Kevin Whittier

683 Santa Cruz Avenue

Salinas, CA 93901

kevindwhittier@gmail.com

Comments from 2024:

I am married for the second time with 5 grown kids and 5 grandkids. I am retired.

Although I technically did not graduate from Ogden High, I feel as if I did. My family moved to Germany during the second quarter of my Senior year and I finished High School at Kaiserslautern (K-Town) American High school, an American military dependents school in Germany. I traveled through Europe after graduating and then returned to Ogden and worked as a sound engineer for the local rock band "Callus" which many of you may remember.

In 1976, I moved to California to study recording engineering and audio electronics and hoped I could break into the professional recording industry.

I graduated from Orange Coast Community College in 1987 with an Associate of Arts degree in Digital Electronic Technologies. I started working for Philips Ultrasound in 1976, as a temporary job, which lasted 19 years. At the end of my time at Philips Ultrasound I was a Printed Circuit Board Designer and the boards were used in the products that Phillips Ultrasound marketed around the world. This job required that I learn how to use and program large-scale computer systems and was the motivation for my studies at Chapman University toward my bachelor’s degree in Computer Science.

In 1992, I got married for the first time. I have 2 children from that marriage which ended in 2011.

I graduated from Chapman University in 1994 with a BS Degree in Computer Science.

In 1994, I started working at Pacific Data Images (A special effects studio in Hollywood). I managed the computer network used by the animators that created the special effects. I helped make a number of movies (e.g., True Lies, Angels in the Outfield, Beverly Hills Cop III). PDI as we called it also did tv commercials and spots (e.g., The Scrubbing Bubbles, The Pillsbury Dough Boy, The Monday Night Football intro with the bumping helmets). PDI was absorbed in DreamWorks and the animators from PDI were the creators of Shrek.

In 1997, I started work at MacNeal-Schwendler Corporation. They made Mechanical Engineering software for doing stress analysis modeling. I managed their computer center and the IT staff.

In 2001, I graduated from California State University, Long Beach with a Master of Science Degree in Computer Science. My thesis was on Supercomputers made by connecting a large number of small desktop computers together to work as one entity.

In 2003, I moved to Monterey California to work for the Navy at their Weather Modeling facility (Fleet Numerical Meteorology and Oceanography Center or FNMOC). I managed their first supercomputer running Red Hat Linux. In 2009, I was appointed as the Information Systems Security Manager for FNMOC. I retired from there in 2023.

I remarried in 2017 and we live in Salinas California. I gained 3 new children with this marriage (All adults) and we now have 5 grandkids (4 girls and 1 boy). We have a bucket list to visit all of the National Parks and so far, we have been to about 10. We are planning on taking a River Cruise in Europe this fall (2024).

I have never completely gotten away from music, I now run the sound system at my church. During a remodel of the church, I had the opportunity to design the sound system, which was very enjoyable. When COVID started, I was asked to get the church on-line, so I designed and implemented the video streaming system we are still using (fbcsalinas.com).

I have 3 brothers and 1 sister. I lost one brother to cancer in 2007, my father to a series of falls in 2012 and a brother to cancer in 2023. My mother is still alive and will be 100 years old in September of 2024.

I have lost track of most of the friends I had during high school, but I hope we can renew old friendships and not let them lapse.