F. Eugene Barber

F. Eugene Barber was born on a sharecrop farm in the Midwest at the start of the Great Depression and attended a rural school with ten other students ranging from the first to the eighth grades. As a boy, he hunted, trapped, fished, did chores, worked on ranches, and branded and punched cattle until he graduated from high school in Junction City, KS and enlisted in the Air Force.

During the Korean War Fred was stationed for a short time at Pusan Air Field, ROK, but soon returned to the States to work on the atomic bomb carrying B-36 aircraft. He became Crew Chief and then Flight Line Chief graveyard shift. The young Staff Sergeant was attached to the 5th Field Maintenance Squadron, 9th Bomb Wing-Heavy, 14th Air Division, 15th Air Force, Strategic Air Command, Travis AFB, CA, Col. Kelly commanding.

The Korean War was winding down so a couple of days before Christmas in December of 1952, S/Sgt. Barber was discharged. Later, using the GI Bill, he attended night-college and earned an AS in Electrical Engineering, eventually a BA, and as an older adult, his MBA. He has had a long, interesting, and adventuresome career working for the military industrial complex—the DOD, FAA, DOE, and the various Intel communities, on ships, guns, submarines, aircraft, UAV’s, large dish antennas, and spy satellites.

He has worked all over the world; North, South, and Central America, Europe, the UK, Polynesia, Russia and Russian Siberia, Finland, South Africa, China, Korea, Japan, Australia, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia. Three decades ago, Mr. Barber and his wife lived for a time in Yorkshire, UK where he worked as a contractor/consultant on a covert joint ops base as part of the Status of Forces—the Cold War was then on! Fred retired at age 81 and the author and his wife of over 61 years, now reside in Arizona near beautiful Lake Havasu.