just want to go back just to two little pieces. One is you have these two daughters. Were there more children?

Atkinson:

No.

Cohen:

Okay, so just [0:57:20] your two daughters. Then when you said you went back to school, was your wife supporting the family? What were you doing for income?

Atkinson:

We had the money from the house, the sale of the house.

Cohen:

Oh, okay, so you had the luxury, so to say, to go back to school.

Atkinson:

Yes, I had. [0:57:40] We lived on that salary. We even bought a house, but we lived in San Antonio without a job for roughly two years. Of course, we spent down a big chunk of money as a result of that. [0:58:00] Finally, I took a position as an intern, simply just to have something to do. The interesting thing about that is the company name was Data Point Corporation. Have you ever heard of Data Point Corporation?

Cohen:

I think I have. [0:58:20]

Atkinson:

You’re going to hear a lot more about it because it is in the process of being recommended for two IEEE Milestone Awards. If you read the most recent Spectrum electronic version, [0:58:40] the newsletter version, you will see that there is an article in there on the Data Point 2200 Desktop Personal Computer being the very first personal computer ever.

Cohen:

Oh.

Atkinson:

That’s its claim to fame is going to be the first PC. [0:59:00]

Cohen:

First PC.

Atkinson:

Now there are other companies that have already claimed that, but they don’t have the proof. We have the proof.

Cohen:

You have the proof. Does Tenneco still exist, or did they get bought out or anything?

Atkinson:

Before I left Tenneco [0:59:20] in 1984, they were in financial trouble. I was not aware of it at the time I left, but they were on the downward spiral at that point. They ultimately did go out of business

Cohen:

Oh, right, they did go out of business. [0:59:40]

Atkinson:

One, we had what we call eleven P & L divisions. One of those P & L divisions was an automotive parts supplier up in Michigan or Wisconsin or someplace up there. It was called Monroe Shock Absorbers. [1:00:00] You may have heard of them. Well, that was a Tenneco company. For some reason after Tenneco was broken up, these eleven P & L divisions all go away. That one company kept the name Tenneco.

Cohen:

Oh.

Atkinson:

That company still is in business today known as [1:00:20] Tenneco.

Cohen:

Tenneco. Okay.

Atkinson:

All the rest of the companies are gone. They crashed.

Cohen:

Gone, yes. Things change. I’m watching on time a little bit. I mean we’re fine. I have plenty of time. But I think I want to sort of move maybe into your IEEE work.

Atkinson:

Hey, [1:00:40] I was just getting there.

Cohen:

But I don’t know if this is a good point, you want to take a little break?

Atkinson:

I’m with you, I’m okay.

Cohen:

Okay. All right. I just thought if we’re at a good break point.

Atkinson:

Yes.

Cohen:

Yes, so then I think before we go into your formal IEEE [activities], were you involved in IEEE [1:01:00] while you were a student or anything like that?

Atkinson:

As a student in college, the only organization I was aware of was the American Physics Association.

Cohen:

Okay, because you were in physics. Right. Not an engineer. You need to be physics. [Laughing]

Atkinson:

No.

IEEE

Cohen:

All right. Tell me a little bit. [1:01:20] Let’s start talking about IEEE.

Atkinson:

When I was working at NASA, I was hungry to upgrade my knowledge of communications and electronics. I started taking courses in the Lockheed school [1:01:40] that they had set up down there. This was just out of Houston, Clear Lake City.

I love to tell this little story of how I got associated with IEEE. I was in the grocery store one day, not an interesting place [1:02:00] to talk about IEEE, but this is how it happened. True story. I was getting ready to check out and there was a guy in front of me. He’s an Indian fellow, and he was engaging the clerk in a really deep conversation about something. I don’t even remember what the conversation was about. [1:02:20] But anyway, they were talking back and forth and back and forth. I’m standing there with my product that I want to get checked out and I’m getting anxious and impatient. Finally, he turns to me, and he gets me involved in their conversation.

Cohen:

[Laughing]

Atkinson:

Not something that I had planned for. [1:02:40] It turns out, he was the professor of wave technology for the University of Houston. An IEEE member, he mentioned IEEE, [1:03:00] and he invited me to come to an IEEE meeting. That’s how it happened.

Cohen:

You probably are the only person in IEEE history that made a connection in a grocery store. [Laughing]

Atkinson:

That’s the way it was. I went to the meeting. I found out [1:03:00] that there was a whole group of people that I felt comfortable with. That I felt like I could learn from. That would be good friends. They were all college graduates with technical degrees. I just felt like I was at home. [1:03:40] I started volunteering almost immediately with them. I pretty much signed up to be a member of the Communications Society there in March of 1968. You can calculate how many years that has been. [1:04:00] I was made the Vice Chair of the Houston Section Chapter. I did that for a while. I remained in the Communications Chapter, but I also got involved in the Section. [1:04:20] I became the Assistant Publications Chair of the Section because we produced a monthly thirty or forty-page magazine.

Cohen:

All this is volunteer?

Atkinson:

All as a volunteer. I became Assistant Chair. [1:04:40] I move on, and I became the Chair. I did that for a couple of years. Ultimately, I had to do away with the magazine because we couldn’t make it financially supportable. We went to a paper mail out [1:05:00] at that point in time. I went through that conversion process. Then I took on the job of Secretary. I did the secretary job there. Then I became Treasurer. I did the treasurer’s job. I went through that. [1:05:20] Then I went through the Vice Chair’s job. I was up for Chair. But I was in the middle of a major network build at Tenneco and my boss says I don’t think you can do both. I said you’re right, I can’t. My boss says, well, I’ll take your IEEE [1:05:40] job and you can do your Tenneco project so that’s what we did. We swapped. He became the IEEE Section Chair. As soon as my project was over, and I moved to Dallas, I [1:06:00] attended some meetings in Dallas. I met a few people there that I got to know later in my career. But then when I went back to Houston, I went back to attending meetings in Houston, but I had no position there. Ultimately moving to San Antonio, [1:06:20] I immediately started going to Section meetings here in San Antonio, not really knowing any of them. I mean they were all new folks until I went to one meeting. I was already a Senior Member [1:06:40] because that University of Houston guy that I originally met in Houston, he put me in for Senior Member and I became a Senior Member.

Cohen:

Okay.

Atkinson:

I had been a Senior Member now for many years, but the time I came to San Antonio. I [1:07:00] went to an A & A [Advancement and Admissions] meeting and I ran into a guy I went to college with.

