During this episode, we talk to Gary about his career in the Navy, where he served in the US Navy Nuclear Submarine Force for 8 years. From 1970 to 1978, he was a Machinist Mate and Engineering Laboratory Technician.
Then his 40-year career pivoted to a Software Engineer, and now Author. We could have talked to him for hours … and hope to have him back for more discussions!
We thank you for your service Gary!
Here are links to Gary’s books and blog:
Blog
Books:
Genome
Arlo and Jake Series
Gary’s two ‘Vellas’ on Amazon’s Kindle:
Vella 1
Vella 2
Transcript
John Simon Sr. 00:06
John, welcome to Simon Says, inspire a podcast about life, leadership and building legacies. I'm John, Simon, SR
Dina Simon 00:14
and I'm Dina Simon,
John Simon Sr. 00:16
and today we have Gary Henson as our guest. Gary, welcome to the podcast.
Gary Henson 00:21
Thank you, John, thank you. Dina, I appreciate it.
Dina Simon 00:23
We're so excited to have you so
John Simon Sr. 00:26
Gary, why don't you take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself, where you were from, and a little bit about your family. Sure,
Gary Henson 00:33
I had to make lots of notes here, because when you asked me this, I started thinking, have I ever really written down, you know, all of my life, and it's like so excuse me if I have to look at my notes once in a while. But I was, I was born in the levelland, Texas, which is a tiny little town west of Lubbock, 1952 so I'm 71 my family was three boys and one girl. Have an older brother, a younger sister and a younger brother. My father was pretty typical of the people who grew up, you know, in the 40s, 30s and 40s, he had to quit high school when he was 14 to go work in the oil fields because his family needed the money, and so he ended up being a roughneck, if you know what that is, the guy who's up on the oil rigs, moving the pipes around and all that kind of stuff. He did that while he was still a teenager, and then later on, went on to run a series of gas stations, tech to Texaco's and gulfs and stuff like that. His family was what we used to call a hard scrabble family. It was, you know, mouth to mouth and no money, but, you know, they had each other. And my mom and dad married young. My my dad was 17, my mom was 15, which was pretty common at that time and in that area. So I grew up there until I was 14, and then we all moved up to Boulder, Colorado. Wow, what got you to Colorado? Well, I had appendicitis when I was 14, and it wiped my dad out. He had no insurance. He didn't believe in it, so it, it wiped him out. And so rather than trying to recover there in level, and they decided to move on. He had a chance to open a gas station in Boulder, and they that the you lease gas stations, you don't own them, so he at least this gas station on 28th Street in Boulder. Moved family up there,
John Simon Sr. 02:39
and that's where you met your wife, Debbie, yep.
Gary Henson 02:41
So, gosh, I was still trying to think she's going to kill me if I get this wrong. I think I was 16 and she was 15 still. Or it's either that or 17 and 16, I can't remember. She went to the boulder High School, which is downtown, next to CU and I went to Fairview High School, which was way out on the edge of town. She was, she went to the cool school because it was, it was actually an, originally a prep school for CU, and then I went to the farmer's school out in the boonies, but we met because her stepbrother worked for my dad for a while, and so he took me home to meet her one day, and we fell in love and dated all through high school, and then got married shortly after I joined the Navy. Nice, nice.
John Simon Sr. 03:33
So, Gary, I've known you for probably 15 years now we have the opportunity to get together once a week, and play pinochle with each other every Wednesday with a group of about nine or 10 guys that we have in our group. And I always thought it was very fascinating. Number one, I want to thank you for your service in the United States Navy, nine years of service. Dina, I think your dad was in the Navy. Also,
Dina Simon 03:58
my dad was in the Navy. Yes, what was he? That's a great question. And and I actually, we, we just started researching because he's no longer here, and he didn't want to talk much about it when he was here. And we, actually, I have a friend who's super interested in pulling, like, his records and stuff. So so once I do that, I'll be sure to share back with you
Gary Henson 04:21
that would be wonderful. Yeah, I'm always interested in that, and I understand why that. He doesn't talk about it. Military service is an arduous thing, no matter you know what you do and not always nice, no matter which branch you're into. So a lot of people, I know, once they got out, they put that behind them and really didn't want to think about it anymore.
John Simon Sr. 04:42
Throughout my years, I've run into a lot of people that have been in the military, but you're the only one that I can say that has been in the US Navy, nuclear submarine service. Oh, yeah, that is very interesting.
Gary Henson 04:56
Yes. Well, that that part of my life. You know? See. Was like decade Well, centuries ago. It was decades ago, but it was definitely a both a very rewarding a very challenging part of my life that I actually joined the Navy when I was 17 and three quarters, because they had a special program you could get in early and get credit for it. And at the time, I had a very low draft number, and so the draft was still not a fact. So I decided to, I've got to go into the military. I'm going to make the most of it. They had a program called the Navy Nuclear Program, where you go to school for two years up front and then you serve your normal four year tour in the Navy, so I chose that, and I ended up testing out really high to be either in radio or electronics. But when I got to the boot camp, the needs of the Navy changed, and I became a machinist mate. Yeah, you really don't have a choice. It's you don't. There's no contract you sign. There's nothing. It's up to the needs of whatever military what they give you, right?
John Simon Sr. 06:03
So you mean they don't go with, well, this isn't what I wanted to do.
Gary Henson 06:08
Yeah, actually, I said that pretty much those same words, but no, it doesn't matter when you sign up, it's all volunteer for submarines. So you you can't be drafted for submarine duty, you can be drafted for normal surface duty. So I volunteered for it because, you know, two years of schooling, and it, it's was the equivalent of a two year college education in in the in the tech field. So I studied chemistry, electronics, mechanics, steam engines, just a whole range of things. And then I went to two schools. I went to nuclear power school in Oh. Nuclear Power School was in Bainbridge, Bainbridge, Maryland. And then I went to nuclear power training unit for six months, and that was in New York, Boston spa, where the Nuclear Power School teaches you, it's all textbook, and you go to school seven days a week, 10 hours a day, occasionally getting part of a weekend off. And then when you go to nuclear power training unit, it's, again, it's, it's 12 hour days, six or seven days a week, depending on what shifts you're on. And in the nuclear power training unit, you're actually operating one of the prototype either submarine or surface craft engine rooms. And so you learn how to flip switches and turn valves and make everything go round and round for six months. And then I got lucky. I was able to test out for a position called ELT engineering laboratory technician, which on top of my machinist mate duties, I was able to do radiation monitoring and chemistry water chemistry for the steam plant. So I decided that I was going to get as much education and experience as I could if I was going to be in the Navy. So I signed up for that, and I ended up being an ELT as well.
