The Man Behind The Mic
Dick Flint - K6JOQ
A native Californian, I was born in Roseville, near Sacramento, on January 14, 1923. My dad was a railroad worker as were most residents of Roseville at that time. I followed in his footsteps for a little while as an oiler in the roundhouse, but I much preferred working with cattle and horses. During high school I worked on haying crews and drove truck for a feed store, all the while majoring in agriculture.
In November, 1942, I signed up for a six year hitch with the U. S. Navy. After bootcamp I was sent to a radio school at the University of Idaho in Moscow. From there I went to Canberra, Australia for more radio and communications training. Upon graduation the bulk of my class was assigned to accompany the Marines as radio operators during beach landings or aboard PT boats. Because I had a talent for CW (and the Marines needed voice operators) I was assigned to assist the Royal Australian Navy as a point-to-point CW operator. There were about twenty of us Yanks there to man the American circuits. I stayed in Australia until 1946 and to this day I am convinced that CW saved my life.
While serving in the Navy I met and married Coral, a lovely Australian lady. Our daughter, Bea, was born while we were still there.
I was discharged from the Navy in 1948 and returned to California. I tried a few jobs, one of which was being a secretary to the Associate Warden at Folsom prison. All the time I was looking for a permanent job I still had a strong desire to use my CW skills so I joined the California Air National Guard AC&W squadron. They needed a full time communication person to keep a couple CW schedules each day. The job also dealt with the installation and maintenance of the radio equipment as well as training reservists to become radiomen. I stuck with that job for several years until I got the chance to work for RCA at their Point Reyes station, KPH. I first worked in the HF point-to-point division. Then satellites came along and made my job obsolete. Not willing to give up, I landed a job with the shore to shore division doing what I always loved; using CW to work merchant shipping.
CW was so much a part of my life that even after an eight hour shift on the job I would come home and work more CW on the ham bands. In fact I worked CW almost exclusively until I stumbled across the RV Net in 1986. There were so many nice people there that I was forced to buy a microphone.
Coral and I have always enjoyed camping. It was all bedrolls and tents at first, but in 1960 we bought our first RV, a cab-over Travel Queen camper. We eventually went through four more campers before we got a fifth wheel in 1981. We are on our 2nd fifth wheel now, but sadly, we don't use it as much as we would like.
We attended our first rally in 1986. We parked alongside another set of first-timers, Don and Barb DeGroot. You can't find much better company than that. We subsequently made most of the rallies until about two years when too many medical appointments got in the way. Nowadays we take life pretty easy. We are enjoying our grandkids and great-grandkids immensely.
Throughout the years I've never lost my love and appreciation for the music of CW. To this day I still get on the air, mostly on 40 meters, and chat with old friends down on the bottom of the band. I think it's fair to say that not only did CW save my life but it enriched it beyond comprehension.
73 from Dick Flint, K6JOQ