Cohen:

Oh.

Atkinson:

When I was a senior in college, he was a freshman. Interesting, now, he had a Ph.D. and had previously been Dean of the Department where we had both been to college [1:07:20] together.

Cohen:

Oh, interesting.

Atkinson:

But he worked for a company here in San Antonio called Southwest Research Institute. He and I got reacquainted. He was the one who got me involved in the leadership of the San Antonio Section. Well, it wasn’t the San Antonio [1:07:40] Section, it was the Central Texas Section back in those days. I gradually became involved with that Section. I went through the leadership positions there ultimately, secretary, treasurer, vice chair, and [1:08:00] in 2003 I was Chair of the Section there.

Cohen:

You’re going to get into the Lone Star, so how did the Lone Star Section come about?

Atkinson:

That comes later. That comes later.

Cohen:

Okay.

Atkinson:

Let me get there. Then I formed the Central Texas Section Life [1:08:20] Members Chapter in Austin. Then for some reason driving to Austin got to be a problem. We formed, I formed, really, a second Life Members Affinity Group in San Antonio. [1:08:40] Our Section had two Life Member Affinity Groups back in that timeframe. Ultimately, the interest of the Austin group and the San Antonio group were not converging. Nobody [1:09:00] in San Antonio would go to Austin for a meeting. Nobody in Austin would come to San Antonio for a meeting. Our interests were totally different. That is when I called a meeting of the San Antonio group, and I said here’s our options. [1:09:20] We can either become our own section, we can become a subsection of Austin. There were about twelve of us in the meeting. We agreed to have subsequent meetings on whether we would choose to separate [1:09:40]. We ultimately created a resolution, and I wrote up the resolution. We had a meeting out at Southwest Research Institute. I handed it to Walt Downing who was the chief operating officer of Southwest Research Institute. He immediately signed it, and it went around the room [1:10:00] all the way back to me. My signature was the last signature on the resolution. Next thing we did was we met with the Austin Chairman and Treasurer. We told them we were going to apply for our own section. They understood that. We proceeded [1:10:20] to [do it]. I immediately contacted the Region Director and asked his permission to separate. He gave it to me. We started the paperwork through MGA (Member and Geographic Activities). You know MGA?

Cohen:

I know MGA. Right.

Atkinson:

Bear in mind: [1:10:40] one little backstop. I had already been Chair of the MGA Operations Support Committee. I had been on that committee for five years prior to this separation. I knew all about [1:11:00] how to organize and separate and build units. We did separate. The MGA Board approved it. IEEE Board of Directors approved it. We became our Lone Star Section in November of [1:11:20] 2019. Well, our LMAG (Life Member Affinity Group) in San Antonio is still connected to their Central Texas Section. What we had to do was we had to separate all of the chapters.

Cohen:

Oh, right.

Atkinson:

We had duplicate chapters in Power, we had duplicate chapters in Communications, we had duplicate chapters [1:11:40] in some of the Affinity Groups. We had to separate all of those out and put them under the Lone Star Section.

Cohen:

Lone Star. Wow.

Atkinson:

It took us like six months to actually complete this transfer. Also, we transferred what we considered is the pro rata amount of money that the [1:12:00] Central Texas Section held that really belonged to the members in San Antonio or in the Lone Star Section. We separated that out, and they wrote us a check for $12,000. I immediately applied for an IEEE concentration banking account. We set up our own Section and I became the [1:12:20] Treasurer of the Section at that point in time. I was Treasurer for four years and two months. Now I’m Past Treasurer. We made that an official position of the XCOM by the way.

Cohen:

Oh, past treasurer?

Atkinson:

Yes.

Cohen:

I mean that’s good to keep continuity.

Atkinson:

Yes, well, I’m still [1:12:40] training the new treasurer.

Cohen:

[Laughing] How big? I mean I guess I could find this out with IEEE, but you probably know, how big is the Lone Star Section? How many members?

Atkinson:

When we became our own Section, we were about 800 members.

Cohen:

Oh, so you were big. [1:13:00]

Atkinson:

Prior to that, the Central Texas Section was over 4,000. Today, they are still a relatively large section. They’re still over 3,000 members. We’re still hovering around 800 members.

Cohen:

They probably get all the University of Texas at Austin [1:13:20] people.

Atkinson:

They do, true. But at the time we separated, the Section had four student groups, but San Antonio had three of the four. We immediately had three [1:13:40] student groups here.

Cohen:

Oh.

Atkinson:

The only one we lost was the University of Texas in Austin.

Cohen:

How?

Atkinson:

We added one. We added two actually. Now we’re up to five [1:14:00] student groups in San Antonio.

Cohen:

Wow.

Atkinson:

We have, oh, about eight or nine Chapters. We have a Communication Signal Processing Chapter. We have a Power Education Chapter. We have a Technology Engineering Management Chapter. We have a [1:14:20] Robotics Chapter.

Cohen:

You have a lot.

Atkinson:

We have a lot.

Cohen:

I know you were involved in obviously the local stuff. We just talked about Lone Star, but you mentioned, too, you were in MGA. When did you start getting involved with IEEE [1:14:40] on the more global [and] national kind of level?

Atkinson:

Actually, before I became a member of the GEOS Committee, I had served two years on the Life Members Committee. [1:15:00] It was years on the Life Members Committee, five years on the GEOS Committee. Then I was not on anything. Then I applied to come back on the Life Members Committee. I spent two years on the Life Members [1:15:20] Committee. Then I became Chair of the Committee for two years and then I was going to be Past Chair of the Committee. I had previously been a Past Chair of the GEOS Committee which was a bummer. I just decided I would never ever be a Past [1:15:40] Chair of a committee again which is why I declined to serve as a Past Chair.

Cohen:

The Life Members --

Atkinson:

Interesting. I still have a lot of good contacts with the folks that served on the committee with me, like yourself. Howard [Wolfman] and I get along beautifully.

Cohen:

Right. [1:16:00]

Atkinson:

Marc Apter and I get along well. I even got a call the other day from Jacob. Jacob and I knew each other from when I organized the Texas Technical Tour. [1:16:20]

Cohen:

Jacob Kulangara, is that who you mean?

Atkinson:

Yes. He was on that tour and he and I connected and got to know each other fairly well. He calls me every now and then wanting to know about this or that and telling me that now he’s on the committee representing Region 3.

