HHS
1965
Greg Kelso
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Bio
I did a lot of traveling during my tour in the Navy and during the first few years on the job down here in Texas. Besides the usual ports in the Mediterranean and Caribbean, the Navy took me to such exotic places as Bombay, India; Karachi, Pakistan; Mombassa, Kenya; Massawa, Ethiopia (now Eritrea) and a little place called Port Lewis on the island of Mauritius. Mauritius is off the east coast of Madagascar and about as far away from Holdrege Nebraska as you can get without leaving the face of the earth.
When I first went to work for General Dynamics Corporation down in Fort Worth, they had just been awarded a contract to produce the F-16 fighter jet for the U.S. Air Force and the air forces of Belgium, Holland, Norway, and Denmark. The entire "fleet" consisted of two prototype aircraft. My entire professional career has been devoted to making the F-16 into one of the most effective combat aircraft in the world. After about a year and a half of pretty dull paper work, the job took a turn for the better when I was sent out to Edwards Air Force Base in California to support flight test of the weapons systems on what were known as the Full Scale Development Aircraft. From Flight test in California I moved on to support the first production deliveries of the F-16 at Hill Air Force Base in Ogden, Utah, and then at a Belgian Air Force base about 20 miles east of Brussels.
It was in Brussels that I met my future wife, Sue. She is from Penrith, a small town in the Lake District of northwest England and had run off to Brussels to seek her fortune in the big city. It was almost two weeks later that I realized we had met on the Fourth of July. It was just another Tuesday night in Belgium. We will be celebrating our 27th wedding anniversary in December.
Sue and I have one daughter, Linda, 23, who I am embarrassed to admit brought shame to the good Kelso name. In spite of my best efforts at raising her right, the kid graduated from high school and immediately ran off to Austin to become a Longhorn. She is now working at Chase Bank in Dallas and to make matters even worse she is currently dating an "Okie" and he's a big Sooner fan. As you can imagine, football season is pretty interesting around here. If the Big Red doesn't get a little defense to go with that west-coast offense pretty soon I am not sure what I will do.
Our Family also includes four four-footed members. Amy and Eric are our Dobermans and Trick and Treat are our cats. In case you are wondering why anyone would call their cats Trick and Treat, it's because Sue and Amy found them while on a walk down by the lake on Halloween night a few years ago. Sue is into obedience training and takes Eric to dog shows around the countryside. Amy and I, on the other hand, are content to go on leisurely "walks" around the lake. "Walks" because I usually ride my bicycle with Amy on the leash out in front. Over the years I have learned to let go of the leash if a squirrel or rabbit takes off in front of us. It sure beats flying over the handlebars.
When my Mom died suddenly on Valentines Day of '04, I found myself half owner of a house in Holdrege and seriously considered retiring and moving back to small town life. Sue even agreed to it, but I am not too sure how long she would survive away from city life and how well she would deal with the "cool" Nebraska winters. My sister and I ended up selling the house that we had always though of as "home" since 1960.
I just retired at the end of September after a little over 32 years on the job. I reached 60 and figured it was time to make way for a younger engineer that may need the job. I don't have any definite plans at this time, but the idea of moving back to Holdrege has never really left me.
I still have ties to central Nebraska, my sister, Annette, and her husband, Rod, live in Kearney, as do my niece, Shannon, her husband, Reggie, and my great-nephew, William.