John Simon Sr. 08:08
So being on a submergible, what was the longest tour that you had? The
Gary Henson 08:14
longest time it was underwater? Was 72 days. Wow. Yeah. We did a what was called a med med cruise, which was a six month deployment, but part of that was 72 days underwater, and we came up once we had a problem with there's a thing called a TDU trash disposal unit, and it exactly what it sounds like it, it shoves trash down to about a submarine out into the water. So because you have no place to store it, and it broke, so we ended up coming to the surface to dump trash overboard. And we came to the service in state four seas, which is just below a hurricane. Oh my gosh, yeah, we had no choice. We had to stay up there to get rid of the trash. So we're up at the top. And wouldn't you know, I would pick that day to be, I can't remember was called. It's been too long ago, but you know what a sale is on a submarine? The part that sticks up when it's on the surface there? Sure. Well, there's a, there's a tube that goes up the middle of that, and then you see the guys standing on top of the sail, so I was at the bottom of that tube inside the submarine, holding on to a lanyard and my job and a microphone. I had a headset on. It's like my job was, if I saw water coming down the tube, to close the door, oh my god, close the hatch. And wouldn't wouldn't you know it one of the one of the waves went over and water came down, and I slammed the thing shut, and water came flooding into the control room. I felt so sorry for the guys at the top, you know, because suddenly their phone was cut off, and they looked down and that nothing but water. Oh my gosh, but it calmed down. It only took a minute or so. To calm down. You drain the water, and they came down, and we finished everything. But that's probably the most harrowing thing I ever did in my life. Look up and see sea water coming down the tube.
Dina Simon 10:10
Oh my gosh, exactly. And so, oh my gosh, 72 days on a submarine. So share with us just the that experience. I mean, that's a that's a lot of days under underwater.
Gary Henson 10:20
It's, it's an experience that is very hard to describe to civilians, I bet. Yeah, but when you're on a submarine and you're on the surface, you you do rock back and forth. When you're on a submarine and you're down a couple 100 feet, it feels just like you feel right now, with the exception of there's always a constant sort of wavy motion to the ship, but you instantly get used to that interesting and then you you in the in submarines, you have a I'll call it a strange life, because you are on watch for six hours. You're back in the engine room, and you're doing your job for six hours. The next six hours, you do maintenance and study and clean up all that kind of stuff. And then the next six hours you can sleep. And then it rotates again, so every 18 hours you're rotating. And so it's a six on six off six sleep type of world. And so it's you get it's amazing how fast you to get used to it. But of course, you're 1920, 21 years old. You can get used to anything at that age.
John Simon Sr. 11:32
So Gary, how many service members would be on a submarine like you were on? Well,
Gary Henson 11:37
I was on the USS bluefish, which is long been scrapped and it was classified as what they call a fast attack submarine. They're the ones with no missiles on board. Their job is to go around and guard coastlines. And on the bluefish, there was 115 people. There were, I think, a total of 16 or 17 officers, and then the rest were enlisted men. The officers had just any like in any part of the military, they were responsible for management, basically. And then the enlisted men ran the boat. And then the top tier of the enlisted man is the chief. So we had seven chiefs on board. We had two or three chiefs for engineering, which is where I was. Engineering is the back half of the boat, where all the steam engine and the reactor and all that are the forward part of the boat is where the torpedoes are and the radar and sonar. And there's also a diesel engine up there for emergencies. Anyway, all that's maintained. But what they what we call the a gang, the auxiliary gang, and they had their own chiefs, and so it was interesting, 115 people for 72 days, most of which we spent underwater. But other than that, fast attacks do. What's I can't remember the term now, but you basically, you will leave on Monday, come back, either Wednesday, Thursday or Friday, depends on the rotation, and get a couple of days off, and then you go right back out again. So it's in and out, in and out, and once in a while, you'll pull something like I did with the with the med crews or a long deployment. But most of the but most of the time, it's five days out, two days in, four days out, three days in. It's, it's real irregular, sure. So, yeah, 115 Yeah, you know, wow, little steel tube, right?
Dina Simon 13:31
And when you're doing that rotation, like the 666, with 115 people, did you avoid? Would you interact with everybody? Or were there people that were on the boat that you wouldn't see now
Gary Henson 13:41
you you interacted with everybody. The middle of the boat is where they had the mess deck. And four times a day you would be served food. And so that's when you you got, you know, you mixed with everybody, right? Yeah, there. There was no nowhere to go, to not mix with everybody. And it was surprisingly easy. I was on two subs and a three year tour at at a training unit, and I didn't meet more than a handful of people that I really did not want to interact with. They for the most part, when you're put in that kind of position, you you learn to watch what you say, watch what you do, and you really don't want to make anybody else uncomfortable or angry, because where are you going to go, right? So, yeah, it, it was actually a challenge when I got out and then went into the civilian workforce, where the opposite is true, right? Exactly.
Dina Simon 14:40
Oh, my goodness. And just to back up to, so you and Debbie met, and so did you get married before you went into the Navy, or was it around the same time?
Gary Henson 14:50
No, I went through boot camp and then came out and was going to some schools when, when I went home for one of my few. Times off, and we got married, and then I drug her out to Bainbridge, Maryland, which is a tiny little town, that's when I was going to nuclear power school. So yeah, we think about it once in a while, and we go, those were some of the best days of our lives, and some of the most challenging, because we had nothing my my paycheck was, when I see I was going to, I was going to look it up, but my paycheck was 14,000 a year when we first got married. Now we had a little bit of benefit, because there was a we could go to the px for food, but it really wasn't. Really didn't help a whole lot. But so there was lots of times when Debbie and I eat tube sticks, you know, and I we would dig into our coats and scrounge around for pennies that we had hopefully dropped through the drop through the pockets and stuff. So it was, it was a very challenging and very bonding time. Debbie and I, we've been together for 52 years now, and it's, I think part of, part of the reason is because we were just determined to make it work, and part of the reason is because we both were in a position where we had to make it work. We didn't have a choice. Let's
John Simon Sr. 16:21
talk a little bit about after you did your nine year hitch, you went into the computer software business, and yet, three actually, you retired from that business. What about four or five years ago?
Gary Henson 16:33
Yeah, almost six now. Yeah, when I got out of the service, I had a couple of quick jobs that weren't computer oriented, but I was more of a have to have a job. I have to have a job. And I kind of accepted a couple of colleges should not have accepted. And then I got lucky again, in a way, there was a company in Longmont called integrated systems, I think it was, and it was just a tiny little research company that was doing a coal mine roof fall warning system. And so I went to work for them as a draftsman and a technician. And then that company had some problems, and I got lucky again. And outside of boulders, little town called Lewisville, it's l, o, u, I S, Lewisville, and there was a huge company there called STC. You've probably never heard of it, because they changed characters and everything over the years, but at the time, they had like, 4000 employees worldwide, and they made, at the time, they made the tape drives you see on some of the movies where the tapes, big tapes are spinning back and forth. They reel to reel, reel to reels. Yeah, and for computer systems. And so I went to work to them as a technician. And I did that for a while, and then again, got lucky and went to work for a man called his name was Dave Granger. I remember him to this day. I think he's still around. And he basically told me, you need to make a decision. You need to be either a hardware guy or a software guy, and I have positions for both. And I said, Well, you know, I don't have a degree. I never got a degree, so I don't now have, nor will I probably ever have the training to be a hardware designer. So I said, I'll do software, because anybody can do software. We had people who had degrees in economics, in history and everything else, doing software. So he gave me a job to software, and I never looked back since then, the last job I had, the one you're talking about I retired from, was here in Frisco, and I was there, I think, 11 or 12 years, and I started as just a software developer. I I'm not an engineer, because I don't have a degree, but I was a developer, doing lots of low level stuff, helping with test equipment, test testing software, and slowly worked my way up to senior staff engineer, developer, where I got to do project management. I got to design a lot of stuff, work with other brilliant people to meet the needs of the company. The company was core point who at the time, they'd been bought since then by other people, but at the time, they were the leading software developer of healthcare software in the world, and probably have used to have the best C suite group of men and women that I have ever met anywhere. I got a lot of my desire to do a really good job. I got because these guys were just like that. They mentored us, they made sure we had all the tools we needed, and they they went out of the way to make sure that what we needed personally was being met. So they're just phenomenal guys. So I, I really miss them.