Cohen:

Right. So, when you [1:16:40] were a member of the Life Members Committee, who was Chair then? When you got more active, it was Charles Turner I think, right?

Atkinson:

Well, the last time I came on the committee, yes, it was under [1:17:00] Turner.

Cohen:

Right, Charles Turner.

Atkinson:

Yes.

Cohen:

Do you remember who it was before that?

Atkinson:

Ah, I would have to dig.

Cohen:

No, no, no. I can find it.

Atkinson:

Well, actually there were two. When I came on my first year, I was under one. [1:17:20] The second year, he term-limited out. I had a different one. I was always kind of the most active member of the committee. I mean I was volunteering to do everything

Cohen:

Yes. I mean to be honest what turned me onto Life Members was you. Thank you. [1:17:40].

Atkinson:

Oh, well, you’re welcome.

Cohen:

You really kind of let me kind of cut my teeth, gave me some really good advice, and made me feel accepted and wanted, so thank you.

Atkinson:

I remember you were asking me: you had a dumb question and I replied there are no dumb questions.

Cohen:

[Laughing] [1:18:00] I still ask questions. My kids yell at me.

Atkinson:

[Laughing]

Cohen:

I ask too many questions. [Laughter] But I do appreciate that there are no dumb questions. You’re right. Now, I know you’re not just sitting home idly because that’s not you, Scott. Tell me a little. I know you’re also doing [1:18:20] some genealogy research. What else are you doing for IEEE at this point?

Atkinson:

Well, of course I’m the Chair of the [IEEE] Communications Society [Chapter] and the [IEEE] Signal Processing Society Chapter, here. This is my Communication Society shirt with my [1:18:40] Past North American Region Director nametag. Here, it’s kind of hard to see.

Cohen:

Yes, I saw you had a nametag. I thought it was because you thought I wouldn’t recognize you. [Laughing]

Atkinson:

A couple of things. Besides being Chair of the Chapter here, I’m also Treasurer of the Chapter. [1:19:00] I have the most knowledge about financial matters in the IEEE. It’s easy for me to just say, well, I’ll do it.

Doug Zuckerman was President of the [IEEE] Communications Society at one point [1:19:20] in time. Doug and I really hit it off really well. I don’t remember exactly the details of how this happened, but he contacted me and says, Scott, I’d like to have you join me on the [IEEE Communications Society] History Committee. Well, as you know, being on the Life Members Committee, we had this special relationship [1:19:40] with the History Committee. I said, yes, I know a little bit about History Committee stuff. I had already previously done quite a number of oral histories of military people. As a result of my uncle -- military [1:20:00] time. I was very familiar with that. I got on the ComSoc (Communications Society) History Committee, and I am still on it. I perform oral histories for the History Committee. I did one recently last year for Dale Hatfield. Then I did one for John Pape, [1:20:20] who was a staff member of the Communications Society. I did one for Leo Wrobel who was an entrepreneur inventor who’s invented a lot of really great stuff. I did a little consulting job for him once. Who else? [1:20:40] I’ve gotten approval from the History Committee to do another oral history of a fellow by the name of Mr. David Monroe who was the Vice President of Datapoint Corporation who knows everything there is to know about what Datapoint did and [1:21:00] what it achieved. He is a special individual I can talk to.

But let me finish up what you asked for. I’m Treasurer of the Technology Engineering Management Chapter. I’m also Past [1:21:20] Treasurer of the Computer Chapter. I have been a Chair of the Life Members Affinity Group (LMAG) here in the Lone Star Section for multiple terms actually. This last term [1:21:40] I had a two-year term and I said I’ve had enough. This needs to go onto the younger generation. I’m still training the current chair. He had been a Section Chair many years ago. But he’s [1:22:00] still kind of a novice on a lot of the IEEE policies and procedures, so I’m helping him. He and I met the other day for lunch just to chat. On the Section, of course, I’ve been its Treasurer for four years. Now I’m Past Treasurer and I’m still involved in [1:22:20] all the Treasurer Activities because I’m helping the current Treasurer take over the Treasurer’s duties for the Section. I have to maintain my own checking account, so I have two checking accounts that I manage. One of them is for the [1:22:40] LMAG here in the Section. Our LMAG currently has assets of about $5,000. We are probably one of the most active well-funded LMAGs in the world.

Cohen:

Yes. I even remember during the time of [1:23:00] COVID when a lot of people were not meeting, your group was still pulling through [Laughing] and doing meetings.

Atkinson:

Yes, we were. We were doing Zoom meetings back in those days since we couldn’t meet face-to-face. True, yes.

Cohen:

I do remember you were pretty active. [1:23:20] I also want to mention, too, that you did spearhead an effort to help support the first inaugural Life Members Conference that we had in April [2024] in Austin. You did take a very active role in providing our Texas hospitality as well as financial support. [1:23:40]

Atkinson:

Well, that’s an interesting story about how that came about. When I first saw the agenda, apparently, I misread the dates. I thought Sunday was kind of the start date.

Cohen:

Oh.

Atkinson:

So, there were not going to be any meetings on Sunday. [1:24:00] I thought, hmm, gee, that’d be a great time to have the Life Members in the State of Texas assemble and be able to be there for an opening reception. So, I pursued that, and you helped me with that. [1:24:20] But as it turned out my dates were wrong.

Cohen:

[Laughing]

Atkinson:

The actual reception date was on that Sunday, but they also had your meetings on that Sunday if I remember correctly now. I still [1:24:40] kind of thought, well, we can do that. We could be there for the reception, but I need to find out how we can make that happen. You and I started discussing how we might possibly make that happen. You offered that if we [1:25:00] accepted a Silver Sponsorship for $5,000 that we could sponsor the reception. I took that and I ran with it. I contacted all of the Life Members in the State of Texas and I said if you’ll donate some money preferably about $100 apiece, we’ll come up with [1:25:20] the $5,000, and we can sponsor this reception. That was a task. We received quite a few donations of $100 through the vTools [1:25:40] events registration. In fact, I think we received about $2,800 that way, but then a lot of people just kept wanting to send me checks instead of registering that way.

Cohen:

Going through that.

Atkinson:

We received over $3,000 in checks that way. Towards [1:26:00] the end, we thought, boy, we are going to barely make our $5,000. Then I got a check for $1,000 from a guy up in Austin, I thought, oh my gosh. We were over $6,000 total. Of course, transferring that $5,000 to the committee turned out to be a little [1:26:20] bit of an exercise.

