It seems impossible to me that my father is old enough to be retired. However that is exactly what happened on March 3, 2011. My father, Larry Dean Craddock, spent the last hour of his last official day working at Western Farmers Electric Cooperative at a retirement luncheon attended by coworkers. He will turn 60 later this year in August. He has spent the majority of his life improving the company that took a risk on a young man with a questionable past. That risk paid off more than any of them could have possibly hoped. During his career at WFEC, my father did everything from replacing lights at the top of tall towers and repairing air conditioners to writing Substation automation systems and ensuring network security. In the words of his long time boss Doug Base: “Larry is one of the finest people I’ve ever met. He rarely gossiped, or complained and was the most respected member of any group he was associated with. He was the best student that Western ever sent to a school, he actually tried to learn while he was away. Amazing if you compare it to most other employees.”
It all started in 1980. I was six years old, my sister Stephanie was four and my mother Samie was pregnant with my brother Nathan. Dad was a successful contract cable splicer who had worked for numerous telephone companies all around the country. Once I began school my parents decided that my sister and I needed a more stable life than traveling around the country at a moments notice. They decided to move back home to Caddo County Oklahoma. One of the most reputable companies in the state, Western Farmers was the obvious choice for a job application. The only problem was that they weren’t hiring. Even worse, past mistakes had left dad with a less than desirable history with the U.S. Army. This was definitely an issue with a department full of ex-military including the division manager who was a World World II P.O.W. Despite these obstacles, dad never gave up and his persistence paid off. He began his job at Western Farmers Electric Cooperative on May 13, 1980 as a Telecommunications Support Mechanic.
A Telecommunications Support Mechanic turned out to be a fancy job title for the guy who climbed towers and replaced lights, repaired air conditioners and generally cleaned up. When he wasn’t sweeping the floors, he was taking correspondence courses in basic electronics and radio communications. He had been promised the opportunity to work as a technician if he acquired an FCC license. Larry Craddock received an FCC Radio Telephone Operator License Second Class on October 8, 1980 and was promoted to the position of two-way technician soon afterwards. Johny Watkins, a long time co-worker and family friend, recounts a memorable event early in dad’s career as a two-way radio technician. Johnny and dad were asked by their boss Al Brooks to investigate an issue with a radio located at Fort Supply which is about 150 miles from the home base in Anadarko. Not long after fixing the bad piece of equipment, they received another call. This time the Hugo plant had a bad two-way radio and it needed to be fixed as soon as possible. As Johnny tells it, “Now it is about 350 miles from Fort Supply to the Hugo Plant but since Larry and I were such good company men (had nothing to do with overtime pay) we proceeded to drive to Hugo.” As it turns out the Hugo plant radio was on the third level of the plant’s smoke stack which is at an elevation of about 400 feet. To make things worse the weather was extremely cold which caused the misting rain to begin freezing. Johnny explained sarcastically that it was “excellent weather to ride a gear driven elevator mounted on the side of a 400 foot smoke stack”. He continued “We loaded the elevator with our test equipment and proceeded to the landing where the radio was located. This radio was located about half way around the stack on the expanded metal floor with only a few hand rails on the outside”. Just imagine being 400 foot up in the air standing on top of a five foot wide expanded metal floor with the wind blowing sleet in your face while also covering both the equipment and the floor in ice. Johnny concluded with “I don’t remember if we fixed that radio or not but the forty foot trip from the elevator to the radio was DEFINITELY, free from all ambiguity, uncertainty or obscurity a trip to remember”.
In 1982, WFEC determined to implement an Energy Management System (EMS). They would need people to learn and maintain the system. Dad applied and was promoted to EMS Hardware Technician. He attended several schools learning to handle the Digital Electronics Corporation machines as well as the Landis and Gyr EMS equipment and was eventually given the responsibility of the master station equipment. I remember this time well. As a young boy dad would take me to the basement to see the mainframe system. It was huge and occupied a room that seemed as big as our house. There were rows of cabinets, tape drives and all kinds of magical devices that blew my ten year old mind. This system completely dwarfed the TRS-80 Color Computer that we had at home. Dad also had a Tandy 100 which was one of the first laptop like computers ever made. Using a ROM burner and his knowledge of the EMS system he reverse engineered the communication system between the Remote Terminal Units (RTU) in the field and the Mainframe in Anadarko which ran over a Scada System. He created a chip that could transform the Tandy 100 into a test set which could be used to emulate either the RTU or the Mainframe which allowed him to monitor the information that flowed between the systems. Over the years dad became an expert in this system which WFEC relied upon until they finally replaced it in 1999 due to the
Y2K bug.
