Stephan A Margossian

This is my condensed version of Stephan's own words that follow. Susan

Stephan “Steve” Alan Margossian was born November 6, 1942 in Oakland, CA to Meguerditch “Margo” and Ruby Minter Margossian. Stephan had two older sisters that both preceded him in death Rose Anne Ziebarth and Kit Cole. His sisters had 4 and 11 children respectively and they provided him with a very large extended family.

Stephan leaves his wife Susan Johnson Margossian and step-children Monica Johnson, Natalie and Kevin Parrish and their children Dean and Allison Parrish.

Stephan attended Bishop O’Dowd High School in Oakland graduating in 1960. He then moved to Arizona to live with his mother where he enlisted in the US Air Force stating “I’d rather fight in the sky over Vietnam than march across the battlefield should I get drafted by the Army”.

He served 8 years in the Air Force stationed in Goose Bay Labrador the majority of time and was part of a flight crew. Steve had been an avid golfer since 11 and was phenomenal. One evening the Base Commander observed him hitting balls and approached him to play with the USAF golf team. His Commander would write Orders for him to be relieved of duty to go play in tournaments all over. Steve received an Honorable Discharge at the rank of Staff Sergeant.

After leaving the Air Force Steve moved to the Santa Clara Valley and started to work in the very young computer industry. He was an integral part of four different “startup” companies the most notable being Amdahl. He attended the University of Santa Clara on Amdahl’s “Early Bird Undergraduate Program” eventually earning his degree in Electrical Engineering. Stephan additionally worked with HAL, Tandem and Compaq among others.

Steve travelled all over the world both for work and pleasure. He was an ardent photographer.

Retiring at the age of 59 ½ he permanently relocated to the home he designed and built in Pine Mountain Lake, Groveland, CA to play golf on their championship course. There he served terms as Pine Mountain Lake Association President and Treasurer.

In October 2020 he met and fell in love with Susan Johnson. They became engaged in February 2022 and proceeded to purchase a home in a 55+ community in Folsom, CA. They designed the interior of their new home which will be completed September 30, 2022 and planned their wedding which took place June 11, 2022.

Stephan took ill Friday, July 29 and passed away at Mercy Hospital Folsom in the early morning hours of July 30, 2022.

IN STEVE’S OWN WORDS
From emails sent to Susan October 2020

MY STORY (Part 1)

I was born and raised in Oakland, CA. I went to Catholic grammar school and Bishop O’Dowd high school. This was a bit unusual since I wasn’t Catholic, I worked for my father from the time I was 13 selling TV’s and records. I got my first car when I was 16; a bright red MGA convertible which I had to pay for. After I graduated and when I turned 18, I went to live with my mom and stepdad in Lakeside, AZ. They had a fishing resort on Rainbow Lake. I got my first non-family job working in a lumber mill. Now that was a rude awaking for a city kid.

Lakeside was a small Mormon tow that if you blinked, you missed it. It was at 7000 ft in the White Mts. This was the time when Vietnam was just getting started so, not being a local, I got my draft notice. I really didn’t want to be a ground pounder, I went and enlisted in the Air Force. I aced the math and science portion to the enlistment exam so after basic training they sent me to Denver for six months of technical school where they trained me to work o fighter weapons control systems. After graduation they sent me to Portland Air Base where I was assigned to work third shift (midnight to eight). They just went to a flight system where they assign people to three aircraft groups. You only worked on those planes. If they had no defects, you didn’t have to work. Well since we had very sharp people on first and second shifts, there was virtually no work for me on third shift. Since I had no work, I got a part time job at Sears selling shoes.

I went 144 days straight without having to go into work. I had my Sears job and plenty of time to go play golf. My father started me playing golf when I was 11. I played whenever I could and played on my high school golf team. I was pretty good when I entered the service. Of course, all good things must come to an end and when they called an alert for the Cuban missile crisis and the shop chief saw me and asked if I was the new guy? I told him no I’ve been here for about 11 months. Bad answer! Three weeks later I received orders to go to Goose Bay Labrador. One thing about Goose Bay, it snows a lot and the temperature gets down around -20F.

This may seem like a long drawn out lead in, but you’ll see how it unfolds in Part 2.
Steve

MY STORY (Part 2)
Here’s the next installment.