Cohen:

I know, there were a few problems.

Atkinson:

[Laughing]

Cohen:

I know it got a little crazy but…

Atkinson:

Oh, yes, you probably haven’t heard the latest on that.

Cohen:

No.

Atkinson:

The lady --

Cohen:

Do we want that recorded for posterity? [Laughing]

Atkinson:

Well, why not?

Cohen:

Okay.

Atkinson:

It’s an interesting scenario about how things work [1:26:40] sometimes in the IEEE. The staff member, what’s her name?

Cohen:

Laura Hall.

Atkinson:

Laura Hall. She said she would make the transfer for me. I said, okay, fine. Go ahead, transfer the $5,000. [1:27:00] Next thing I know, the money was transferred. Well, I thought, it’s all done. It’s taken care of. About a month or two later, I got an email from somebody up in the IEEE [1:27:20] Finance, that said it’s wrong. We’re resending it. They sent the $5,000 back to me. I said wait a minute. How am I going to get this $5,000 into the committee?

Cohen:

Right.

Atkinson:

They said, well, we’ll figure it out. [1:27:40] They ended up taking $5,000 out of the Section account.

Cohen:

Oh, no.

Atkinson:

Then I owed the Section $5,000.

Cohen:

[Laughing] Oh god.

Atkinson:

I transferred $5,000 to the Section to replace the [1:28:00] $5,000 the Section gave to the Life Members Committee. This scenario, interestingly enough, happens more often than you’d realize. I can tell you another long story about how they messed up. [1:28:20] A very short one. I paid $5,000 for a conference out of my Chapter funds. I paid it out. For some reason I paid it out of LMAG money. [1:28:40] I must have been having a bad day or something. I realized that wasn’t the way to do that. It should have been transferred out of the Section funds because that’s where the money is. I told them that I needed them to clear this up. Well, what they did was they took that money [1:29:00], it was over $600, and they sent it back to the Section, not as an expense, but as a deposit.

Cohen:

Ah, oh, gee.

Atkinson:

[Laughing] They [1:29:20] should have sent it back, of course, as an expense. We had money in our account that it --. It just went on and on and on. It’s finally settled, but I had to get them to convert it to an expense. Then they had to put it in the right account, and they put it in the wrong account. It went back and forth [1:29:40] and just yesterday I did an audit on it, just to make sure that it’s all done correctly. Everybody has the right amount of money, and in the right accounts, and so it is. But it just takes a lot of time, effort, and energy to correct even the smallest errors

Cohen:

[1:30:00] IBM, not IBM, IEEE, sorry, that goes back to my IBM days. IEEE, it’s a huge bureaucracy for some stuff. There’s a lot of wonderful, wonderful things that go on, but you’re right, it’s convoluted and just [1:30:20] some stuff that’s hard. I want to kind of sort of start wrapping up a little bit. I mean are you okay? Do you feel like there’s some material that we’ve missed that you want to go back to?

Atkinson:

I can say that the IEEE has been my [1:30:40] professional association. I felt like it’s done a lot for me and my career. It’s put me in touch with some of the world’s greatest engineers, professionals whom I would never have met or got to know [1:31:00] otherwise. People like Doug Zuckerman. I can go down the list of all of the great people that I’ve worked with and for and known in the association. Many of them have been presidents of [1:31:20] IEEE. Certainly, a lot of them have been in high level positions in the IEEE that I can call friends. Tom Coughlin and I know each other personally.

Cohen:

He’s a good guy.

Atkinson:

We’ve met on many occasions in Region 5. [1:31:40] That’s one thing I hadn’t even mentioned in this whole scenario about my IEEE career is that I had a career in Region 5 as well. From the time I was Section Chair of the Central Texas Section I got on that Region 5 Committee and I progressed through many positions [1:32:00] in Region 5. I was on the Industrial Relations Committee. I was on the Awards Committee Chair. Through that, after I served in Region 5 committees, the Director of the Region, Bob Scolli who was from Tulsa, Oklahoma. He was the one who recommended [1:32:20] that I come on the Life Members Committee originally. That started my career at the upper echelon of IEEE, serving two years on the LMAG. Then five years on the GEOS Committee. [Laughing]

Cohen:

Right. I want to [1:32:40] capture, too, a little bit here, that you were one of the people that fought really hard to get the IEEE Life Members Chair on the [IEEE] Board. They started going to the Board meetings. Well, that didn’t happen before.

Atkinson:

[1:33:00] Relative to the organizational structure of the Life Members Committee, it is the only committee that I know of that has two parents.

Cohen:

Right.

Atkinson:

That is kind of a back and forth, back and forth scenario. We would do things [1:33:20] in the MGA (Member and Geographic Activities) side of the house that the [IEEE] Foundation would say they didn’t agree with, even to this day. I’m going to make my own personal feelings about this. I believe that the Life Members Committee [1:33:40] should be an MGA committee only. That the funds of the Life Members Committee can still stay in the Foundation without the Chair being an ex-officio Director of the Foundation. [1:34:00] I believe the whole scenario would work out much, much better for everyone involved. When you look at the [IEEE] History Committee for example, the History Committee is on the IEEE side. Yet, they have a prestigious position [1:34:20] in the Foundation side. But the Foundation is not a parent of the History Committee.

Cohen:

Yes. I’m on the [IEEE] History Committee officially now and that’s actually because of you, because you made me the liaison. Then the other thing [1:34:40] that we’ve also did that was an accomplishment of yours, Scott, and that is the fellowship that was funded by the Life Members. Life Members only donated money. We didn’t have any input. Now we have somebody on the committee because I’ve reviewed a lot of those fellowships and scholarships [1:35:00] for the last few years and that’s been great because now we have a more active role.

Atkinson:

Yes.

Cohen:

Of course, as Life Members has gotten more to do with their web page and stuff like that, we’re pushing it. As we do ask for donations, it’s easier to see where the money went.

