First of all, a little about me. My name is Keevin. Over the years, it's been misspelled many times and I've been called Kevin, Keevan & a lot of other things that we won't go into here. Even spell-checker doesn't like the spelling of my name. Suffice it to say that I like being different - even "special". If you guessed that I am outgoing, you're right. I grew up as the second child in a family of four children & have an older brother and two younger sisters. My father was in the U.S. Air Force from the 50's through the '70's, so we moved a lot. Between 1958 & 1974 we lived in Florida, Japan, Washington, Alabama, California, Florida again, Washington again, Alabama again & back to Washington. The common denominator there seems to be Washington. As you can see, I'm not sure what to tell people when they ask me where I'm from. I had attended no less than 9 schools by the time I enrolled (10th grade) in Washington High School in Tacoma, Wa. That list includes Park Lodge Elementary in Lakewood, James Sales Elementary in Parkland,  & Lochburn Junior High in Lakewood, WA. Some people think it's odd that we moved so much. Some have even expressed some sort of sorrow or grief or something. Well, I just saw it as an adventure - a new place to go and meet people & make new friends. A friend of mine once told me that he traded travel for a formal education. I think traveling and living in different areas is a sort of education. Well, it's definitely a learning process. I always thought of it as a very long, paid vacation with a little work thrown in for character-building.

After my dad retired from the Air Force and I graduated from high school, I worked in residential construction for the summer, worked for an architect in the fall & joined the USMC in December '76, went to Southern California, traveled some more & then came back to - you guessed it - Washington. Not long after that, I began contract engineering (ship design), traveled all over the country (Oregon, Wisconsin, Michigan, Massachusetts, Maine, Virginia, Louisiana, & Connecticut) working for naval architects, marine engineers, and shipyards from coast to coast and finally came back to ........... Washington.  When I say that I lived in Maine (or any other place, for that matter), I don't mean just one place. Actually, I lived in Maine for 7 years and was in 14 different places - 5 places in Wisconsin, and 3 places in Michigan. As a closing note to the travel bit, I haven't been doing much contracting since 1995, but still enjoy traveling & working in the field of Naval Architecture/ Marine Engineering. It allows for a bit of paid travel, too, so I kind of get the best of both worlds. I get to see new places & meet new people AND get to come home to Washington. There's a link to my employer and also some links to places that I have traveled. It is my intent to have a lot on links on this site before it is all said & done.

History

Speaking of employers, Last October I celebrated my 6th year with Elliott Bay Design Group (EBDG). It is the longest I have been with any one single employer. Some people think this is strange, but it is the nature of being a contractor. The job lasts only as long as the project and then it's time to go to another place for another contract (getting paid to travel is one way to see the country - or the world for that matter). I worked as a contractor (TrampDrafter) from 1982 through 1999 and was a contractor with EBDG for one and a half years before becoming an employee. Now that I think about it, my work history is all over the map. I started working in 1974 for the Pierce County Library System when I was in high school. There were some interesting child labor laws at the time - I was 15 and the youngest member of the union. But I had to get special permission from my parents to do it and was allowed to work a maximum of 20 hours per week. Union wage at the time was $1.80/hour and I was ecstatic. The first thing I did was get my own telephone line in my bedroom. It's funny - I have a hard time remembering my current cell phone or home number, but I can still remember my first telephone number. The second thing I did was bought a pair of Snyder Super Deluxe skates from Tiffany's Skate Inn. They cost $220 then and I paid a little extra every time I skated & it was applied to the balance. I was not allowed to take them home until they were more than 50% paid for, so there was a little incentive there - thanks, Dennis. By the time I graduated, I was making almost $3.00/hour. After working at the library, I worked in residential construction, built about 20 houses all over western Washington, worked as a floating salesman for Sears - downtown Tacoma, worked for an Larry S. Braund, AIA as a drafter/gopher, stocked shelves at Jafco, joined the Marine Corps (avionics), built aluminum doors & windows, and worked for Chalker Engineers a drafter before attempting, once again, to work for myself. I was doing just that in Walla Walla in May 1980 when Mt. St. Helens blew her top. Shortly after that, I started working at Tacoma Boatbuilding Company as a drafter/designer and have pretty much stuck with the marine industry ever since - mostly as a contractor. Sometimes contracts can be difficult to get unless you agree to travel a long distance for a short period of time, so I kept myself busy doing other things between contracts. I worked in new & used car sales in Tacoma, sold boats, trailers and marine gear in Maine, had my own body shop in Maine, had a firewood business with my best friend, Bruce in Tacoma, and a few other things that I can't remember at the moment.

After one contract with TODD Pacific Shipyards in Seattle, I decided to get an education in Business, so I went to Olympic College for almost 3 years, got an Associates degree in Management and a certificate in Drafting (CAD) while I was at it. My grades were much better in college than they ever were in high school. I was 37 in college and the hormones had settled down a little so I could concentrate on the classes instead of other things. I was on the dean's list the entire time and was inducted into Phi Theta Kappa International Honor Society, too. It might not seem like much, but I worked very hard to keep my grades up, hated finals (and all testing, too), and got paid by the college to tutor some of the other students, too. I really have to thank a lot of people for that stage in my life. My ex-girlfriend let me stay in her mother's house when she had to be moved to a place with 24-hr convalescent care. I took care of the house in exchange for being able to live there. You can't beat that and I cannot say 'thanks' to her enough for that. There was also a lot of help from the college with financing. I am still repaying the loans, though. Just a couple more years and that will be finished.

Now 48 years old, time seems to be passing more quickly than ever before. I have heard that time seems to go faster when you are older, but it never really sank in before.

So there you have my story. Obviously not all inclusive, but it hits on many of the highlights. Life goes on.

As my brother told me, most personal web sites are constantly under construction, so I will remove the construction signs as time permits and I update each individual page. Thanks for your patience ,indulgence, and comments/feedback. As I mentioned on the front page, this is pretty much just an experiment - perhaps a sort of an outlet for the time being. It's still interesting, so I will find or make time to continue to update the site for now. Obviously, if (or when) I have someone to be more involved with, there will be less time to keep this updated, so this is the best time to do it.