Goose Bay was snowy and cold but they did have two months of summer. I had my golf clubs shipped up there (I was something of a golf nut by the time I was at Goose Bay, I was pretty good).
There wasn’t a lot to do there except work. Again, I was on the graveyard shift. One day, I was out behind the barracks hitting balls back and forth and I noticed someone watching me practice. I had no idea who it was. Anyway, he came over and asked me if I wanted to go to the base golf course (6 holes with sand greens) and play a round. So, we did. After the round he asked me to play the next weekend with the base golf team in a match against the Canadians. Goose Bay was a Strategic Air Command (SAC) base and I belonged to Air Defense Command. He said “that’s no problem”. So, I played. As it turned out, he was the base commander and he had a bet with his opposite, the Canadian commander. The loser was to serve as the man servant for the other for the entire weekend. Anyway, we beat them soundly and he won the bet.

Two weeks later, I received temporary duty orders to play golf in Iceland with the SAC golf team. Since we were shorthanded at the time, my commander was really upset but these orders same from a full bird colonel and he was only a major. So, I went and played. Three weeks later another set of orders came down sending me to play golf in Ottawa again with the SAC team. My commander was really getting hot. The final straw came four wees later when I was ordered for temporary duty to play golf in Florida, again with the SAC team. Now my commander was livid.

Fortunately, I was due to go back to the states in another month so there were no repercussions due to golf. But here’s the rub. I put in to be transferred to Florida or somewhere in the Southeast. And where did they send me? Beale AFB in Marysville, CA. Beale was a SAC base where all they had were bombers, tankers and special aircraft. I was trained on fighters, there wasn’t a fighter arc aircraft within 100 miles from Beale. It seems SAC wanted me on their golf team. Somebody pulled some strings to make it happen.

When I left Goose Bay it was about -15F and we were running around in tee-shirts (you get acclimated to the cold after a while). They flew us down to Maguire AFB where t was about 100F, I almost died. We were in heavy blues with overcoats. They had us stay out on the open tarmac with no shade. It was brutal. Finally, we got on the plane to California.
It was August when I arrived in Marysville and 110F in the shade (and there was no shade). This could be justified as cruel and in-humane punishment. I spent the first week in front of the air conditioner on full blast.

Since there were no fighters, I had to be trained on all new equipment. For six weeks I had to drive each day to Sacrament for training. I buckled down and read the manuals cover to cover. I still couldn’t go to work because they had to update my security clearance.
For two months I had orderly room duty. Usually, NCO in charge or entertaining visiting VIPs on the golf course. It was fun but boring. Finally, my clearance came through and I could finally go to work. Because of the good reviews I received, they put me in charge of a lab mockup. However, when visiting aircraft came in, they switched out all their trashed-out equipment for out good one in stock. As a result, I got a lot of experience fixing all that hardware which got me the reputation as the go-to person to get something fixed.

After about a year in the lab, they transferred me to the back room where they did all the super- secret stuff. I was assigned to the tanker support group for the SR71 aircraft. I went on flight status and flew as the technical support crewmember. I got to fly missions 4 or 5 times a month on both tankers and bombers. I loved it.

This was the time that Vietnam was heating up so they would send us to Okinawa for 175 days and then back home for the same time. I really loved Okinawa. Also, got to go to Thailand and the Philippines. I think that’s where first started to get my love of Asia.

Now the missions we flew were long and in support of the SR71. It was mostly over water or over Vietnam. That could be a little scary. We only flew two or three times a month so there was a lot of down time. Of course, they had a golf course and I did that and played for the base golf team. However, golf wasn’t enough so I decided to further my education with courses through the university of Maryland. It was a good move ad set me on a whole new path.

I didn’t know I’d be writing my autobiography. I hope I’m not boring you but f you really want to know me, you have to walk in my shoes (verbose as it may be).
Steve

MY STORY (part 3)

While the travel and flying were exciting, when the time for my current enlistment was up (after 8 years), I was faced with a major decision, did I want to make a career of the service? I decided that if I relisted again, I would receive a permanent assignment back to either Vietnam or Thailand since all my duty to Asia was classified and it appeared on my record as temporary dt to SAC headquarters I the US. I really didn’t wat to go back so I opted to get out.

I went to work for Varian Data Systems as a technician. I also decided to go to night school to further my education. One of the fellows that I met in school asked me to come and see what he was doing at a new company called Amdahl. I was really impressed with all the state-of-the-art things they were doing and they offered me a position. Amdahl was going head-to-head with IBM designing a mainframe computer. My broker told me that I would be silly to accept the offer since no company was ever successful against IBM. I accepted anyway. It was perhaps the best career decision I ever made. It launched my career in startups.