Atkinson:

Well, the [1:35:20] reason I am the way I am, I’d say we didn’t get into this. You asked me at one point if I had any graduate degrees. While I was with Tenneco, I always wanted to have a graduate degree in telecommunications. In the [1:35:20] United States, there was only one university that had one and that was the University of Colorado in Boulder. Well, I was working, so I didn’t have the privilege of taking off a year from work to go up to Boulder to attend that program. That was very much on my mind. [1:36:00] Then a university out of California called Pepperdine University started holding classes in Houston. So, they came out in the newspaper advertising, looking for students who would sign up. I went to Tenneco and [1:36:20] Tenneco agreed to pay for my going to school. I enrolled in the graduate degree program. It was what we called an Executive MBA. They brought the professors for the classes [1:36:40] to Houston. We met every three weeks. We met for an entire weekend in class: Friday night, all day Saturday, and Sunday half a day. I did that for one whole year going to three trimesters. Yes, [1:37:00] maybe more than a year. Then I had to write a thesis. I had trouble getting my thesis accepted by one of my professors. That’s a long story that I won’t get into. But anyway, I finally convinced [1:37:20] them that I was eligible to graduate, and I did graduate with that Executive MBA from Pepperdine University, which is a prestigious university to have a degree from. When I was Network Manager for Tenneco, I felt the need to get more managerial type [1:37:40] training and knowledge, so that’s why I pursued that degree in management. I had those credentials in my bailiwick when I started in many of these high-level IEEE positions.

Cohen:

Right. [1:38:00] I also want to be sure that we take a few minutes to talk about the Texas Tour that you organized.

Atkinson:

Okay.

Cohen:

Talk a little, because I think that was a very interesting opportunity. People still talk about it. I don’t know if this tour was to be resurrected, but go ahead. [Laughing]

Atkinson:

Well, how tours [1:38:20] got started. On my original membership on the Life Members Committee, we were sponsoring tours. We sponsored the first tour to Panama City. I got involved in planning [1:38:40] that under Ted Bickart who was the Region 5 History Committee Chair. He was also on the Milestone Awards Committee of IEEE History. [1:39:00] Ted was involved in that. My wife and I went on that tour. Then we talked about the second tour. The second tour, I said I would help with it. Everybody else vanished, [1:39:20] and all of a sudden, I’m doing it.

Cohen:

[Laughing].

Atkinson:

I organized the second tour of England and Scotland, but I was not allowed to go on the tour. Interesting. Anyway, I was at a Communication Society conference [1:39:40] and I happened to be passing through England on the day they started that English tour. I met with them. I greeted them. Next, I left London and flew back home while they went on the tour. But I was [1:40:00] involved in coordinating all the details. I set up all the sites. I organized the whole tour. I did that tour.

Then I was offered the Life Members Committee and sponsored a couple more tours in subsequent years. Then for some reason [1:40:20] all of a sudden it just stopped. They said: no doing tours out of a committee, that’s not heard of, that’s something we don’t do.

Out of the Central Texas Section, there’s a fellow named Tom Grim, who was on the Life Members Committee. [1:40:40] He tried to push through getting a new tour established with a focus being primarily visiting sites around the State of Texas. Tom tried to get that through the Life Members Committee, and they would not agree to do it. [1:41:00] Well, I had already been working with Tom trying to get that going. Then Tom says, well, they won’t do it, so I’m not interested. I talked to a couple of people and said, well, what do you think? You think we ought to go ahead and do this? So, yes. let’s go ahead and give it a try. [1:41:20]

I started off getting some volunteers to help me and we pretty much organized a tour just like IEEE would organize a conference. You had to have a 20 percent surplus on your expenses at that time. That [1:41:40] was the formula. We organized the tour exactly that way. I think thirty-some-odd members signed up for the tour. What we put on there, we would make the 20 percent surplus that we had [1:42:00] put together. It turns out we had forty-two members sign up for the tour, so we actually exceeded our 20 percent surplus. I banked the entire tour through our local bank account. We had over [1:42:19] $114,000 [Laughing] in our bank account. The tour ended up yielding close to $20,000 surplus which came back to our LMAG here in San Antonio. [1:42:40] That money financed our LMAG from that point on. We’re still living off of that money because we have our own investment account of over $4,000 right now which is money still left over from that that Texas Tour. [1:43:00]

Cohen:

You’re still living off of that?

Atkinson:

We operate pretty much strictly on --

Cohen:

Would you be willing to take on another one or?

Atkinson:

I’m sorry?

Cohen:

Would you be willing to organize another technical tour?

Atkinson:

Well, I guess the answer to that is, it depends.

Cohen:

Okay. [1:43:20]

Atkinson:

Now, let me tell you something that we haven’t come up with yet. The last twelve months we’ve been heavily involved in trying to get a MILCOM Conference [IEEE Military Communications Conference]. It’s a Communications Society conference out of their [1:43:40] sequence of meeting locations which is Boston, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles. I think one time they might have had one in Missouri. We said, why not have one in San Antonio? We have the largest [1:44:00] contingency of United States military here in San Antonio. Why wouldn’t we have a MILCOM Conference here? I supported that. We’ve been working with that. I got the Section [1:44:20] Conferences Committee Chair on board. He’s helped an awful lot. His name is Chris Camargo. Chris set up meetings with the ComSoc Planning Group. We originally wanted the conference for 2024. [1:44:40] Time developed; we couldn’t get that. We set our sights on 2025. They’ve had a meeting less than a month ago and said they had decided on the 2025-2026 conferences, and they were awarding [1:45:00] 2026 to San Antonio.

Cohen:

Wow.

Atkinson:

That’s what I’ve been involved in most recently.

Cohen:

I also went through your notes a little bit, too, to make sure there’s nothing else that we missed. One of the things that I did see we needed to talk about was the [IEEE Region 5] Stepping Stone Awards. You’ve done some [work] with Stepping Stones. Do you want to address that [1:45:20] a little bit?

Atkinson:

Are you familiar with Sofia? Okay. It was a [1:46:20] flying telescope. They made the first observation of an occultation of the Planet Pluto because you can’t see planets because they don’t irradiate.

Cohen:

We have to be careful because Pluto’s no [1:46:40] longer a planet [chuckling].

Atkinson:

Well, that’s…

Cohen:

[Laughing] Yes, just trying to…

Atkinson:

That’s part of it.

Cohen:

It’s important.

Atkinson:

That’s part of the reason I guess you might say that Southwest Research Institute has a guy by the name of Dr. Alan Stern who decided that investigating Pluto [1:47:00] was a mission critical thing. Eleven years before, he had proposed to NASA that they do a flyby of Pluto. So, for eleven years this spacecraft was out there in space headed toward Pluto. [1:47:20] Eleven years.

Cohen:

Wow.

