Michael Dangel
After graduation from RHS, I attended South Dakota State University and graduated with a BS in Electrical Engineering in 1972. After taking a 3 week vacation through the Rockies with a college buddy (and lots of Coors beer), I started my first job with Westinghouse Electric in Baltimore, Maryland.
In Maryland, I was reacquainted with Juanita Parker who I had met on a blind date in Redfield a couple years earlier while she was on vacation visiting relatives. We were made for each other and were married in August of 1975. The wedding was in Redfield, since most of the relatives on both sides lived in the area. Another interesting event in Maryland was meeting Teddy Wilson at a party in the Baltimore area – it’s a small world.
A couple months after we were married, I accepted a job offer from Texas Instruments in Dallas, Texas. We moved to Dallas in November 1975, and found a nice 2-story apartment overlooking the Dallas Country Club. We moved into our first house (which cost less than most new cars do today) in 1976 and were thrilled to have all the extra room, fenced backyard, and garage. We were blessed with 2 wonderful children – Matt & Katie. Juanita volunteered for the tough job of staying home and raising the children, and I had the easy job of going to work. While the children were young I went back to school and received an MBA in Management, thinking that management was a good career path (I must have been young and naive at the time).
In 1988, I had the opportunity to transfer to the Texas Instruments site in Sherman, Texas. Sherman is a “small” town of 25,000 (at least small compared to the Dallas metro-area) and close to the large Lake Texoma. We enjoyed camping, boating, fishing, hiking with the children and were very active in the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts. A couple of the Scouting highlights were accompanying Matt and Katie (in the Explorer Post) on a backpacking trip to Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico and canoe trip at the High Adventure Canoe Base in Canada. Matt graduated from Texas A&M University with a BS in Chemical Engineering and started his first job in Austin, Texas.
After 26 years of employment at Texas Instruments & MEMC Southwest (my TI division was spun off into a joint venture company with MEMC in 1995) the plant was closed, so it was time for a career change. I was fortunate to have two friends who had started a small capital equipment company (GT Equipment Technologies) in Nashua, New Hampshire. It was an interesting culture change moving from the South to Yankee country; and to see the forested hills rather then flat prairies. Politics consume many in NH (first in the nation primary), and we became very active in state and local politics, also. After a couple years at GT Equipment Technologies, I changed employment to BAE Systems (large defense contractor with the motto “We Protect Those Who Protect Us”). Katie is attending Southern New Hampshire University majoring in Political Science (what else?) with a minor in Finance/Philosophy.
Matt married his college sweetheart Cristina in 2005, and they had our first grandson Christopher in 2007. Unfortunately they live in Bakersfield, California, so it’s not easy for visits. The first 40 years since graduation from RHS have been great, and I have been blessed with a wonderful family and friends. I’m looking forward to the next 40 years.