In the early 80’s, dad became obsessed with personal computers. He was constantly reading books and magazines dedicated to the hardware and software of the emerging personal computer industry. I vividly remember reading his programming magazines and copying the basic code onto the screen and even writing simple programs on my own. At a time when the most technologically advanced device most of my friends had was a record player, my siblings and I were being introduced to the concepts of computer programming. Home computers weren’t very sophisticated in those days. Instead of hard drives, cd roms or even floppy drives we had a cassette tape player/recorder which we connected to our TRS-80 via an audio jack. I can still remember how excited we all were when we acquired our first 5 ½ inch floppy drive. An actual hard drive was still a few years in the future. In the mid to late 1980’s dad had leveraged his knowledge of electronics and Tandy computers into a part time job repairing equipment at the local Radio Shack. Our garage was transformed into a electronics shop. There were all sorts of contraptions piled up in this room waiting to be fixed such as computers, radio’s and televisions. However it was computers that were a constant fixture in our house for as long as I can remember. In 1987, I was the only kid in my class that had their own computer, a Tandy 1000, which I used for scholastic pursuits such as King’s Quest which I played as Nathan watched jealously.
By the late 1980’s we had moved out in the country and the shop was upgraded from a room at the back of the garage to a full fledged building that was about 40 foot long. The electronic repair “side” business had morphed into a personal computer and networking business, Total Technologies was born. It was my job to assemble the computers by placing motherboards in cases, attaching peripheral cables to boards, locking processors into place and hooking up I/O cards and memory. By the age of 13, my father had taught me how computer hardware worked and how to trouble shoot issues and fix them. These machines ran Windows 3.1 on top of DOS 5 in the beginning. Dad would also setup 10Base2 networks for libraries, schools and other businesses. It was around this time that he became an EMS Software Analyst at WFEC, a change made possible by his discovery of programing languages including Assembler and C. One of his biggest achievements as a software analyst was his role designing and developing a Substation Automation system. This system gave authorized employees the ability to remotely track and control substations in most of Oklahoma and parts of surrounding states. This was a powerful system capable of amazing feats. Once while testing a governmental required feature, he accidentally shut down power for what felt like half the state. Everyone ran around like mad men for a little while until they brought it all back up but the application’s effectiveness was proven.
Another increasingly important obsession for dad was online access starting with bulletin boards, moving on to services such as Delphi and finally true Internet access. We had magazines that listed bulletin board numbers for a variety of different purposes. I was particularly fond of Sierra Online’s board as they offered tips for those poor souls such as me who were stuck while playing their games. Dad was more interested in the message boards where he could discuss hardware and software issues with other technophiles. Delphi was more like the Sam’s Club of bulletin boards. Services such as these had large communities for most any subject. Eventually, dad purchased an account with IONet which was the largest Internet service provider in Oklahoma City. The Internet was fresh and new and not the crowded marketing machine that it is now. The speeds were outrageously fast at 28.8 Kbps. It was a beautiful thing except for one problem, it was expensive. It wasn’t the actual price of the account that was the problem, it was the long distance fees from the telephone company. This meant that online time had to be curtailed. This just wasn’t acceptable so the Total Access era began.
In the early 1990’s we all moved back to Anadarko, Ok. Eventually Total Techologies opened up shop on NE 1st street. This was the era before nationwide long distance and dad was not the only resident of Anadarko unhappy about paying long distance fees to access the Internet. My father was apparently the only resident willing to do anything about it. In late 1994, dad purchased a T-1 line along with 16 modems capable of handling connections with speeds up to 28.8 Kbps and began selling Internet access to the citizens of Anadarko and the surrounding communities. He setup servers running Slackware Linux to handle services such as Web, Mail and News. I can still remember the first time I downloaded an application from the Internet at T-1 speeds, it felt instantaneous. At this time I was in the Air Force and living in Boosier City, La. I would regularly make the 6 hour drive home and I would always lug my desktop with me so that I could plug it into dad’s network. In the meantime mom and dad were working constantly. Dad would work for WFEC during the week and come home to a to do list such as build, repair or deliver computers, add new subscribers, fix security holes that needed to be plugged and this is only a small example. My mother, Samie Craddock, handled the finances and day to day operations which included tasks such as tech support, Internet and/or computer training, signing up new customers as well as billing and user management to name a few. They both worked hard seven days a week and earned the respect of the community by always doing their best to offer quality products and services. After years of hard work mom and dad sold Total Access in 1998.