Atkinson:

Finally, as I say, personally, I did not know this information until my friend who was a network coordinator on the Sofia project told me [1:47:40] about them flying out over the Pacific Ocean and catching the occultation of the Planet Pluto with a star behind Pluto illuminating Pluto.

Cohen:

Oh.

Atkinson:

I knew about that then. He told me about it. That’s a whole ‘nother story about how I got involved [1:48:00] in telescopes and Sophia. Then the next thing I know, on the news, New Horizon Spacecraft flies by Pluto and takes these pictures. It’s in the news all over the world as a huge accomplishment.

I called up Walt Downing [1:48:20] who I have a fairly good relationship with who’s the Chief Operating Officer of Southwest Research Institute. I told Walt, I say, IEEE needs to recognize you for this event. We got involved in a conversation. He says, well, I have to have NASA’s approval to accept an award because it’s their project. [1:48:40] He checked with them and finally they said okay. We could give them an award. I go back to Ted and I said, Ted, what kind of award can we give Southwest Research Institute for this accomplishment? Since he was on the IEEE Milestone Awards Committee, [1:49:00] he drafted up a Stepping Stone Award document that he wrote and I helped edit. We created this document called the Stepping Stone Award which we presented to the Region 5 EXCOM and finally got [1:49:20] their approval to do that. Ted decided to make the award physically look like a Milestone plaque. That’s going to be problematic in the future [1:49:40] by the way.

Cohen:

Right.

Atkinson:

We got Region 5’s approval. He notified the [IEEE] History Committee that we were going to issue the [IEEE Region 5] Stepping Stone Award to Southwest Research Institute. We crafted [1:50:00] the language for the plaque. These plaques cost about $900 apiece. I asked Walt [Downing], are y’all willing to pay for the plaques? He says yes. Buy me two. [Laughing].

Cohen:

Oh, you bought the two.

Atkinson:

We bought two plaques. One plaque [1:50:20] was presented to the President of Southwest Research Institute, the Vice President in charge of their space operations and Walt Downing here in San Antonio. It’s mounted out there in their space research building [1:50:40] where they build instrumentation for satellites. Then months later Ted couldn’t attend the San Antonio presentations. Oh, we scheduled the second plaque presentation for Boulder, Colorado [1:51:00] which is where Dr. Alan Stern is located. Walt Downing and I and maybe one or two more flew up there to present the plaque to Dr. Stern. I got to present the plaque to Dr. Stern in Boulder. [1:51:20] We had a really great trip there and it was great meeting him. I happened to have had a book that he just wrote, and I had just bought it. It just came out.

Cohen:

Wow.

Atkinson:

I brought it. I took it with me.

Cohen:

To get an autograph.

Atkinson:

Yes, and he signed it; autographed it. [1:51:40] An interesting story is he was here in San Antonio just last week. He was going to be making a presentation on his suborbital flight on one of those up and down flights. He was going to give a presentation on that. I told Walt, I said, let’s get [1:52:00] a picture of him and the plaque that we have here in San Antonio, so we did. We got him over there. We got the picture of him, and Walt asked me to be in the picture, too, since I was so heavily involved in all of it. Walt was in the picture. Another [1:52:20] woman and Joe Redfield, was also in the picture. I could send you these pictures by the way. They’ve shown up on LinkedIn already.

Cohen:

I mean you could send them to me, but I think what I’d like to do is pass it along to the Life Member Group.

Atkinson:

Okay.

Cohen:

Or I could pass it [1:52:40] to History, either way.

Atkinson:

Yes, it’s a phenomenal opportunity. But by the way I got him to sign my book twice [Laughing].

Cohen:

Oh, okay, all right. I think a lot of these pictures are not part of what we’re doing today as far as the oral history, [1:53:00] but some of those pictures should be shared with a wider audience of IEEE because there’s a lot of interesting stuff that goes on.

Atkinson:

Yes, that’s a good idea. I think that’s great. I’ll see that those pictures get forwarded on to you.

Cohen:

Yes, because I think this stuff becomes more of an oral history, [1:53:20] but I’ll be glad to pass that stuff along.

Atkinson:

I’m going to mention this at this point in case you really want to wrap this up. During my career with the IEEE, I think I have won awards as Outstanding in IEEE or I’ve [1:53:40] received these awards from the Sections, from the Region, from MGA. I’ve also received an acknowledgement by the IEEE Board of Directors for all of my volunteerism that I’ve done over these fifty, sixty years, whatever it is of working with the IEEE. [1:54:00] IEEE has been almost a continuous part of my life since I joined back in 1968. I can’t think of a better organization to have as a professional association. The [IEEE] Communications [1:54:20] Society has been my society of preference from the get-go. I am also a member of the [IEEE] Computer Society and the [IEEE]Technology Engineering Management Society. I am a Life Member of those other Societies [1:54:40] as well as the IEEE. I actually have four different Life Memberships: three by Societies and one by IEEE. Having those awards and those acknowledgements for me has been very interesting. [1:55:00] Relative to the Communications Society, I actually was Executive Chair of two of the major conferences, the Globe Com 2001 and Globe Com 2014, more recently. Both of the conferences were very successful [1:55:20] conferences. I had a great team of folks that supported me in those conferences. Now I’m off and running, I’m the de facto leader of MILCOM 2026. [Laughing]

Cohen:

[Laughing] You still have energy to still keep going.

Atkinson:

You [1:55:40] asked me how about my involvement in IEEE. There’s not a day that goes by I’m not involved in some way, shape, or form.

Of course, my other love is genealogy and I’m heavily involved in the local genealogical society here in San Antonio. I do. I’m an author. I lecture on [1:56:00] genealogy topics here in the local genealogical association. I’ve had a great life. I can’t complain at all.

Cohen:

I know you’ve taken your family’s history back many generations I assume.

Atkinson:

Oh, you wouldn’t believe how far back I can take it.

Cohen:

Wow.

Atkinson:

Try about 400 A.D. [1:56:20]

Cohen:

Really? That’s pretty impressive.

Atkinson:

Yes.

Cohen:

Especially because of knowing how you reference going back to that.

Atkinson:

Well, there’s a tool out there called Wikitree.com of which I am one of the San Antonio [1:56:40] gurus of Wikitree.com. I teach that class on that topic monthly at this local genealogy library. It’s a great tool for tracking and documenting your family tree. I highly recommend it.

Cohen:

Okay. [1:57:00] Wikitree.com?

Atkinson:

Yes.

