What was your best year?

It wasn't any one year for me. The decade of the 90s beginning in 1991 was good for my family and me. I started working for Delta Airlines that year and after making the jump to mechanic from junior mechanic, life was good. We moved to the Dallas/Fort Worth area from south Texas and have had very few regrets.

It as a good move because my wife and I struggled just to exist throughout the 1980s when we still live in south Texas. Whatever prosperity there was during that decade never reached that part of the country. When the oil and gas industry collapsed in 1982, we lost everything but one vehicle and the clothes we were wearing. We had to move in with my wife's parents for a while and I was determined that it would never happen again, which was prompted me to enroll in A&P school in 1990.

Delta closed the DFW hangar in 2005 and we decided not to take a transfer to Atlanta. I bounced around for a while, but started working for Southwest last year.