Dina Simon 19:58
Yeah, I love that. And that's so important, right? If you feel that you have that leadership at the top that is doing all the right things for their employees and engaged both in your personal and professional career, you as an employee, absolutely you just you want to do so much for the organization because of that, that leadership at the top and and that linkage there. I love that, and you were super lucky to have that. I like, I love that. So you were in Colorado. And then when did you get to Texas?
Gary Henson 20:25
We moved down here 20 years ago, because at the time I was in Colorado, both our girls were still there. And then our youngest daughter has an autoimmune disease called scleroderma, and the cold weather was, you know, literally killing her. And so she and her sister moved down to Texas. They were both teachers at the time, and so they moved down there, and and then a year later, we said, well, we can't handle it, so we decided to follow them down. And so we followed them down. And since then, the older daughter, spring, has moved up with her family to Manhattan, Kansas. Oh, sure. And and our younger daughter, Amber, lives two blocks away from us.
Dina Simon 21:11
And did you say your daughter's name is spring? Yes,
Gary Henson 21:13
spring. I
Dina Simon 21:14
love it. Spring. Sharee, great name. Yeah.
Gary Henson 21:18
We tried to find names that were were different than at the time, because at the time, everybody was Debbie, everybody was Gary, yep, you know. And so it's like, you know, let's, let's find something that they will enjoy,
Dina Simon 21:32
yeah, or, or John, right? John, so, yeah, yeah, my daughter Mandy, we have a lot of John's in the family, a lot of Richards in the family, a lot of Williams in the family, she, when she meets a boy, she does not want to date a boy that has those names, because we can't have another. We can't, one day add another to the family. Yeah,
Gary Henson 21:51
John, John, John. Yeah. No, yeah, no. Everybody was Gary when I was growing up. So my mom always called me Gary Allen, because just to make it different,
John Simon Sr. 22:00
right, right? Right? So Gary, after, after you retired, you started on another passion that you have, and I know you've done it, you worked on it prior to retirement, but that's writing books. Yes,
Gary Henson 22:12
I actually published, let's say, while I was still in software, I I had to have something that was not software to take, you know, because it's it's a high stress job, especially if you want to do it properly. And so I'd always liked telling stories and making up stories. I decided I saw this thing where Barnes and Noble and and Amazon both have a program where you can write your book, publish it through them for free. So i decided i What the heck I do that? And I had a story that I had been brewing for years in the back of my head. So I wrote it. It's, it's called genome. I wrote it and published it in 2006 The funny thing is, there's a lot of things in my book that have since come both for real and on movies, the whole holo, holographic imaging stuff. My book described that in detail. So I that I wrote that book, and then I wanted to do something more, along the lines of something I wanted to read. And I like stories like, you know, Guardians of the Galaxy. You know, it's sci fi, it's action, but it's also funny. Yeah, so I wrote a series of five books called Arlo and Jake. It's a buddy book, but Jake is a human and Arlo is a sentient chameleon. So Jake gets grabbed up by a group who are fighting a race that's trying to wipe out part of the galaxy, and this group called the Federation of 13 galaxies, needs his specific software and pretty much software background. And I, obviously, I based it off myself. There's a lot, there's a lot of me in the book. And I just had a blast writing these, these books that just one came right after the other. Just like, Oh, this is so cool. I could I could go here, I could go there. And I'm really proud of them. They, they don't sell, worth itang, but I don't care, right, right?
John Simon Sr. 24:18
So, Arlo is based on a human? Is he someone from your past, or is he you? Or no,
Gary Henson 24:26
Jake is the human, and he's based off of me. Arlo is he starts out just just being Jake's pet chameleon, and they're on a beach, down in a Corpus Christi, and then they get snatched up by this group. And part of the thing that the group does is they can immerse you in this DNA VAT to to bring Jake's DNA back to age 25 How would you like that? Nice, yeah. And then what it also does, though, when Arlo goes in there, it also freezes his. DNA, but it makes him sentient. So now he's he can talk to Jake, and there's just tons and stuff, tons of interaction between the two. And he's the sidekick
John Simon Sr. 25:10
I enjoyed whenever I was reading the books about the some of the references you made, like to ZZ Top and and your love for wearing Hawaiian shirts. Oh, Gary, I don't think Gary has a shirt. That's not a Hawaiian shirt.
Gary Henson 25:26
I have t shirts that my kids give me and Hawaiian shirts. There
Dina Simon 25:30
you go.
Gary Henson 25:31
That's pretty much it. I had so many Hawaiian shirts that several years ago, when my mom was still alive, I gave her two boxes full of ones I hadn't worn for a while, and she made a blanket, a quilted blanket for me that's on my bed right now. Oh, and she had, she had enough left over to make a small quilt for my best friend back in Colorado. So and I still got, I probably got 30 or 40 of them in my closet. Now,
John Simon Sr. 25:56
you can always tell Gary's around, because he will have a Hawaiian shirt on. Yep.
Gary Henson 26:00
Yeah, Hawaiian shirts, shorts and and TiVos. So,
Dina Simon 26:03
yeah. So I love the books. I also have authored a book. So I do know that the books don't make us rich, but it's just getting the stories out there and and that passion. And you also have a blog, yep. And so any, any future books in your future? Are you writing anything out?
Gary Henson 26:19
Yeah, I just published a collection of short stories called scattered visions. It's the five or six, mostly science fiction stories. Some of them are hard to describe, because I kind of like to mix genres, like in genome, it's a biotech it's a biotech thriller, but there's some ghosty stuff in there as well. So and then I'm getting ready to either I have another story for the Arlo and Jake series in mind, or I'm going to write something completely different, something out of my wheelhouse, just to try something different. But yeah, I continue to write. And
Dina Simon 26:59
as you're writing, are you still doing self publishing on Amazon and Barnes Noble, yes, nice.
Gary Henson 27:05
I have tried several times to find an agent or find a publisher who's interested, but it's not a very realistic thing to do. It's saying, I guess, if you lived in in California or New York, even then it's, I'm sure it's, you know, it's very difficult to do. I mean, they have literally hundreds and 1000s of submissions a day, and your chances of getting, you know, picked out of the pile are pretty slim
Dina Simon 27:30
well, and the ability to self publish and do that like you just think this awesome opportunity for you, you know, so in your in your kind of third act from from being in the Navy and then being in software development and now being an author, and your passion for writing and bringing those stories to life, even with us doing this podcast, like it's the the ability to bring our passion projects to the world, it's so much easier for for just any of us to do that. But you're right, like the big publishers and those big days when people would get, you know, book signings and stuff, they're still out there. But I think we were probably not in that circle right now, at least. But you never know. Gary, one of your books might get picked up for a movie. Yeah,
Gary Henson 28:13
I would love that. I mean, Genome would make a great movie. It really would. Of course, I say that because I wrote it and I see it's in my head so I can visualize what it might be as a movie. Unfortunately, you can't put that vision into somebody else's head. You know, you can. They can read it, and then they'll have their vision of it in their head. But, yeah, which? Which? You know, I read a bunch. There's a book called on writing by Stephen King, where he lays out in no nonsense terms, what it's like to be a writer. And he says, you know, the key to writing is to read a lot and write a lot. That's about it. You know, anything else you know? You push, like you said, you try to find some way to get your word out there, and just don't let it get you down when it hadn't happened.