Cohen:

I’ll have to check that out. Let me also ask you about reflecting. What would you want to tell young people as far as pursuing a career in this field? What advice you would give them? [1:57:20] Pitfalls. Whatever, I’ll leave that up to you to describe.

Atkinson:

Well, in a way, I would like to refer you to a video that Chris Sanderson made of me back many years ago when I was the South Area Chair of Region 5. I had responsibility for the South Area which included Dallas, [1:57:40], Fort Worth, Austin, San Antonio, Houston, Galveston, all of those various sections. Oh, boy. I’m having a mind lapse. Now what were we talking about?

Cohen:

We were talking [1:58:00] about Chris Sanderson, the video, and what advice you would give young people. [Laughing]

Atkinson:

Yes, he caught me one time. I was over in Houston visiting the Section there and he says, Scott, I want to catch you on a video telling about IEEE. He interviewed me and I don’t think I could [1:58:20] do better than that one. You can look it up. It’s on the Houston Section website.

Cohen:

Okay.

Atkinson:

I can say this off the top of my head. There’s no better connection [1:58:40] for a young person who’s interested in technology than to be a member of the IEEE because through the IEEE, you will expand your horizons for both your career, [1:59:00] your friends, and your knowledge. I can’t say enough about all those being of value to an individual in their career. I highly recommend it. People will say, well gosh, I’m just a student, I don’t [1:59:20] know anybody. You start by volunteering. You volunteer. You meet people. You start meeting people; you get to know more people. All of a sudden, you’re doing more and more things in the IEEE. [1:59:40] Next thing you know, you’re at conferences. You’re presenting papers at conferences. You’re working with the conference team of individuals putting on the conferences. In ComSoc, I not only put on conferences, but I’ve served on the Conferences Planning Committee [2:00:00] for over twenty years. I went to two conferences per year. All over the world. I could never afford to do that on my own money. It’s phenomenal. I feel like I’m [2:00:20] a highly blessed individual to have had the opportunity to do all of these things and meet all of these people. It is almost a little sad to have to start stepping away from being involved, but our health and wellbeing [2:00:40] takes priority over international travel.

Cohen:

Yes.

Atkinson:

I haven’t flown in an airplane since Howard Wolfman and I flew up to meet some folks at Piscataway, [New Jersey] in 2020. February of 2020 is the last time I was on an airplane. [2:01:00]

Cohen:

Oh, wow. Okay, that’s a while ago.

Atkinson:

After doing it for twenty years.

Cohen:

Yes. Is there anything that you want to say that you’re most proud of in your career or in your life?

Atkinson:

Well, my career went like a [2:01:20] yo-yo to a certain extent. I’ve been unemployed two major times in my career, both of them were very depressing times. I wasn’t sure I would ever recover from not having a good job. But each time I [2:01:40] not only recovered but I did better. All I could say these days is it’s well because it ended well because each time I was [2:02:00] down in the dumps, I came out of it stronger and better. I can say I’m a very privileged individual. I’m a retired Lieutenant Air Force Colonel. I have my military retirement pay. I have complete hospitalization [2:02:20] through the military. My wife has had several major hospital stays whose bills come in at $80,000 and $100,000. We’re billed zero.

Cohen:

Zero. Well, you gave time to the country and to your service so it’s nice.

Atkinson:

I’m retired from Tenneco, Incorporated. I get a pension from them. I’m retired from USAA and get a pension from them. My wife has her Social Security pension. I have my Social Security pension. So, the five pensions that we have give us a pretty good lifestyle. [2:03:00]

Cohen:

Yes. I mean today’s people, who knows if they’ll have Social Security but they’re certainly not going to have pensions. This is sort of a thing to reflect on a little bit. Do you think you achieved your dreams?

Atkinson:

I’m sorry?

Cohen:

Did you achieve your dreams? [2:03:20] I think if someone asked me this, it’s a hard question, because life turns out the way it does. I mean it’s sort of on my list, but it’s an odd question to ask.

Atkinson:

Well, it is an interesting question. My dream was to achieve [2:03:40] something with my life. I did, so I have. For that I feel like, yes, I have to say I have achieved my dream.

Personal life, reflections, closing remarks

Cohen:

Yes. It does sound like you are slowing down a little bit because of [2:04:00] health issues and getting older. But it sounds like you still have goals. You’re still staying active in your chapters in San Antonio.

Atkinson:

Right.

Cohen:

You’re not going quietly, Scott. [Laughing]

Atkinson:

It doesn’t look like it. That’s for sure.

Cohen:

But that’s life.

Atkinson:

I play tennis three times a week.

Cohen:

Oh, that’s right. I forgot you [2:04:20] play tennis. You play tennis three times a week? Wow.

Atkinson:

I’m not the best player out there, but I get out there and I was playing yesterday. Yesterday? What is today? Tuesday? Yes.

Cohen:

It’s Tuesday.

Atkinson:

Yes, I played yesterday morning. One of the ladies says you know Scott, you’re a really good player. Say, what? [2:04:40] She says, these other guys, they beat up on me all the time. She says, no, but you’re a good player. [Laughing]

Cohen:

Oh, good. That’s good. It does sound like you keep yourself pretty busy and active you know with things. San Antonio you said has been your home for thirty years.

Atkinson:

Right.

Cohen:

You certainly have a big [2:05:00] social circle, friendship circle, work circle.

Atkinson:

Well…

Cohen:

Oh, go ahead.

Atkinson:

No. I was going to say at this point in my life my brother is still alive. All of his children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren are alive and presumably doing okay. My two daughters [2:05:20] are doing well for their status and position in life. My oldest daughter just got laid off from her company, so she’s saying should I retire. I don’t know. But she’s old enough to retire. She’s coming over next week, [2:05:40] actually at the end of this week, to spend a few days which gives me an opportunity to venture out and do some things I’ve been wanting to do by myself because she’ll be here.

Cohen:

Your other daughter is in San Antonio, right? [2:06:00]

Atkinson:

Our youngest daughter is here in San Antonio, and she lives with us. She’s been here with us a couple of years now. I think she’s going to be here indefinitely.

Cohen:

Okay.

Atkinson:

We like that. We’re very pleased. That’s not to say everything is peaches [2:06:20] and cream, but you know kids and parents, there’s always some degree of interaction that could go differently.

Cohen:

Right. I mean my parents are gone now, but I know with my children, too, they’re starting to keep an eye out for us. You know.

