Start of my Engineering Career

START OF MY ENGINEERING CAREER
Walter L. Elden, P.E. (Ret)

I began my first job as an engineer with The Martin Co. in Orlando, working as a systems engineer on the development of the Army's new Pershing ballistic missile system. There, I met and later married my wife, Anna Marie Walsh Elden. Go to this WEB page for an expanded background of my engineering career is provided.

Director of Choir at St. Andrews Catholic Church

Through a co-worker, I learned of the need of a Choir Director at St. Andrews Catholic Church, located in Pine Hills, FL. I became interested and went and met the Pastor, Father Neidert. I told him of my music background, he explained they had lost their Choir Director and were in need, and so it was arranged that I became their new Director.

At first, I wasn't accepted easily, as some felt I had taken over part of what the current Organist had been doing, but in time, I became accepted. We performed four part harmony hymns before, during and after masses. Later, I organized a full production musical program for Midnight Mass, with an entrance procession in robes. Later, during Easter week, we performed at several of the holiest days ceremonies.

Sang Some Barbershop Quartet Music

As an adjunct to this, four of the men organized a Barbershop Quartet and we would get together once each week and sing songs. I believe we actually performed in public once. This was done just for the fun of it. I sang the bass parts.

Performed in the Winter Park Bach Festival Choir

The Winter Park Bach Festival Choir is one of a few dedicated to performing choral works or J.S. Bach and others. It is situated as part of Rollins College, in Winter Park, FL and performs in the Knowles Memorial Chapel, on campus. I met the conductor at that time, Robert Hustader, and was admitted into it. We rehearsed every Monday evening in the Chapel, accompanied by an organ. Every year, it puts on a music festival, around early March. In 1959, we performed as the major work, Bach's B Minor Mass. We did a performance Friday afternoon, that evening, and again Saturday morning. During the performance, professional soloists were added and we were accompanyied by members of the Florida Symphony Orchestra, a harpsichord and the organ. The choir was composed of over 100 members. For that particular festival, Director Hufstader had me perform a small solo part in one of the selections.

Knowles Memorial Chapel and Bach Choir Bach Festival Choir of Winter Park

This was the finest choral organization I had ever performed in. The next year, in 1960, the choir performed with the Florida Symphony in its performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, the Choral. To this day, the Choir continues on and each year its Festival is held. This was the last time I performed in any musical organization, as I became married and my engineering work took over as my major activity in life, but I continued to increase my collection to music recordings, upgrade my home music system and attend concerts from time to time. I remember attending a performance by the Florida Symphony, in December 1970, on the 200th anniversary of the birth of Beethoven.

Did Achieved Position of a Director, But Not in Music

It is somewhat ironic that while I initially sought to become a Director (Conductor) of Music, a career I did not achieve, in another entirely different field, engineering, I did achieve this. In less than 10 years from the time I was discharged from the US Navy, I had been promoted to the position of Project Engineer for a small telemetry company, Dynatronics, located in Orlando, Fl.

HICAT Project Engineer, Age 35

There we developed airborne equipment to be flown aboad military planes, helicopters, rockets, missiles and space craft. One project which I am particulary proud of was the
HICAT (High Altitude Clear Air Turbulence) program for Lockheed Aircraft and
the US Air Force, valued then in 1965 at about $100,000.

HICAT Data Acquisition System Developed for a Lockheed/US Air Force U2

The equipment was flown in an Air Force U2, super secret spy plane. I was the Project Engineer, and in effect was the overall Director. The Cold War Museum requested I write an article about it and put it on the WEB. I cite this project, performed in 1965 when I was 35 years of age, as an exemple of a successful engineering project. A summary WEB page describes what the project was all about and what was accomplished with it by the Air Force.

Before I finally retired from engineering, I had been assigned the position, at the other end of the scale, of System Architect (Director) of a large, $1 Billion proposal for the worldwide electronic Defense Messaging System (email) developed for the US Air Force for use by all the military services and federal agencies of government. So my objective was achieved after all, but not in the field I initially set out to achieve it in. The Korean War changed all of that.

Multi-Cultural Experience in Music and Engineering

During one of my engineering assignments as Project Engineer of an airborne telemetry product for a West German Electronics Company, while enroute to Munich, W. Germany, I was met in Paris by our European Sales Representative. He happend to be Jewish. As it was Easter and Passover season, we chose to attend a performance of Handel's oratorio The Messiah. Here I was, an American Catholic, in a French city, with a Jewish Salesman, and we attended a concert of a work written by an Englishman, which was sung by a German chorus in German. My engineering career had enabled me to be emershed in this multi-cultural experience and I really enjoyed it.

Support of My Daughter's Music Activities

Now, jump ahead some 15-20 years, when our daughter, Marianne, became involved in her own music. In elementary school, she sang in the mixed chorus and just before entering junior high, she informed us she wanted to learn to play the flute and get in the band. We then moved from Orlando to Columbia, South Carolina, where I went to work for NCR Corporation, and she entered the 7th grade. I went to a music store, picked out and bought her a flute, which she learned to play. From her 7th through her 12th grades, she played in the school band. I would enjoy going to their rehersals, watching and listening and remembering when back in junior and senior high school I had done the same thing. In South Carolina she performed in the Irmo High School concert and marching band. It was a terrific band with a wonderful conductor and plenty of talented students. In her junior year, the band went to Louisville, Kentucky and marched in the Kentucky Derby festival in town, similar to when my band went to Havana, Cuba and marched in their Mardi Gras. Marianne finished her high school at Satellite Beach High School, in Melbourne, Fl, where I had joined the Harris Corp. That band was also good, but not as good as was the Irmo High School band.

Go to this WEB page for an expanded background of my engineering career.

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