John Simon Sr. 29:04
Well, Gary is, as you know, our podcast is about life, leadership and building legacies. You've done a great job of explaining what you've done in your life and everything. Tell us a little bit about some of the leaders that you've had in your life that really spurred you on. Yeah,
Gary Henson 29:19
I actually wrote down some of them I was thinking back when I was in the Navy on bluefish. I actually got to know then commander Kelso, who ended up being the Chief of Naval Operations later on in life, Frank Kelso and that gentleman was, I think, my first exposure to what a true leader or a mentor is all about, a man who truly cared about each and every one of us on the sub, including our families. And he wasn't intimate, but he was, he was always there. He had an open door policy, you know, if you had a problem, you know, you went to your like. Lead first, but you could also go to him and talk. And then when I got out one of my first jobs, I mentioned Dave Granger. Dave Granger was kind of a renaissance guy. He did not have a degree, I don't believe, and yet, he had worked his way up the ladder at STC, and he kind of took me under his wing. He's the one that told me, you need to decide hardware, software. And here's and he went through with me, you know, here, here's what your what your life's going to look like if you do hardware, and here's what your life's going to look like if you do software. And then he, even after I made the the decision to go software. He, he kept an eye on me. He there was several times where he pulled me aside and said, you know, either you're doing a great job. I like what you did here, or you need to rethink what you did over here, because whatever.
John Simon Sr. 30:53
And that's really what good leadership is all about. Exactly, yeah. Now I was going to say it's interesting how Commander telso You had contacted him a number of years later, and he remembered who you were, what you were doing on the on the ship, so apparently you left a everlasting memory in his mind. Also,
Gary Henson 31:13
yeah, and that was one of the more rewarding moments when he emailed me back and said, Oh, I remember you. There was an incident in the engine room lower level where we had what's called a sound leak. And that's usually where some piece of equipment is not supposed to but is leaning up against the hull, so the vibrations leak out through the hull, and you can be heard for miles and miles. And we had put out a commander Kelso had put out a thing saying, go check your spaces and see if you can find it. I found it. I found it an injury. And lower level, a pipe had inadvertently been stepped on and pushed out of its bracket in into the hall. And he came down, he said. He talked to me about how I found it. What did I do? You know, how what was your reasoning about looking and where did you go and all that. And at the end, he said, I really appreciate what you did. The whole ship appreciates it. And it was a very moving moment for me. I mean, I was 2023, maybe. And here's this, you know, Commanding Officer of the boat coming down. And you know, you know, we used to call them attaboys. Give, gave me an attaboy and made sure that the ship's crew knew about it. So again, like you said, that it is sometimes the little things in leadership that can make a huge difference in somebody's life, absolutely.
Dina Simon 32:36
And sometimes those little things, yes, they make such a difference that lasting impression, and then hopefully we take it forward and pay it forward to others.
Gary Henson 32:45
Yeah, yeah. I ended up being able to do a little mentoring of my own later on in life. At the last position, I was in the last software position, I became the the lead for the test Software Group, which was a small group, but I ended up being able to help some people that I recognized had kind of a similar background as me and similar desires, and made sure that, you know, their needs were met. So it was, you know, it was very nice. It was humbling in a way, you know, it's like, I gotta be careful here. I need to make sure I, you know, I foster this person, you know, and make sure that I don't cause them. You know, career damage, I guess. You know, you just be a, be a manager or leader without being, you know, I don't have to be your pal or your buddy, but you and I work together, and I'd like to help
John Simon Sr. 33:39
you well. And, you know, building legacies, which is the, you know, the last part of our podcast, that's the fact that you left a real legacy behind with the people that you work with. You
Gary Henson 33:51
know, I wasn't too sure for a while, you know, that I wanted to retire, but looking back at the time when I decided to retire, it's like, yeah, I've, I've left my mark here. And people are doing things that I suggested, you know, things that I helped mentor, things that I know will help the company. So I felt, I felt good about, you know that part of it, as
Dina Simon 34:17
you talked about your life story, so many yourself and your parents, you know, so many people had to make very different decisions when they were in their early teens, and you just did what you needed to do, whether it be being out on the farm and, you know, working multiple jobs to support families and now the pressures of these young kids is, you know, making decisions on where are you going to go to college? What are you going to do? Sometimes declaring a major before you even get to college. And so there the big push, also for, you know, trade schools or go to community college, get your basic stuff out of the way. And one of the things Gary you talked about, there's, I know, this whole software engineering like you picked that path. And there are so many people. That I know out in the business world, like, that's a, it's kind of a second career where people have said, you know, I I climbed this ladder, and I'm not loving what I'm doing, but super interested in getting into software engineering, and it's been a great career path for for many,
Gary Henson 35:14
oh, yeah, it's, it's one of those jobs where you get, you get quite a bit of almost immediate gratification. You know, you're writing almost daily. You write something that you can look at and say, Look what I did. You know, that kind of So, which is a truly wonderful feeling, and it is something that I believe just about anybody can do. It's, it's mostly tenacious and willing to study. I mean, I, I swear, every three years I had to learn a new new language over a new operating system or a new whatever. But it was actually fun. I mean, it was challenging, but you had to stick to it. And it teaches you. It teaches you some very interesting skills that you can, really, you can, you can use its logic. So you can use this skill in just about every branch of your life.
Dina Simon 36:08
So Gary and John, what I would like to say is, I love that both of you, you know, you're similar in age, and so from a retirement perspective, you found some really cool ways to, you know, stay engaged and be creative. And so Gary, with all the writing that you've done and your blog and avid reader and researcher, love that, and this is one of the reasons that I'm super excited to partner with John on the podcast, is to bring people like yourself to the table and have these awesome conversations. So just thank you for being our guest today.
Gary Henson 36:41
Oh, absolutely. And I appreciate you know you and John both thinking of me, it's very fulfilling to know there are people out there who appreciate the things that you've done in life enough to do something like this. It's it's very humbling, but I appreciate it very much.
John Simon Sr. 36:57
You're more than welcome, because whenever Dena and I started it, we started thinking about family members, but also friends and acquaintances. And you were one of my first picks. I said, I really got to get Gary on there, because I think he's done a number of amazing things in his life. No, I
Gary Henson 37:15
appreciate that.
Dina Simon 37:15
Yes, and when we put the podcast out there, I'll make sure I link to you know all your resources and the books and all of that, and just really thank you for thank you for joining us today.
Gary Henson 37:26
Oh no, thank you. I appreciate the chance to talk to you. It's nice to meet you and and talk to John again. I I really do appreciate your including me in this.