Atkinson:

Oh, yes.

Cohen:

Because we are [2:06:40] aging. There’s good, but it’s hard when you’ve been the parent and now, they’re sort of trying to parent you a little bit so it’s a different role. Are there grandchildren in your family?

Atkinson:

Well, we have five grandchildren.

Cohen:

All right, so you do have that next generation.

Atkinson:

We have a girl and a boy by my oldest [2:07:00] daughter. My youngest daughter has two sons and a daughter. That daughter, her name is Desiree. She lives not too far from us here. She’s over here at our house somewhere around two to three times a week. She comes over [2:07:20] and she helps out with some of the household chores and I’m gladly able to help her out with some money.

Cohen:

Anybody in the grandchildren generation engineers, communications people?

Atkinson:

My oldest [2:07:40] grandson is now vice president of a construction company in Houston. He’s the vice president of information technology, so I would call that cybersecurity.

Cohen:

Yes. That’s computers, right?

Atkinson:

More than anything else. My [2:08:00] next oldest grandson is a fireman. He’s a very, very successful fireman. In fact, he’s applying to be promoted to lieutenant, just coming up real soon because he’s been selected as the outstanding Fireman of the Year multiple times [2:08:20] by his peers. He’s doing well. The next grandson is involved in the sales and installation of audio-video and security systems. He [2:08:40] works for another fellow. He’s also a great mechanic. He just put running boards on my new SUV [Laughing] for me.

Cohen:

Okay. [Laughing]

Atkinson:

They help us a lot. We share our financial [2:09:00] means with them accordingly because we enjoy them. They enjoy coming and visiting with us, so we try to regularly hold family dinners where we get the whole gang together and there will be four or five or six of us for dinner. [2:09:20]. I don’t know whether you call this a positive or a negative, but I end up paying the bill. [Laughing]

Cohen:

But like you said, you know you have the luxury, you could do that, you’re glad to share. It means you build memories. They’re spending time with you. It’s a win/win [2:09:40]. I know you’re also generous with your donations to IEEE. You do support IEEE as well.

Atkinson:

Well, you’re right. I’m still in the [IEEE] Heritage Circle. There’s two of them. The Heritage Circle and… [2:10:00]

Cohen:

I think there’s another one that starts with a -- the one where if you put something about IEEE in your will. [The IEEE Foundation has the IEEE Goldsmith Legacy League.]

Atkinson:

Yes, that one.

Cohen:

Right, right.

Atkinson:

I have both of those.

Cohen:

Yes.

Atkinson:

Yes. I regularly contribute $1,000 a year to the IEEE [2:10:20] towards my Heritage Circle, I guess, I think is the one. Haven’t got to the $10,000 mark yet but we’re working -- or is it $5,000 or $10,000

Cohen:

Oh, wow. I think it’s $10,000. Yes.

Atkinson:

$10,000. I’m not there yet.

Cohen:

I think it’s $10,000 but you could spread it out over --

Atkinson:

Yes, I’m about halfway there.

Cohen:

Yes. [2:10:40] No. I think that one of the things that we sometimes hear, that they say, well, Life Members don’t have to pay dues anymore. Well, excuse me, most Life Members give more than their dues back to IEEE as donations.

Atkinson:

A certain number of them do.

Cohen:

Some of them, right [2:11:00].

Atkinson:

But I have to tell you that I’m disappointed that Life Members don’t make more commitments to support the IEEE Life Members Fund.

Cohen:

Yes. I know.

Atkinson:

Because the number, the actual number is pretty low. It’s like fifteen.

Cohen:

I mean when you were Chair of the Life Members, [2:11:20] we were sort of trying to get that initiative going and now it’s kind of gone off to the side. I think it is something that we should revisit again because I think there’s definitely people that probably would contribute, but I think they need to see what they’re getting for their contributions.

Atkinson:

Well, that’s true.

Cohen:

It is making a difference.

Atkinson:

Absolutely. I think that’s the key [2:11:40] right there. They need to know what their contributions are doing for the Society and that’s the bottom line I think.

Cohen:

Yes. There are certain people that are cut out of the cloth where they want to give [2:12:00] back. You certainly are one of them. But yes, I know there’s a lot that are not going to do anything.

Anything else that you want to go back to or anything you think that I didn’t ask you that you want to [2:12:20] talk about that we missed?

Atkinson:

I can’t really think about it, at this point.

Cohen:

The process is the recording gets transcribed. Then you’ll have a chance to look at [2:12:40] it. I think you know the process. Excuse me. If there’s anything that you want me to correct or change, you can certainly do that. But I know, Scott, I know it takes time. I appreciate the time. I’m actually truly honored [2:13:00] that you asked me. I really am. I’m very touched. Thank you.

Atkinson:

Well. I had a number of people who kind of jumped on me after I agreed to do this for you because other people thought they were going to be the one. [Laughing]

Cohen:

Well, I’m glad I won. [Laughing]

Atkinson:

[Laughing]

Cohen:

For whatever it’s worth. [Laughing]

Atkinson:

I knew that you had done some oral histories. I knew that we had a special working arrangement.

Cohen:

Right.

Atkinson:

So, I felt very comfortable that you and I could collaborate effectively.

Cohen:

Yes, I hope this was comfortable, this was good and worked well [2:13:40] for you.

Atkinson:

Well, I hope it serves the purpose and the furtherance of IEEE’s acquisition of history because I have been a member for, what, sixty years. I can’t remember the actual…, so1968. If this [2:14:00] helps further the acquisition of history for the IEEE, I could probably talk for ten hours on IEEE history about all the things I’ve seen and been involved in doing. But obviously we don’t have that amount of time to delve into it. [2:14:20] I’ve got other things to do, too.

Cohen:

I know. I’ve taken a bunch of your time this morning. But if there are some things, I certainly can talk to Mary Ann [Hellrigel] if we need a part two or something like that. I did, just for clarification, send her an email about [2:14:40] the forms we signed. They were the other day. She said she should be able to adjust them.

Atkinson:

I saw her response that she’s doing an oral history for Jim Jefferies who is a friend of mine as well.

Cohen:

Oh, okay. All right.

Atkinson:

[Laughing]

Cohen:

I guess today is oral history day. All right. I just want to make sure what I can do here. I’m going to [2:15:00] stop. Are you okay? I’m going to stop our recording.

Atkinson:

Yes, and thank you.