Dhahran was a different place in 1982. It was bigger! It was busy! It was growing and it was missing the main ingredient, my old friends. All the buildings and memories were in place, but my friends had gone off to start their lives elsewhere.
Steve Furman was a relief supervisor in Office Services. Marshall Jones was a supervisor and Rauf al Hamayal was our department head. I think that’s where the authority of my hiring came from. Marshall said to me one day, “I hired you because of your computer experience.” I had eight years of experience with a computer company but my experience was with service engineering and I guess Marshall thought I was flexible enough to fill varied roles. Rauf never talked to me about my hiring but I knew a little about him. His wife and my sister were in the same class at the Dhahran Senior Staff School. He had to know about my dad who was the foreman of the Machine Shop for many years. Rauf took a small collection of Saudi workers and grew Office Services into a dynamic service organization controlling three million square feet of office space! Rauf was personable and his demeanor was productive. He was a good boss and when you met with him, he was all business. I’d say he was intense, always pushing to get the job done.
Besides missing my departed friends, the pristine landscape of Dhahran was blanketed. There were over 20 rock crushers spilling finely pulverized aggregate into the air, the result of a rapidly expanding cityscape. From Dhahran, south to Half Moon Bay and north to Dammam, the land was covered with construction sites, completed community centers for new expatriate developers, a bigger, more spacious airport, and curving multi-lane interstate-like highways moving the traffic in and out of the Dhahran Core Complex.
My family followed me to Dhahran six months after I landed. The infamous housing list finally coughed up an offer of a double-wide trailer in North Camp, not inside the old Dhahran Camp fence, but it was a start and there was superior bus service. Clarice and our son Curt came in July. It was only a couple weeks until Curt was visiting all over main camp. He was in the recreation portable one day and a new friend said, ‘my dad works for ARAMCO and my grandpa worked for ARAMCO too.’ Curt just smiled- two third generation ARAMCO kids meeting for the first time.
The bus system took Curt to all three districts. He was even on an ARAMCO marine tug out of Ras Tanura. In the fall, he and his mother boarded the nightly Swissair DC-10 to Zurich and went to Austria. Curt attended Sea Pines Abroad (Faistenau) for two years. He came back to the States semi-fluent in German.
Kelli was already out of college and away from home. She was working in Denver for a fast food chain in their management track. Eventually she married and moved to Omaha where she continued with the same company.
I stayed in Dhahran for three years. The work was interesting and challenging, being able to survey various departments, accommodate their growth by re-designing their office space and figuring out the needs of future developments pretty much depended on the results of the next five year plan. Office Services had a big design team to meet these needs.
Clarice stayed two years, working at the Labs department for Adam Janowski, as a clerk typist. On a good day, Clarice could rip off 90 words a minute and Adam told her about the Department of Defense Dependent Schools (DoDDS) where he had taught in Japan. She met all the new PDP students off to the States for college. When her two year teacher leave lapsed, she went back to her old teaching job in Cedar Rapids. Curt went home with her to finish high school.
I left Saudi ARAMCO after three years to the day. I liked the work but I felt my place was really at home helping the family.
During my three years, several big events occurred: ARAMCO became Saudi ARAMCO; the baton was passed to the Saudis after half a century of cooperation with Stateside direction. ARAMCO had its 50th anniversary, and the business CORE Complex in Dhahran grew from four big office buildings to seven. The Engineering Building, the EXPEC Building and the new Labs Building were added, staffed, and filled with Saudi ARAMCO departments. Office Services split into three departments and became Office Systems and Support. We had a general manager and three department heads.
The work for ARAMCO was expressive and satisfying. The expatriate staff was varied and professional. One of the biggest challenges was getting the culture of a multi-national company to meet the goals of a broad workforce with American and European work attitudes in a Middle East cultural setting. This was the same hurdle that ARAMCO faced when my father came to Dhahran in June of 1944! So, some of the challenges from 1944 were still to be resolved in 1984; some professional and social currents take a long time to restructure. The Saudi management was patient but their goals were evident.
Once back in the States, I decided to make a career correction. While working for Office Services, I taught young Saudi employees Drivers Attitude Training (DAT). I enjoyed the work and decided to go back to Mount Mercy College and become a social studies and visual art teacher. It was a good decision, and it helped take us back overseas.