Dina Simon 37:35
I want to take a minute to thank Gary Henson for being on our podcast today, we are super excited to bring his experience and stories to life on our podcast, we thank him for his eight years of service in the Navy and super fun to learn more about what being on a nuclear submarine is all about. So love that and his 40 years of service as a software engineer. Loved that long history and career, and we will share some links in our show notes so that you can learn more on how to find his books and blog and all of that great stuff that he's working on in this next act. So Gary, thank you so much for being involved in our podcast today. As always, I think my father in law, John Simon, for his co hosting with me and thanking him for bringing Gary to the table and until next time, thank you. You.
John, welcome to Simon Says, inspire a podcast about life, leadership and building legacies. I'm John, Simon, SR
Dina Simon 00:14
and I'm Dina Simon,
John Simon Sr. 00:16
and today we have Gary Henson as our guest. Gary, welcome to the podcast.
Gary Henson 00:21
Thank you, John, thank you. Dina, I appreciate it.
Dina Simon 00:23
We're so excited to have you so
John Simon Sr. 00:26
Gary, why don't you take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself, where you were from, and a little bit about your family. Sure,
Gary Henson 00:33
I had to make lots of notes here, because when you asked me this, I started thinking, have I ever really written down, you know, all of my life, and it's like so excuse me if I have to look at my notes once in a while. But I was, I was born in the levelland, Texas, which is a tiny little town west of Lubbock, 1952 so I'm 71 my family was three boys and one girl. Have an older brother, a younger sister and a younger brother. My father was pretty typical of the people who grew up, you know, in the 40s, 30s and 40s, he had to quit high school when he was 14 to go work in the oil fields because his family needed the money, and so he ended up being a roughneck, if you know what that is, the guy who's up on the oil rigs, moving the pipes around and all that kind of stuff. He did that while he was still a teenager, and then later on, went on to run a series of gas stations, tech to Texaco's and gulfs and stuff like that. His family was what we used to call a hard scrabble family. It was, you know, mouth to mouth and no money, but, you know, they had each other. And my mom and dad married young. My my dad was 17, my mom was 15, which was pretty common at that time and in that area. So I grew up there until I was 14, and then we all moved up to Boulder, Colorado. Wow, what got you to Colorado? Well, I had appendicitis when I was 14, and it wiped my dad out. He had no insurance. He didn't believe in it, so it, it wiped him out. And so rather than trying to recover there in level, and they decided to move on. He had a chance to open a gas station in Boulder, and they that the you lease gas stations, you don't own them, so he at least this gas station on 28th Street in Boulder. Moved family up there,
John Simon Sr. 02:39
and that's where you met your wife, Debbie, yep.
Gary Henson 02:41
So, gosh, I was still trying to think she's going to kill me if I get this wrong. I think I was 16 and she was 15 still. Or it's either that or 17 and 16, I can't remember. She went to the boulder High School, which is downtown, next to CU and I went to Fairview High School, which was way out on the edge of town. She was, she went to the cool school because it was, it was actually an, originally a prep school for CU, and then I went to the farmer's school out in the boonies, but we met because her stepbrother worked for my dad for a while, and so he took me home to meet her one day, and we fell in love and dated all through high school, and then got married shortly after I joined the Navy. Nice, nice.
John Simon Sr. 03:33
So, Gary, I've known you for probably 15 years now we have the opportunity to get together once a week, and play pinochle with each other every Wednesday with a group of about nine or 10 guys that we have in our group. And I always thought it was very fascinating. Number one, I want to thank you for your service in the United States Navy, nine years of service. Dina, I think your dad was in the Navy. Also,
Dina Simon 03:58
my dad was in the Navy. Yes, what was he? That's a great question. And and I actually, we, we just started researching because he's no longer here, and he didn't want to talk much about it when he was here. And we, actually, I have a friend who's super interested in pulling, like, his records and stuff. So so once I do that, I'll be sure to share back with you
Gary Henson 04:21
that would be wonderful. Yeah, I'm always interested in that, and I understand why that. He doesn't talk about it. Military service is an arduous thing, no matter you know what you do and not always nice, no matter which branch you're into. So a lot of people, I know, once they got out, they put that behind them and really didn't want to think about it anymore.
John Simon Sr. 04:42
Throughout my years, I've run into a lot of people that have been in the military, but you're the only one that I can say that has been in the US Navy, nuclear submarine service. Oh, yeah, that is very interesting.
Gary Henson 04:56
Yes. Well, that that part of my life. You know? See. Was like decade Well, centuries ago. It was decades ago, but it was definitely a both a very rewarding a very challenging part of my life that I actually joined the Navy when I was 17 and three quarters, because they had a special program you could get in early and get credit for it. And at the time, I had a very low draft number, and so the draft was still not a fact. So I decided to, I've got to go into the military. I'm going to make the most of it. They had a program called the Navy Nuclear Program, where you go to school for two years up front and then you serve your normal four year tour in the Navy, so I chose that, and I ended up testing out really high to be either in radio or electronics. But when I got to the boot camp, the needs of the Navy changed, and I became a machinist mate. Yeah, you really don't have a choice. It's you don't. There's no contract you sign. There's nothing. It's up to the needs of whatever military what they give you, right?
John Simon Sr. 06:03
So you mean they don't go with, well, this isn't what I wanted to do.
Gary Henson 06:08
Yeah, actually, I said that pretty much those same words, but no, it doesn't matter when you sign up, it's all volunteer for submarines. So you you can't be drafted for submarine duty, you can be drafted for normal surface duty. So I volunteered for it because, you know, two years of schooling, and it, it's was the equivalent of a two year college education in in the in the tech field. So I studied chemistry, electronics, mechanics, steam engines, just a whole range of things. And then I went to two schools. I went to nuclear power school in Oh. Nuclear Power School was in Bainbridge, Bainbridge, Maryland. And then I went to nuclear power training unit for six months, and that was in New York, Boston spa, where the Nuclear Power School teaches you, it's all textbook, and you go to school seven days a week, 10 hours a day, occasionally getting part of a weekend off. And then when you go to nuclear power training unit, it's, again, it's, it's 12 hour days, six or seven days a week, depending on what shifts you're on. And in the nuclear power training unit, you're actually operating one of the prototype either submarine or surface craft engine rooms. And so you learn how to flip switches and turn valves and make everything go round and round for six months. And then I got lucky. I was able to test out for a position called ELT engineering laboratory technician, which on top of my machinist mate duties, I was able to do radiation monitoring and chemistry water chemistry for the steam plant. So I decided that I was going to get as much education and experience as I could if I was going to be in the Navy. So I signed up for that, and I ended up being an ELT as well.
John Simon Sr. 08:08
So being on a submergible, what was the longest tour that you had? The
Gary Henson 08:14
longest time it was underwater? Was 72 days. Wow. Yeah. We did a what was called a med med cruise, which was a six month deployment, but part of that was 72 days underwater, and we came up once we had a problem with there's a thing called a TDU trash disposal unit, and it exactly what it sounds like it, it shoves trash down to about a submarine out into the water. So because you have no place to store it, and it broke, so we ended up coming to the surface to dump trash overboard. And we came to the service in state four seas, which is just below a hurricane. Oh my gosh, yeah, we had no choice. We had to stay up there to get rid of the trash. So we're up at the top. And wouldn't you know, I would pick that day to be, I can't remember was called. It's been too long ago, but you know what a sale is on a submarine? The part that sticks up when it's on the surface there? Sure. Well, there's a, there's a tube that goes up the middle of that, and then you see the guys standing on top of the sail, so I was at the bottom of that tube inside the submarine, holding on to a lanyard and my job and a microphone. I had a headset on. It's like my job was, if I saw water coming down the tube, to close the door, oh my god, close the hatch. And wouldn't wouldn't you know it one of the one of the waves went over and water came down, and I slammed the thing shut, and water came flooding into the control room. I felt so sorry for the guys at the top, you know, because suddenly their phone was cut off, and they looked down and that nothing but water. Oh my gosh, but it calmed down. It only took a minute or so. To calm down. You drain the water, and they came down, and we finished everything. But that's probably the most harrowing thing I ever did in my life. Look up and see sea water coming down the tube.
