legacy to an Idea
There was a stretch of my life when the sun rose over high school textbooks and set over the Lockheed hangars. I’d leave class at noon, change out of one uniform, and step into another—the smell of coffee and hydraulic oil replacing chalk dust and ink. My father would already be there, steady as ever, the kind of man who could make a crescent wrench look like an extension of his hand.
Three of us boys worked alongside him on the L-1011 project. Afternoon shift. Rows of fuselages in different stages of assembly, light bouncing off aluminum skin, the steady rhythm of tools echoing through the bays. I was in avionics—running wire bundles, crimping connections, learning how to make a system that trusted electricity more than luck. My father never said much, but his presence set the pace. You didn’t cut corners in his line of sight.
He’d check a line, nod once, and that was enough. The rule wasn’t written anywhere—it lived in the work: If you’re going to build something that flies, make sure it can’t lie. Every connection had to be right, every reading double-checked. Planes didn’t care about excuses.
Then life, as it tends to, shifted course. I was drafted and sent to Germany for three years. The work changed, the landscape changed, but that same rule followed me: do it right, and do it steady. When I came home, I chose a different road—mining. I wanted to raise a family without the travel, to give them the roots I’d never had. It seemed like the better path at the time. Turns out, every trade carries its own kind of road, and every choice has its own turbulence—but that’s another story.
What stayed the same was the wiring: precision, honesty, and the quiet pride of getting it right. Years later, when I started working in systems made of language and code instead of metal and wire, I realized I was still chasing the same goal. The Faust Baseline™ grew from that hangar discipline: measure twice, speak true, make it hold under pressure.
My father built machines that carried people through the air. I build a framework meant to keep truth airborne in the digital storm. The distance between us isn’t that far—just the tools changed hands.
Good lessons produce great ideas.
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