Jerry Van Engen 1970

After retirement from the air force, I joined Thornton Oliver Keller Commercial Real Estate Company as an industrial market specialist. I became a partner and helped grow it to the largest commercial real estate company in Idaho. I volunteer my time by serving on the board of the Idaho Shakespeare Festival, Young Life of SW Idaho and Idaho ANG Honor Guard.
I read a lot! Mostly fiction in the suspense, thriller and historical fiction categories. “The Boys in the Boat” by Daniel James Brown is a must-read. Also, “Lord Grizzly” by my cousin Fredrick Manfred.
Memorable Central College moments: The red beanies were “interesting,” sorry that is no longer practiced? Great faculty! I competed in the United States Air Force and the civilian world against graduates from every university in the United States and never felt like I was inferior in preparedness or learning. I lettered four years in basketball, which was exciting! A great education, which prepared me for the rest of my life!
Favorite memory: As freshmen, we all had Western Civilization at 0800 hours on Monday, Wednesday and Friday in the Chapel. Dr. Nannes was the professor and she would lecture for 50 minutes per class. We had assigned seats and each student was allowed two cuts per semester. There were senior history majors in the balcony taking attendance. If you skipped more than two times, your next skip resulted in a one full point deduction in your overall grade! If you skipped more than five times, you were out of the class. It was how they sorted out the sleepers from the achievers in the old days. Anyway, one morning apparently one of our classmates (who shall remain nameless) had overslept a little and got inside the back of the chapel just as the doors were closed and locked at 0801 a.m. By this time, Dr. Nannes had started her lecture and he wanted to get in his seat without her noticing. Unfortunately for him, his assigned seat was right in the middle. He military crawled down the side aisle until he got to his row, then tried to crawl into the row of seats to get to his before he could be marked absent. Meanwhile up at the podium, Dr. Nannes had not missed a beat on why the Roman Empire failed. (It was the greed for filthy lucre!) Just about the time he thought he had pulled this whole thing off, Dr. Nannes stopped lecturing and pointed a crooked finger at him and demanded, “Stand up you sinner!” and commenced to chew him out for the evils of being late for her class. He stood there taking it like the man he is. When she finished chewing him out, she said he could sit down and instructed the attendance takers to mark him present because of his tenacity of spirit. She also told him it wouldn’t work a second time. We all applauded the verdict and the lecture went on as usual. That’s how it worked in the olden days.

Pictured below is the F4G Wild Weasel, my favorite aircraft.