Dina Simon 10:10
Oh my gosh, exactly. And so, oh my gosh, 72 days on a submarine. So share with us just the that experience. I mean, that's a that's a lot of days under underwater.
Gary Henson 10:20
It's, it's an experience that is very hard to describe to civilians, I bet. Yeah, but when you're on a submarine and you're on the surface, you you do rock back and forth. When you're on a submarine and you're down a couple 100 feet, it feels just like you feel right now, with the exception of there's always a constant sort of wavy motion to the ship, but you instantly get used to that interesting and then you you in the in submarines, you have a I'll call it a strange life, because you are on watch for six hours. You're back in the engine room, and you're doing your job for six hours. The next six hours, you do maintenance and study and clean up all that kind of stuff. And then the next six hours you can sleep. And then it rotates again, so every 18 hours you're rotating. And so it's a six on six off six sleep type of world. And so it's you get it's amazing how fast you to get used to it. But of course, you're 1920, 21 years old. You can get used to anything at that age.
John Simon Sr. 11:32
So Gary, how many service members would be on a submarine like you were on? Well,
Gary Henson 11:37
I was on the USS bluefish, which is long been scrapped and it was classified as what they call a fast attack submarine. They're the ones with no missiles on board. Their job is to go around and guard coastlines. And on the bluefish, there was 115 people. There were, I think, a total of 16 or 17 officers, and then the rest were enlisted men. The officers had just any like in any part of the military, they were responsible for management, basically. And then the enlisted men ran the boat. And then the top tier of the enlisted man is the chief. So we had seven chiefs on board. We had two or three chiefs for engineering, which is where I was. Engineering is the back half of the boat, where all the steam engine and the reactor and all that are the forward part of the boat is where the torpedoes are and the radar and sonar. And there's also a diesel engine up there for emergencies. Anyway, all that's maintained. But what they what we call the a gang, the auxiliary gang, and they had their own chiefs, and so it was interesting, 115 people for 72 days, most of which we spent underwater. But other than that, fast attacks do. What's I can't remember the term now, but you basically, you will leave on Monday, come back, either Wednesday, Thursday or Friday, depends on the rotation, and get a couple of days off, and then you go right back out again. So it's in and out, in and out, and once in a while, you'll pull something like I did with the with the med crews or a long deployment. But most of the but most of the time, it's five days out, two days in, four days out, three days in. It's, it's real irregular, sure. So, yeah, 115 Yeah, you know, wow, little steel tube, right?
Dina Simon 13:31
And when you're doing that rotation, like the 666, with 115 people, did you avoid? Would you interact with everybody? Or were there people that were on the boat that you wouldn't see now
Gary Henson 13:41
you you interacted with everybody. The middle of the boat is where they had the mess deck. And four times a day you would be served food. And so that's when you you got, you know, you mixed with everybody, right? Yeah, there. There was no nowhere to go, to not mix with everybody. And it was surprisingly easy. I was on two subs and a three year tour at at a training unit, and I didn't meet more than a handful of people that I really did not want to interact with. They for the most part, when you're put in that kind of position, you you learn to watch what you say, watch what you do, and you really don't want to make anybody else uncomfortable or angry, because where are you going to go, right? So, yeah, it, it was actually a challenge when I got out and then went into the civilian workforce, where the opposite is true, right? Exactly.
Dina Simon 14:40
Oh, my goodness. And just to back up to, so you and Debbie met, and so did you get married before you went into the Navy, or was it around the same time?
Gary Henson 14:50
No, I went through boot camp and then came out and was going to some schools when, when I went home for one of my few. Times off, and we got married, and then I drug her out to Bainbridge, Maryland, which is a tiny little town, that's when I was going to nuclear power school. So yeah, we think about it once in a while, and we go, those were some of the best days of our lives, and some of the most challenging, because we had nothing my my paycheck was, when I see I was going to, I was going to look it up, but my paycheck was 14,000 a year when we first got married. Now we had a little bit of benefit, because there was a we could go to the px for food, but it really wasn't. Really didn't help a whole lot. But so there was lots of times when Debbie and I eat tube sticks, you know, and I we would dig into our coats and scrounge around for pennies that we had hopefully dropped through the drop through the pockets and stuff. So it was, it was a very challenging and very bonding time. Debbie and I, we've been together for 52 years now, and it's, I think part of, part of the reason is because we were just determined to make it work, and part of the reason is because we both were in a position where we had to make it work. We didn't have a choice. Let's
John Simon Sr. 16:21
talk a little bit about after you did your nine year hitch, you went into the computer software business, and yet, three actually, you retired from that business. What about four or five years ago?
Gary Henson 16:33
Yeah, almost six now. Yeah, when I got out of the service, I had a couple of quick jobs that weren't computer oriented, but I was more of a have to have a job. I have to have a job. And I kind of accepted a couple of colleges should not have accepted. And then I got lucky again, in a way, there was a company in Longmont called integrated systems, I think it was, and it was just a tiny little research company that was doing a coal mine roof fall warning system. And so I went to work for them as a draftsman and a technician. And then that company had some problems, and I got lucky again. And outside of boulders, little town called Lewisville, it's l, o, u, I S, Lewisville, and there was a huge company there called STC. You've probably never heard of it, because they changed characters and everything over the years, but at the time, they had like, 4000 employees worldwide, and they made, at the time, they made the tape drives you see on some of the movies where the tapes, big tapes are spinning back and forth. They reel to reel, reel to reels. Yeah, and for computer systems. And so I went to work to them as a technician. And I did that for a while, and then again, got lucky and went to work for a man called his name was Dave Granger. I remember him to this day. I think he's still around. And he basically told me, you need to make a decision. You need to be either a hardware guy or a software guy, and I have positions for both. And I said, Well, you know, I don't have a degree. I never got a degree, so I don't now have, nor will I probably ever have the training to be a hardware designer. So I said, I'll do software, because anybody can do software. We had people who had degrees in economics, in history and everything else, doing software. So he gave me a job to software, and I never looked back since then, the last job I had, the one you're talking about I retired from, was here in Frisco, and I was there, I think, 11 or 12 years, and I started as just a software developer. I I'm not an engineer, because I don't have a degree, but I was a developer, doing lots of low level stuff, helping with test equipment, test testing software, and slowly worked my way up to senior staff engineer, developer, where I got to do project management. I got to design a lot of stuff, work with other brilliant people to meet the needs of the company. The company was core point who at the time, they'd been bought since then by other people, but at the time, they were the leading software developer of healthcare software in the world, and probably have used to have the best C suite group of men and women that I have ever met anywhere. I got a lot of my desire to do a really good job. I got because these guys were just like that. They mentored us, they made sure we had all the tools we needed, and they they went out of the way to make sure that what we needed personally was being met. So they're just phenomenal guys. So I, I really miss them.
