Keena and I met at Brigham Young University in 1966-67. She was in the School of Nursing and I was about to graduate in Business Management. Although we had known each other for several months, we did not date until the end of the school year. Then something clicked. We courted during the spring and summer and were married in Oakland, California on August 25, 1967.
Since then . . . .
|
1967-69 |
Boston, Massachusetts. Our honeymoon was the drive from California to Boston where I attended the Harvard Business School and Keena continued her nursing schooling at LaSalle. During the first year, we lived in an apartment in Cambridge near Harvard Square. Keena became a Registered Nurse by the end of that school year. We spent the summer of '68 in California, Keena working at the Kaiser Hospital in Oakland, and I working in the Management Sciences department at Bank of America in San Francisco. During our second year in the Boston area, we worked as dorm parents at Mt. Ida Junior college while I continued at Harvard. I got my MBA in June of 1969. |
|
1969-75 |
Stockton, California. I worked as plant manager for California Cedar Products Company, a supplier of incense cedar slats for the world's wooden pencil industry. I was very involved in the early development and production of the company's better known product: DURAFLAME firelogs. Keena worked as an RN at two different hospitals. She also became a certified aerobics instructor. Three of our children were born in Stockton - Kristina in 1969, Krey in 1971 and Kamber in 1974. |
|
1975-76 |
Thousand Oaks, California. I joined The Talley Corporation, a manufacturer of aerospace components, in 1975. We bought a home in Thousand Oaks but only lived there for a few months because we then got an assignment to move to . . . |
|
1976-81 |
Niklasreuth, Germany. Talley had a manufacturing and sales operation, Electro Pneumatic International (EPI), located in the mountains about 30 miles south of Munich, Germany. I was Managing Director of EPI and represented Talley to the European aerospace industry. Due to visa and licensing restrictions, Keena could not be officially employed but she was able to volunteer at the local hospital. She also continued teaching aerobics. We lived with a wonderful German family on an operating dairy farm in the foothills of the Bavarian alps. This was real "Sound of Music" country. We could see the mountains of Austria from our balcony and, in the winter, the nearest ski slope was about five minutes away. We pretty much immersed ourselves in the local culture. Our older children attended German schools and became very fluent in the language. Our last two children were born here - Kerrie in 1977 and Kevin in 1980. |
|
1981-82 |
Provo, Utah. Upon our return to the States, I took a leave of absence from Talley and joined the faculty of the Marriott School of Management at Brigham Young University for a one year appointment. I called this my "sabbatical from the real world." It was very intellectually stimulating and a lot of fun to boot. |
|
1982-2000 |
Grand Rapids, Michigan. We moved to Michigan in the Spring of 1982 and for the next 18 years, I served as:
Keena went back to school and got a degree in Health Sciences from Grand Valley State University. She worked part time for the Red Cross for eight years administering the Senior Center Services. She also had some very intense experiences on disaster relief assignments in California (earthquake), Puerto Rico (hurricane), and West Virginia (flooding). During our last couple of years in Michigan, Keena worked for a nursing agency at several retirement and nursing homes in the Grand Rapids area. We continued our activity in the L.D.S. (Mormon) Church with several callings including, for Keena, both ward and stake Relief Society president and, for me, bishop and stake president. We have many fond memories of Grand Rapids. We lived on a 13 acre hobby farm with lots of animals, a barn, a stream, a pond, woods and four acres of front yard - enough to fly ultralight airplanes and powered paragliders from. |
|
2000- |
Salt Lake City area, Utah. I joined Liquitek Enterprises Incorporated (LEI) at the end of 2000 and we moved to Utah a couple of months later. Liquitek had recently acquired several companies in the commercial water and fluid processing industries and I was assigned as president of two of them, one located in Las Vegas and one in New Zealand. That made for a lot of travel. Unfortunately the parent company ran out of funding in the spring of 2002 so we had to close the Las Vegas company and revert the New Zealand company back to its previous owners. For the last several years, I had been working part time on a new invention for the heavy trucking industry known as the GearMaster At about the same time as Liquitek was being dissolved, a new version of the GearMaster was nearing completion. We created GearMaster International as a division of Johnson Manufacturing Company (which Keena and I own) and I began devoting my full time to bringing the GearMaster to market. It has been fun, exciting and just a little breathtaking. Check out www.gearmaster.com for more details. When we moved to Utah, we rented an apartment in Draper while we were selling our house in Michigan and were looking for a new place here. In June 2002, we bought a home in Eagle Mountain which is about 30 miles south of Salt Lake City. It is a desert environment but we have a beautiful view of the mountains and Utah Valley. Our house sits on a five acre lot and - you guessed it - I can fly my ultralight from a runway in our back yard. See www.priceaero.com for some flying pictures. Keena worked part time at the Draper Rehabilitation and Care Center when we lived in Draper and continued there for a few years after we moved to Eagle Mountain. In 2006 she accepted a position as a charge nurse at Liberty Dialysis Clinic, now a division of Fresenius Medical Care, in South Jordan about 25 minutes away from our house. She works about 30 hours a week and enjoys a lot of flexibility in scheduling time off to travel and play Grandma to our expanding family. Our daughter Kerrie and family live in the Salt Lake City area and we are enjoying having them nearby. Our other children and grandchildren are scattered in Idaho, Oregon, Washington and Australia.
Update January 2020 - With the bulk of heavy duty trucks now being equipped with automatic transmissions, the demand for the GearMaster technology has pretty much dried up. We are,however, still looking at some possible innovations. In addition, I keep myself busy...
In the meantime, Keena has been "slowly retiring," working somewhat reduced hours but still enjoying going to work a couple of days a week. For more detail, check out our Christmas letters on the home page. |
To return to our home page, click here.
To go to Kent's early years, click here.
To go to Keena's early years, click here.