Pat was living in Cincinnati at the time I met her, so Columbus was a good choice for me to migrate. We were married on June 15, 2003 and now we both live in Cincinnati. After our marriage, I inform her of my plans to retire as soon as possible. I had promised that I would assist in paying off our House mortgage, build my retirement Entertainment room (20'X 20') which had to fit around my new 60" Sony TV. Then I decided to build myself a Woodshop (12’X16’) in which case we both agree that I would have to retire debt free. Well my wife and I did it all. No debts; I CAN RETIRE! Besides the long drive gas was getting very expensive. I am looking forward to my finale retirement on Halloween 10/31/2008. At which time I plan to travel across the United States, enroll in woodworking classes to be able to make something for each of the kids. A keepsake you might say. Well, I could not wait I’m taking my first woodshop class on the 25th & 26th of October. My new job title will be "The Family Handyman", which Pat's Father has the title now. Then I can devout the rest of my life to woodworking, traveling, and spending more quality time with my wife and (8) grandchildren. Between us we have five kids and eight grandchildren. I am looking forward to my finale and last retirement on October 31, 2009. Well it's been five months into my retirement and I have completed 2 woodshop classes and I've signed up for two more. So far traveling has been stopped due to the all chores I have around the house. The chores being: 1, remodeling the upstairs bathroom, 2, installing exhaust fans on both sides of the house in the attic, 3, building a deck around my woodshop, 4, and of course all the spring yardwork that seems to have started already. Spring is upon us I made it through my first retirement winter without any regrets over my retirement decision in October. I guess one of the pleasures of life and is having grandkids and hearing the little ones walk in the door saying 'grandpa'. I'm doing well, I'm really enjoying my retirement.Charlie Hopson
After 24 years in the military (12 Marines, 12 Navy) I manage to retire in Cleveland prior to its closure. DISA hired me in January of 1992 as a GS 11. I was doing well in Cleveland and then we were hit by the BRAC closures. While in Cleveland I was successful in linking our Defender III secure 19.6 modem equipment to a government satellite which the USS Dixon was able to link with the DISA Computers for Military Payroll while the ship was underway. Thus, being the first DFAS ‘Navy Payroll access’ to a US ship while at sea. I had agreed to stay in Cleveland and close the installation by transferring the network circuit by circuit to DISA Chambersburg. After working 1 extra year in Cleveland I was successful in closing the insulation, I then migrated to DISA Chambersburg, I stayed until the next BRAC closure. Again I was tasked in moving the network to Columbus. I then migrated along with the mainframes to Columbus Ohio. I was very fortunate in meeting two very knowledgeable co-workers, Mr. Ray Wallace and Mr. Rich Harris. After my transfer to Columbus, DISA HQ decided to move the Cleveland mainframes to Mechanicsburg. In either case I was very satisfied moving to Columbus since I had met my future wife (Pat) in Chambersburg, through mutual friends. While in Columbus I stayed in networking with the IBM mainframes. During my tour we lost the mainframes to Ogden, UT during reorganization. I was then moved into the IT Server Section with very knowledgeable co-workers once again, Hank Lang, Bill Rhoades, Kevin Wright, Julie Shivener, Dan Kusko, Rich Harris and two new members Matt Snider and Martin Duccilli in this new field of work. Columbus started acquiring more work which I received a project called Multi-Host Internet Access Portal (MIAP). The most resent project I was working on was the Secure Encrypted File Transport System or SEFT project. I leave DISA with the knowledge that I gave my all to help DISA move forward in the IT world. I was assigned a new co-worker located in San Antonio, TX, Mr. Mike Davis, for the MIAP project. Mike had his hands full with teaching me about servers and working on this project. We started out with a test group of 27 people at Wright Patterson Air Force Base. After 4 years the systems grew to over 33,000 customers with many application and network changes along the way. Mike and I worked long hours getting this project running and supporting over 33,000 DISA customers. This project grew so fast that Mike and I had to ask for help. We did manage to set up three sites for disaster control. DISA HQ would not allow more resources for MIAP in Columbus, so with DISA HQ’s wisdom the solution was to pass the project to Mechanicsburg. To assist the Network section during my last few months I tackled the section project of updating the DMZ tracking database and current Visio Network drawings of all the DMZ equipment. The new updated Visio Rack drawings included all the DMZ equipment as stored in Racks in each of DISA computer rooms located in; Ogden, Mechanicsburg, Oklahoma City, and Columbus Ohio. I then further updated the data flow by linking our sections Access database to the Visio Rack drawings. This has streamed line our in-house processing of enabling the section to update the DMZ data to pass from our Access database to the Visio drawing with a simple refresh command on each of the Visio equipment shapes. Savings of man hours and ensuring the drawings are updated along with the database.