Dina Simon 19:58
Yeah, I love that. And that's so important, right? If you feel that you have that leadership at the top that is doing all the right things for their employees and engaged both in your personal and professional career, you as an employee, absolutely you just you want to do so much for the organization because of that, that leadership at the top and and that linkage there. I love that, and you were super lucky to have that. I like, I love that. So you were in Colorado. And then when did you get to Texas?
Gary Henson 20:25
We moved down here 20 years ago, because at the time I was in Colorado, both our girls were still there. And then our youngest daughter has an autoimmune disease called scleroderma, and the cold weather was, you know, literally killing her. And so she and her sister moved down to Texas. They were both teachers at the time, and so they moved down there, and and then a year later, we said, well, we can't handle it, so we decided to follow them down. And so we followed them down. And since then, the older daughter, spring, has moved up with her family to Manhattan, Kansas. Oh, sure. And and our younger daughter, Amber, lives two blocks away from us.
Dina Simon 21:11
And did you say your daughter's name is spring? Yes,
Gary Henson 21:13
spring. I
Dina Simon 21:14
love it. Spring. Sharee, great name. Yeah.
Gary Henson 21:18
We tried to find names that were were different than at the time, because at the time, everybody was Debbie, everybody was Gary, yep, you know. And so it's like, you know, let's, let's find something that they will enjoy,
Dina Simon 21:32
yeah, or, or John, right? John, so, yeah, yeah, my daughter Mandy, we have a lot of John's in the family, a lot of Richards in the family, a lot of Williams in the family, she, when she meets a boy, she does not want to date a boy that has those names, because we can't have another. We can't, one day add another to the family. Yeah,
Gary Henson 21:51
John, John, John. Yeah. No, yeah, no. Everybody was Gary when I was growing up. So my mom always called me Gary Allen, because just to make it different,
John Simon Sr. 22:00
right, right? Right? So Gary, after, after you retired, you started on another passion that you have, and I know you've done it, you worked on it prior to retirement, but that's writing books. Yes,
Gary Henson 22:12
I actually published, let's say, while I was still in software, I I had to have something that was not software to take, you know, because it's it's a high stress job, especially if you want to do it properly. And so I'd always liked telling stories and making up stories. I decided I saw this thing where Barnes and Noble and and Amazon both have a program where you can write your book, publish it through them for free. So i decided i What the heck I do that? And I had a story that I had been brewing for years in the back of my head. So I wrote it. It's, it's called genome. I wrote it and published it in 2006 The funny thing is, there's a lot of things in my book that have since come both for real and on movies, the whole holo, holographic imaging stuff. My book described that in detail. So I that I wrote that book, and then I wanted to do something more, along the lines of something I wanted to read. And I like stories like, you know, Guardians of the Galaxy. You know, it's sci fi, it's action, but it's also funny. Yeah, so I wrote a series of five books called Arlo and Jake. It's a buddy book, but Jake is a human and Arlo is a sentient chameleon. So Jake gets grabbed up by a group who are fighting a race that's trying to wipe out part of the galaxy, and this group called the Federation of 13 galaxies, needs his specific software and pretty much software background. And I, obviously, I based it off myself. There's a lot, there's a lot of me in the book. And I just had a blast writing these, these books that just one came right after the other. Just like, Oh, this is so cool. I could I could go here, I could go there. And I'm really proud of them. They, they don't sell, worth itang, but I don't care, right, right?
John Simon Sr. 24:18
So, Arlo is based on a human? Is he someone from your past, or is he you? Or no,
Gary Henson 24:26
Jake is the human, and he's based off of me. Arlo is he starts out just just being Jake's pet chameleon, and they're on a beach, down in a Corpus Christi, and then they get snatched up by this group. And part of the thing that the group does is they can immerse you in this DNA VAT to to bring Jake's DNA back to age 25 How would you like that? Nice, yeah. And then what it also does, though, when Arlo goes in there, it also freezes his. DNA, but it makes him sentient. So now he's he can talk to Jake, and there's just tons and stuff, tons of interaction between the two. And he's the sidekick
John Simon Sr. 25:10
I enjoyed whenever I was reading the books about the some of the references you made, like to ZZ Top and and your love for wearing Hawaiian shirts. Oh, Gary, I don't think Gary has a shirt. That's not a Hawaiian shirt.
Gary Henson 25:26
I have t shirts that my kids give me and Hawaiian shirts. There
Dina Simon 25:30
you go.
Gary Henson 25:31
That's pretty much it. I had so many Hawaiian shirts that several years ago, when my mom was still alive, I gave her two boxes full of ones I hadn't worn for a while, and she made a blanket, a quilted blanket for me that's on my bed right now. Oh, and she had, she had enough left over to make a small quilt for my best friend back in Colorado. So and I still got, I probably got 30 or 40 of them in my closet. Now,
John Simon Sr. 25:56
you can always tell Gary's around, because he will have a Hawaiian shirt on. Yep.
Gary Henson 26:00
Yeah, Hawaiian shirts, shorts and and TiVos. So,
Dina Simon 26:03
yeah. So I love the books. I also have authored a book. So I do know that the books don't make us rich, but it's just getting the stories out there and and that passion. And you also have a blog, yep. And so any, any future books in your future? Are you writing anything out?
Gary Henson 26:19
Yeah, I just published a collection of short stories called scattered visions. It's the five or six, mostly science fiction stories. Some of them are hard to describe, because I kind of like to mix genres, like in genome, it's a biotech it's a biotech thriller, but there's some ghosty stuff in there as well. So and then I'm getting ready to either I have another story for the Arlo and Jake series in mind, or I'm going to write something completely different, something out of my wheelhouse, just to try something different. But yeah, I continue to write. And
Dina Simon 26:59
as you're writing, are you still doing self publishing on Amazon and Barnes Noble, yes, nice.
Gary Henson 27:05
I have tried several times to find an agent or find a publisher who's interested, but it's not a very realistic thing to do. It's saying, I guess, if you lived in in California or New York, even then it's, I'm sure it's, you know, it's very difficult to do. I mean, they have literally hundreds and 1000s of submissions a day, and your chances of getting, you know, picked out of the pile are pretty slim
Dina Simon 27:30
well, and the ability to self publish and do that like you just think this awesome opportunity for you, you know, so in your in your kind of third act from from being in the Navy and then being in software development and now being an author, and your passion for writing and bringing those stories to life, even with us doing this podcast, like it's the the ability to bring our passion projects to the world, it's so much easier for for just any of us to do that. But you're right, like the big publishers and those big days when people would get, you know, book signings and stuff, they're still out there. But I think we were probably not in that circle right now, at least. But you never know. Gary, one of your books might get picked up for a movie. Yeah,
Gary Henson 28:13
I would love that. I mean, Genome would make a great movie. It really would. Of course, I say that because I wrote it and I see it's in my head so I can visualize what it might be as a movie. Unfortunately, you can't put that vision into somebody else's head. You know, you can. They can read it, and then they'll have their vision of it in their head. But, yeah, which? Which? You know, I read a bunch. There's a book called on writing by Stephen King, where he lays out in no nonsense terms, what it's like to be a writer. And he says, you know, the key to writing is to read a lot and write a lot. That's about it. You know, anything else you know? You push, like you said, you try to find some way to get your word out there, and just don't let it get you down when it hadn't happened.
