Our volunteer this month is Dale Swafford, and if you’ve been around the Resource Center lately (new or old) you have seen him hard at work.  Dale has spent many hours helping with the move. Dale is also the SIG leader for the new CD Burner SIG

The organization has also seen his other skills come forward with the move to the new Resource Center in Crossroads Mall.  I personally saw him there doing some highly skilled work and the finish work on the walls at the new location.  I knew his career was elsewhere, so I asked him where he learned construction skills.  He was self-effacing, but said he had built several houses in past years and had also lived in military housing that always needed remodeling.

Dale spent over 30 years in the Army as a helicopter pilot, and had 2 tours of duty in Germany, 2 in Korea, and 2 in Vietnam.  He played many roles related to helicopters – maintenance, operations, pilot, and  instructor.   He enjoyed the challenge of Army life, the variety of living places, and  the foods of other cultures.  One of Dale’s stories was about kemshi (cabbage and other foods fermented for several days in the ground by the Koreans) and the powerful smell associated with it.

Dale met his wife – a nurse in the Cardiac ICU at BAMC - while stationed at Fort Sam Houston.  They have been married over 21 years and both retired from the Army 14 years ago. They now live in a house (which they built, of course) at Medina Lake.

I also asked Dale how he got involved with AlamoPC.  He said that he saw the information about meetings in the Sunday newspaper at about the same time he was having some problems with Windows 95, so he thought it would be a good idea to be around people who knew something about computers.  He attended the SIGs in Computer Literacy, Win 95/98, WordPerfect, and graphics.  His first personal computer was an 8086 Compaq Deskpro. He now uses an AMD K6II 450 MHz machine with 128 Mb of memory and a 20 Gigabyte hard drive, driving a 16-10-40 Yamaha CD Burner.

Dale is the local CD “burner” (recorder) expert and SIG leader, and  has written several articles for PC Alamode about creating CDs. He has also built 4 computers from scratch.

Dale’s most recent activity with Alamo PC has been with the recent relocation to Crossroads Mall.  He had high praise for Alamo PC Vice President Joe Brazell for being the Project Manager for the organization’s move to Crossroads Mall.  He said that Joe played a significant role in analyzing the project and in keeping the volunteers focused on the next task.  He noted that Joe also was heavily involved in the work himself.

I’m sure you readers will agree with me that we are fortunate to have people like Joe Brazell and people like Dale Swafford as members of the organization.