"I don't know how I found time to work for a living," John Alcorn says facetiously. Now that he is retired, his three hobbies consume all his time.
The first is pencil drawing. "I've been drawing ever since I could hold a pencil," he says. His fine, large, detailed drawings are usually social commentaries - some satirical, some not. Now he is working on a series of illustrations of Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales," social commentaries in their own time.
Another lifelong hobby of John's is building static scale-model airplanes (that don't fly). One of the proudest moments of his life was in 2000 when he won Best in Show at an international competition in Telford, England. His entry was a 1/24th-scale DeHavilland DH-9A "NINAK," which took him 6,400 hours over a span of eight years to complete. As with all his models, he built it from scratch. "It's very delicate," he says. "I built a special case to transport it as carry-on luggage."
Finally, he studies European history. "It's all I read," he says. He fills loose-leaf binders with his "long-winded synopses" of various subjects, as well as illustrations and excerpts from books, each page in its own plastic protector. One notebook contains information about Columbus, the Vikings and the conquistadors. Magellan gets his own notebook. John is starting another notebook about paleoanthropology: "My current passion," he says.
"What about me?" quips his wife.
"Other than my wife," he quickly adds.
John retired on his 16th real birthday - Feb. 29, 1996. He was born in Tulsa, Okla., on Leap Day, 1932. "It was two days after Elizabeth Taylor was born, the day before the Lindbergh baby was kidnapped and the nadir of the Depression," he says. "Not auspicious times."
His father, Irwin, was chief engineer for the Gulf Coast district of Pure Oil Company and a pioneer in offshore drilling. His mother, Drusilla, was a schoolteacher from Denver before her marriage.
When John was 3, the family moved to Houston, Texas, where he grew up. A dramatic event of his childhood was the bombing of Pearl Harbor, when he was 9. "My parents were having a party," he recalls. "It disintegrated when the attack was announced."
Now John listens exclusively to classical music on KING-FM in his workroom, but back then in Texas, "we were subjected primarily to hillbilly music," he says. "It's now glorified as country and western." Among his favorite songs as a teenager was "Lost Highway," by Hank Williams.
John graduated from Lamar High School, a large public high school, in 1950, two weeks before the outbreak of the Korean War. He had been accepted to the Rice Institute (now University) in Houston, but he wanted to join the Marine Corps and go to Korea. "I had missed World War II!" he says. "I was a typical young buck who thought he was immortal."
But his father wanted him to attend Rice, and his father prevailed.
At Rice, John majored in mechanical engineering with an elective in Naval ROTC. He was not a fan of collegiate sports, but as a result of an elaborate practical joke concocted by his roommates, he ended up head cheerleader.
Summers he worked in the oilfields, mostly as a "roughneck" on drilling rigs.
After completing a five-year curriculum in mechanical engineering, John graduated in 1955. Concurrently, he received his commission in the U.S. Navy Reserve. He served two years on a San Diego-based destroyer, which made two six-month tours in the Pacific, venturing as far west as Rangoon, Burma.
When he got out of the Navy in 1957, "oil still ran in my Alcorn veins," he says. He enrolled in the Petroleum Reservoir Training Program at Humble Oil in Houston.
About this time, at a party, he met Frances Bartsch. "She was this cute girl in a checkered dress," he says, "but a mere sophomore at Rice." He was smitten.
In the summer of 1958, John went to California to visit Francie and her parents. He abandoned the oil business and remained out there. "Nature took its course," he says, "and we were married in September 1959."
John soon got a jobin the San Francisco area with Aerojet General Nucleonics, a small firm that worked on the development of nuclear energy, and Francie enrolled at the University of California-Berkeley. She graduated in 1960 with a degree in accounting and got a job with the large accounting firm of Price Water- house.
In 1961, John went to work for an engineering consulting company called Brobeck & Associates, beginning his career in the high-energy physics research business. "Throughout my career," he says, "I mostly designed and monitored construction of large DC [direct current], superconducting electromagnets."
Francie and John took an extended break from their jobs in 1963. "We trundled off for a six-month odyssey through western Europe," says John, "touring historical sites in a white VW bug. It was a high adventure that has enriched our lives ever since."
Soon after their return, they conceived their first child, Stewart, who was born in Berkeley in 1964. (Stewart, now married, is a fisheries biologist in Olympia, and a talented artist.)
The young family moved in 1965 to Palo Alto, where John worked at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center for 10 years. In 1966, son Peter was born. "Pete was 'surfer Joe' in high school, but also a good student. He graduated from Princeton," John says proudly, "in 1988." (Pete, also now married, heads the PodCasting activity at Apple in California.)
John's career took them back to San Diego, where he worked for General Atomics Company for 13 years, then to Newport News, Va., where he worked at the Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility until his retirement. "We lived in Williamsburg," says John, "but not in the historical area, so we didn't have to wear three-cornered hats for the tourists."
By the time John retired, son Stewart and his wife were living in this area, so John and Francie decided to move here. After renting a house for a year in Woodway, they moved to east Queen Anne in 1997. They bought a house still under construction, so they had some input into its design.
A profusion of roses fills the parking strip in front of their home, and lush baskets of flowers hang densely from the porch. Inside, every wall is covered with artwork and photographs. The family room is a gallery of John's pencil drawings. The metal horns of eight vintage, wind-up gramophones bloom from the perimeter like large black petunias. They sit on cabinets that house around 2,000 78-r.p.m. records. Francie's loom sits in a corner.
John turns philosophical. "Despite the end of the Cold War," he says, "I'm greatly concerned about the continuing threat of nuclear holocaust." Having dedicated much of his career to the development of nuclear energy, to him it is distinct from nuclear weapons - energy is good, weapons are not. "Ultimately we have no recourse but to stop using fossil fuels and employ nuclear energy for our primary utility power needs," he says. "Alternatives like wind, solar, geothermal, biomass and tidal power are supplemental at best."
He is also concerned about the multiple worldwide consequences of overpopulation, and transportation problems are among them. "Closer to home," he says, "I am deeply disappointed that our city can't come up with an efficient and comprehensive rapid mass-transit system."
Getting even closer to home, he gets personal. "What's good about aging is you gain a deeper understanding of life and its significance," he says. "You realize that life is finite, and cherish what you have." His relationships with old friends have deepened. "Friends are more important," he says, "and Francie and I are even closer."
Once an avid runner, he still follows a disciplined exercise regimen, but now he is bothered by some irritating physical problems.
"I'm beginning to appreciate my Aunt Flo's ornate kitchen sign that proclaimed, Old age ain't for sissies," he says.
"But in retirement," he continues, "you have an opportunity to pursue your avocations without restriction." Even three of them.
John Alcorn's drawings may be viewed by logging on to www.homepage.mac.com/pete_alcorn/john_alcorn. The Web site was a gift from his son Pete. Quality prints (not the originals) are available for sale.
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