Author: Steven M. Jones

Publisher: Dorrance Publishing

Published: 2023-03-03

Total Pages: 97

ISBN-13:

About the Book For four generations Steve’s family has been rooted in the U.S. aerospace and aviation industry. In 1972 while working on his Master’s Degree in history at UCLA he discovered that there were no jobs for history professors anywhere in the U.S. Following in his mother’s footsteps he earned a lifetime K-12 + Adult School degree and became an elementary school teacher in Burbank, CA. After four years of no raises, his wife begged his Lockheed Skunk Works brother-in-law to get him a job at Lockheed Burbank. One interview later in 1979 Steve was hired as an entry-level administrator in Lockheed’s International Trade Development organization where they handled activity they called “Offset” in Canada, Australia, The Netherlands, and Portugal. Thus began the long journey to the true-story scandal infamously known as “The Letter Bomb”. After twenty years at Lockheed, Steve went on to work for Boeing for eighteen years before retiring out of the Washington D.C. corporate office in 2020. About the Author Steve was born in Newark, NJ in 1950. His parents moved to Van Nuys, CA in 1953 where his Dad went to work for Lockheed Burbank. Love at first site, he saw his sweetheart Danny at fourteen while riding his bike in Van Nuys, pursued her heart relentlessly in high school and college, and finally married her on Easter Sunday 1972 after graduating from UCLA. They just celebrated their 50th Anniversary. They have two beautiful daughters Melaney and Leslie, and two gifted grandchildren Pia and Engin (Raiden). To honor his parents, Steve put himself through college working full-time as a custodian for the L.A. City Schools for six years. At Lockheed from 1979-1999 Steve worked in twenty countries promoting the sale of F-16, P-3, C-130, and L-1011 aircraft and many other products and services. He and his family lived and worked in Portugal for over two years on the last L-1011 sale. Steve and Danny lived in Central Europe for one year promoting the Foreign Military Sale of military F-16’s and C-130’s to NATO aspirants. Steve spent ten years interfacing with the Pentagon on USAF programs.