Startups have three possible outcomes: you take them public; you sell them; or you bury them. They involve long hours and a lot of travel. If you are successful, the rewards can be great. Fortunately, Amdahl was successful and we took it public. I stayed with them for eight years rising through the ranks to middle management and becoming part of their key employee program. It was a good ride. I finished my AD degree and got accepted to an honors program at University of Santa Clara. In this program I was able to do my upper division work in Graduate school. My management wanted me to write a technical paper for a computer conference. Since I had to do a thesis for school, I used that for the technical paper. I never spoke in front of a large audience before and when I gave my paper there were about 500 people in the room, I was petrified but it went well. My company published it in the US, Europe, and Japan. All of a sudden, I became a name in my field.

About a year later, I left Amdahl to join another computer startup sponsored by STC. I stayed with this one about three years but the parent company ran out of money so we had to close it down. At that time, I was Director of Program Management. We buried the company and I went with them as VP of manufacturing.

One unique thing about startups is that you work with many of the same people from company to company. The names don’t change, just the business cards. We ended up selling that company to Toshiba. Since they already had their own manufacturing group, I felt my position was redundant so I laid myself off.

My career went along these same lines. I participated in another four startups serving in executive management roles. It was quite a ride but this was a young man’s game and I wasn’t getting any younger. As soon as I reached 59 ½ I decided to retire. I did some consulting after that and got sucked into one more company. They hired me to do a project to reduce their product cost but then enticed me to take over a division. I told them that this was a project not a career so I limited it to nine months to find a replacement. Nine months came and I was gone.
Well, that’s my life in a nutshell. I hope it wasn’t too tedious. I just wanted for you to see where I came from and what I did.

Steve

CONTINUED

The amazing part of that saga is that every word is true. As I sat down to write that, the memories just started to flow out of my mind. You wouldn’t believe it but I became an engineer because I hated to write. Little did I know at the time, that a major portion of Engineering work is writing reports.
I really enjoyed your family history. Now here’s mine.

My father was born in Smyrna, Turkey. He was raised in Alexandra, Egypt. He was educated in Belgium and got his BS at the University of Wyoming and received his Masters at Cal Berkeley. Most of my family, on my father’s side, was wiped out in the Armenian massacre in Turkey. My father spoke seven different languages. It was interesting to hear my father and my uncle converse. They would start out in Arabic, switch to Armenian when they hit a word that didn’t translate. This kept on in different languages all through conversation. It was a site that I’ll probably never see, or hear again. Unfortunately, my father insisted that only English would be spoken at home so that’s all I ever learned.

My mother was born in Boise, Idaho and had four sisters. They were raised on a homestead in Oregon. They say that grandmother came across to the West in a wagon train. I don’t put a lot of stock in that. My mom was a master at making pies and my one aunt was equally adept at making cakes. That’s probably why I developed such a sweet tooth. My mom met my dad when she was getting her Masters at Berkeley.

My father was the first person to major in television at Cal. He established a radio and TV store in Oakland. They also sold records which is why I have such a love of all kinds of music (except rap). I worked there after school and on weekends from the age of 13. They were the single largest supplier of records to the Oakland school system. I spent my time there selling radios, TVs, and records. I also did repairs on radios, TVs and phonographs. Needless to say, I was gently nudged to go into engineering.

I was the baby of the family and had two sisters. My oldest sister passed away last year at 83. My other sister lives in Fairfield. She has kidney problems and has been on dialysis for about 15 years. She had a transplant but her body rejected t after about 3 years. (Kit passed away 2 weeks after Steve and my wedding) When each of my sisters were born, my father bought my mom roses. When I was born, mom got a fur coat. Talk about sexual inequality, there’s a great example.

Growing up in East Oakland, I was always curious and adventuresome. There were few houses and lots of open fields. We also had a creek nearby, so I could just roam around and explore. It was a great place to grow up. My mom helped drive the founding of Knowland Park Zoo so I was a regular there. I got to help feed the animals and even went in to pet Leo the lion. He was an old and a toothless wonder but I felt like I was king of the world when I got to do that. There were also square miles of hills that I regularly explored. That’s probably where I got my love of nature.

Well, that gives you a bit of background into my lineage. I have to admit it was a bit different but exciting. Of course, I left out the parts where I got in trouble and my adolescence years but I have to keep some of those items left unsaid so I have some interesting conversation material.

BTW, I also went to DeAnza and Foothill colleges. That’s where I got my AS degree. I was also president and founder of the evening student council. My first venture into politics. Being in senior management at the time, I didn’t let the faculty or school board take advantage of my fellow students. I sort of showed them how the cow ate the cabbage.