John Simon Sr. 29:04
Well, Gary is, as you know, our podcast is about life, leadership and building legacies. You've done a great job of explaining what you've done in your life and everything. Tell us a little bit about some of the leaders that you've had in your life that really spurred you on. Yeah,
Gary Henson 29:19
I actually wrote down some of them I was thinking back when I was in the Navy on bluefish. I actually got to know then commander Kelso, who ended up being the Chief of Naval Operations later on in life, Frank Kelso and that gentleman was, I think, my first exposure to what a true leader or a mentor is all about, a man who truly cared about each and every one of us on the sub, including our families. And he wasn't intimate, but he was, he was always there. He had an open door policy, you know, if you had a problem, you know, you went to your like. Lead first, but you could also go to him and talk. And then when I got out one of my first jobs, I mentioned Dave Granger. Dave Granger was kind of a renaissance guy. He did not have a degree, I don't believe, and yet, he had worked his way up the ladder at STC, and he kind of took me under his wing. He's the one that told me, you need to decide hardware, software. And here's and he went through with me, you know, here, here's what your what your life's going to look like if you do hardware, and here's what your life's going to look like if you do software. And then he, even after I made the the decision to go software. He, he kept an eye on me. He there was several times where he pulled me aside and said, you know, either you're doing a great job. I like what you did here, or you need to rethink what you did over here, because whatever.
John Simon Sr. 30:53
And that's really what good leadership is all about. Exactly, yeah. Now I was going to say it's interesting how Commander telso You had contacted him a number of years later, and he remembered who you were, what you were doing on the on the ship, so apparently you left a everlasting memory in his mind. Also,
Gary Henson 31:13
yeah, and that was one of the more rewarding moments when he emailed me back and said, Oh, I remember you. There was an incident in the engine room lower level where we had what's called a sound leak. And that's usually where some piece of equipment is not supposed to but is leaning up against the hull, so the vibrations leak out through the hull, and you can be heard for miles and miles. And we had put out a commander Kelso had put out a thing saying, go check your spaces and see if you can find it. I found it. I found it an injury. And lower level, a pipe had inadvertently been stepped on and pushed out of its bracket in into the hall. And he came down, he said. He talked to me about how I found it. What did I do? You know, how what was your reasoning about looking and where did you go and all that. And at the end, he said, I really appreciate what you did. The whole ship appreciates it. And it was a very moving moment for me. I mean, I was 2023, maybe. And here's this, you know, Commanding Officer of the boat coming down. And you know, you know, we used to call them attaboys. Give, gave me an attaboy and made sure that the ship's crew knew about it. So again, like you said, that it is sometimes the little things in leadership that can make a huge difference in somebody's life, absolutely.
Dina Simon 32:36
And sometimes those little things, yes, they make such a difference that lasting impression, and then hopefully we take it forward and pay it forward to others.
Gary Henson 32:45
Yeah, yeah. I ended up being able to do a little mentoring of my own later on in life. At the last position, I was in the last software position, I became the the lead for the test Software Group, which was a small group, but I ended up being able to help some people that I recognized had kind of a similar background as me and similar desires, and made sure that, you know, their needs were met. So it was, you know, it was very nice. It was humbling in a way, you know, it's like, I gotta be careful here. I need to make sure I, you know, I foster this person, you know, and make sure that I don't cause them. You know, career damage, I guess. You know, you just be a, be a manager or leader without being, you know, I don't have to be your pal or your buddy, but you and I work together, and I'd like to help
John Simon Sr. 33:39
you well. And, you know, building legacies, which is the, you know, the last part of our podcast, that's the fact that you left a real legacy behind with the people that you work with. You
Gary Henson 33:51
know, I wasn't too sure for a while, you know, that I wanted to retire, but looking back at the time when I decided to retire, it's like, yeah, I've, I've left my mark here. And people are doing things that I suggested, you know, things that I helped mentor, things that I know will help the company. So I felt, I felt good about, you know that part of it, as
Dina Simon 34:17
you talked about your life story, so many yourself and your parents, you know, so many people had to make very different decisions when they were in their early teens, and you just did what you needed to do, whether it be being out on the farm and, you know, working multiple jobs to support families and now the pressures of these young kids is, you know, making decisions on where are you going to go to college? What are you going to do? Sometimes declaring a major before you even get to college. And so there the big push, also for, you know, trade schools or go to community college, get your basic stuff out of the way. And one of the things Gary you talked about, there's, I know, this whole software engineering like you picked that path. And there are so many people. That I know out in the business world, like, that's a, it's kind of a second career where people have said, you know, I I climbed this ladder, and I'm not loving what I'm doing, but super interested in getting into software engineering, and it's been a great career path for for many,
Gary Henson 35:14
oh, yeah, it's, it's one of those jobs where you get, you get quite a bit of almost immediate gratification. You know, you're writing almost daily. You write something that you can look at and say, Look what I did. You know, that kind of So, which is a truly wonderful feeling, and it is something that I believe just about anybody can do. It's, it's mostly tenacious and willing to study. I mean, I, I swear, every three years I had to learn a new new language over a new operating system or a new whatever. But it was actually fun. I mean, it was challenging, but you had to stick to it. And it teaches you. It teaches you some very interesting skills that you can, really, you can, you can use its logic. So you can use this skill in just about every branch of your life.
Dina Simon 36:08
So Gary and John, what I would like to say is, I love that both of you, you know, you're similar in age, and so from a retirement perspective, you found some really cool ways to, you know, stay engaged and be creative. And so Gary, with all the writing that you've done and your blog and avid reader and researcher, love that, and this is one of the reasons that I'm super excited to partner with John on the podcast, is to bring people like yourself to the table and have these awesome conversations. So just thank you for being our guest today.
Gary Henson 36:41
Oh, absolutely. And I appreciate you know you and John both thinking of me, it's very fulfilling to know there are people out there who appreciate the things that you've done in life enough to do something like this. It's it's very humbling, but I appreciate it very much.
John Simon Sr. 36:57
You're more than welcome, because whenever Dena and I started it, we started thinking about family members, but also friends and acquaintances. And you were one of my first picks. I said, I really got to get Gary on there, because I think he's done a number of amazing things in his life. No, I
Gary Henson 37:15
appreciate that.
Dina Simon 37:15
Yes, and when we put the podcast out there, I'll make sure I link to you know all your resources and the books and all of that, and just really thank you for thank you for joining us today.
Gary Henson 37:26
Oh no, thank you. I appreciate the chance to talk to you. It's nice to meet you and and talk to John again. I I really do appreciate your including me in this.
Dina Simon 37:35
I want to take a minute to thank Gary Henson for being on our podcast today, we are super excited to bring his experience and stories to life on our podcast, we thank him for his eight years of service in the Navy and super fun to learn more about what being on a nuclear submarine is all about. So love that and his 40 years of service as a software engineer. Loved that long history and career, and we will share some links in our show notes so that you can learn more on how to find his books and blog and all of that great stuff that he's working on in this next act. So Gary, thank you so much for being involved in our podcast today. As always, I think my father in law, John Simon, for his co hosting with me and thanking him for bringing Gary to the table and until next time, thank you. You.