Chapter 6: TRW

Autobiography of Rick Wagner, continued.

Starting a Career

"TRW" stands for Thompson, Ramo, and Woolridge. The Ramo Woolridge Corporation helped the Air Force get its ICBM program going in the 1950s and then produced spacecraft as a pioneer of spaceflight. The Thompson Products Corporation started out making capscrews in the early 20th century and then moved into engine valves and other products. Their sodium cooled valve for the Merlin engine helped make the air superiority fighter, the P51 Mustang, possible. Thompson Products bought Ramo Woolridge and named the resulting company TRW, Inc. Dr. Simon Ramo is the R in TRW and I read his book on tennis (Extraordinary Tennis for Ordinary People) in the late '80s. More recently, I read his 1995 book Meetings, Meetings, Meetings; Getting Things Done When People Are Involved. Both books influenced me somewhat.

I was recruited to TRW from the University of Hawaii by John Otera of spacecraft integration and test (I&T). I also had job offers from General Dynamics and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, but TRW offered the highest starting salary.

I flew to the mainland in early January 1980 and TRW put me up at Barnaby's Pen and Quill hotel on the Pacific Coast Highway (PCH) and Rosecrans Ave. It took me over a month to find an apartment to share in Hermosa Beach, and TRW paid the entire hotel and resteraunt bill. I bought an old Buick station wagon from a TRW employee for two hundred dollars. I rented a room in Hermosa Beach. Andrea came and visited me for a few days and we had a good time together. I volunteered at the South Bay Free Clinic on Manhattan Beach Avenue for a few months in the clinical laboratory. I learned how to do urine tests including microscopic analysis and blood tests including drawing blood. In the springtime Andrea came to live with me and we moved to the lower rooms of a house on Palm Drive, just off the Strand in Hermosa Beach. Robert Wilson, a psychologist, owned the place and lived intermittently upstairs with his wife.

I proposed to Andrea that December and we were married June 13, 1981, in a ceremony in her parents' back yard by my step father, Prof. Rev. Mitsuo Aoki.

This page created April 9, 2002.
Updated December 17, 2008.
Updated August 5, 2009.
Last updated September 2, 2010.