When I received my Sustained Superior Performance Award from Brigadier General Arwood (retired Major General) in 1984, I was the youngest recipient ever to recieve such a high level of recognition from the Defense Logistics Agency. The award was given for my work on reports that were presented to Congress by General Arwood. I installed the first PCs to be used in DLA Headquarters and provided spreadsheet and database training to the users of the MS DOS 1.0 computers. The facility had about 2000 employees of which half were civilians like myself. The world's largest online database was housed in the top-security data center there. I used dBase II, Basic, Fortran, Multiplan (Microsoft's predecessor to Excel) and other programs to automate many laborious tasks. Efficiency increases were quickly noticed and the numbers of PCs used rapidly increased throughout the Agency's headquarters. I am thankful to all my friends at the Federal Center for giving me the opportunity to serve our country and the great start my career received working with them. |