Life went back to normal for the most part. In 2002, dad was promoted to a Controls Coordinator position which meant that he was a technical liaison for Western Farmer’s member cooperatives. By 2003 he was put in charge of cyber security for the company network. As had become customary, he flew around the country taking classes and learning as much as he could. It was around this time that the new management closed the doors on Total Access. People in Anadarko, still requiring Internet access, started calling dad and asking his advice. Eventually there was a large enough demand that he started another Internet Service provider, this time he named it Netride Internet Services. With experience as their guide, mom and dad toned down the number of services they were offering and ran the business out of their home in the garage, my old bedroom. In addition to dial-up access, Netride also offered high speed wireless access which could be utilized all over town. He put up a tower next to his house with a dish that negotiated a point to point connection with another dish that was located at the top of a tower next to the McDuffy’s auto shop down town. It was a marvelous system that was well ahead of it’s time. The only negative that I could see was that when there was bad weather it tended to cause issues with the equipment and that usually meant climbing towers. I can only imagine that this must have brought back memories of his early days at WFEC. In an apparent effort to mitigate the dangers of tumbling off of the top of a tower, dad hired his nephew John Morris to do some of the heavy lifting, tower climbing, modem installations as well as many other responsibilities. Despite this precaution, it seems that calamity was still lurking in some of the most unlikely locales as described by John: “We had gotten some chicken strips from Step n Fetch. Suddenly Larry started beating at his chest with one hand and pointing toward his open mouth with his other hand as he stood up. I’m sure you can imagine Samie’s reaction. I began to worry as i could barely put my arms around him, but finally managed to get into position to perform the Heimlich. By this time Samie was nearly in shock and as you can probably image Larry was closer to death from laughing rather than choking. Through the years I had heard many stories of unc laughing in the face of death, from that point on I believed all of them. After a few good squeezes the chicken became dislodged and after about 15 minutes Larry finally stopped laughing, and finally after about 3 hours Samie calmed down and everything was back to normal.”
Time flowed predictably for several years, dad continued at Western Farmers in his role as the cyber security czar with his title being changed officially to Sr. Network Security Coordinator in 2006. A trip to dad’s office as a child was like visiting a nerdy amusement park and growing older never changed that. There were computers everywhere, stacked on top of tables, under his desk and even in drawers. He had all sorts of other equipment laying around too, ROM burners, modems, test sets and many other things only he could explain. In fact he had so much stuff that he ended up customizing his desk. He cut out a square out of the top of it, replaced the wood with a piece of glass and added an angled shelf under it so that his monitor could be placed inside. It was almost as fun listening to him describe his “modifications” as it was seeing them. Those descriptions almost always started with the words “Oh man, you’ve GOT to see this”. Things couldn’t have been going any better, that is until 2008.
In January of 2008, dad was diagnosed with colon cancer. It was a devastating event in our family. It was life changing for us all. My intention is to recount dad’s work history starting with his job at Western Farmers only, so I won’t be going into details. However, this incident had a very real effect on every aspect of his life including his job. Nearly the entire year was spent in surgery or recovery and dad was unable to work most of it. As with every bad situation I’ve ever seen my father be involved with, he bravely faced adversity and won. Dad has been completely cancer free for over 3 years now. He was warmly welcomed back to WFEC but fighting cancer and running a Internet service provider was a bit much. With the skill of a seasoned negotiator, mom sold the wireless Internet portion of Netride leaving their nights and weekends open to more enjoyable pursuits. Dad returned back to work but after that experience it was inevitable that he would retire just as soon as he could.
From my earliest days of childhood, through adolescence, after starting my own family and career, my father has always been my guide. When I am unsure of which path I should take I look to him. Notice I said look and not ask, he has never pushed his opinions on me much. Either he thought it best for me to develop those myself or was wise enough to know that I wouldn’t listen anyway. When I ask, he listens. He always craftily manages to turn it back on me and what I think but I’m wise to this trick. I’ve learned to follow his example in work ethic, fatherhood and life in general. I am by no means the only one who has learned this lesson. Dad has positively effected people all throughout his life. I have never found anyone willing to criticize him, most offer nothing but praise. My father is universally respected by all who know him and for good reason, he is the embodiment of integrity. Dad now passes the time by working on projects at home with mom, spending more time with his grandchildren and making plans for traveling around the country. Both mom and dad seem as happy as I’ve ever seen them. To be honest I’m quite envious. I can only hope that when my children are grown that they’ll be as proud of me as I am of my parents.
I stood one day surveying, for the first time, the ruins of the old fort St. Joesph, on that beautiful peninsula, which guards, like a crouching lion, the entrance to St. Mary’s River. There was the old road, the crumbling walls, the gun emplacements, and the most impressive of all, some gentle garden flowers, which have wasted their fragrance on the desert air of over a hundred years; a gentle but sure reminder of the place where human beings lived. There mail symbols of the past drew me into a reverie of retrospection and I saw in fancy the old fort of 1812; I saw men in the scarlet and blue of the British Army, men in blankets and leather stockings, men rough and unkept called voyageurs, and I saw women and children. I heard the blast of the bugle, the tramp of men and the jumbled sounds of a human community. But then, what’s the use of daydreaming? Fancy may be far from fact.
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