USAFA Class Histories

DONALD R. SIMMONS (DECEASED)

{NOTE: Don submitted this summary prior to his death on 9 April 1998.}

My career was not particularly noteworthy. I spent the full 28 years allowed for those of us who did not get promoted to full Col. I also selected a rather mundane field of civil engineering and stayed in it. After an initial tour at Hamilton AFB, I went to graduate school in residence at AFIT where I got a master€™s degree in Space Facilities€"a sort of civil engineering degree in outer space. That was followed by a year in Vietnam(68-69) in an Air Force Red Horse Squadron, sort of like Navy Seabees. I returned from there to Washington D.C., where I spent the next seven years. First as a staff officer at HQ AFSC, then two years on the IG Staff at AFSC, then four years at HQ NASA working on the NASA Space Shuttle Program. I left there and went to Los Angeles Air Force Station the summer of 1976 to continue work on the Space Shuttle as an Air Force Civil Engineer. I became the Chief of the Civil Engineer Program about a year later and kept that job for three more years. I then took a short (1 1/2 year) job as a Civil Engineer Squadron Commander at Kadena AFB, Japan and returned to the same job at Los Angeles AFB. I stayed in that until I retired in June 1971.

After retiring I was hired by the civilian contractor who provided Base Support Civil Engineering Services as their Chief of Civil Engineering Programs, and have held that job ever since. Along the way I divorced, remarried in 1993, became widowed in 1996, and am still single. I am still pretty active in numerous areas including golf, big game fishing, and country western dancing. I have one son and two great grandchildren, a boy and a girl.