Minerd.com Memoir: A Life's Resume, by Earl Thomas Steiner

A Life's Resume
A Memoir By the Late Earl Thomas Steiner

See Beginning and Grampa France, Michigan Center

I was born on 8 November 1927. This was a Tuesday, as it was an election day. My mother never could remember who was running and who won.

My father's family are descended from Swiss anabaptists. They emigrated from Alsace region of France after the Napoleonic Wars ended. The family originally settled in Wayne County, Ohio near Kidron. They then moved to near Bluffton, Ohio.

On my mother's side, the France family appears also to have been anabaptists and arrived in this country about 1735. At that time the name was Frantz.

During the Depression we moved a lot. Until finally my father Benjamin Harrison Steiner was appointed as a federal meat inspector, he was a veterinarian.

We moved to Detroit in the late summer of 1933, where I started school. In January of 1937, we moved to Piqua.

I graduated from Piqua Central High School in June of 1945. In high school my favorite subjects were math, science, and wood working.

I was a member of the photography club and the slide rule club. I have pictures in the high school annual, the Piquonian. These were taken with a five by seven inch plate glass negative camera. This camera was one my father used around 1910.

Since graduating from high school, I worked in several jobs. My favorite was on the farm. I also had one semester at Miami University extension, and three semesters at Defiance College.

I was drafted in 1950 and spent a year in Korea in the Second Infantry Division.

After returning from the Army in 1952, I worked at Areo Products in Vandalia for a year and in the fall of 1953 I went to Ohio State University. I graduated in 1956 with a a M.Sc. degree in Agricultural Education. I was hired as a graduate assistant by Ohio State University in Agricultural Economics. I earned a M.Sc. degree in Agricultural Economics in September of 1957.

After graduation I worked eight years for Cargill Incorporated in the Hybrid Corn Division. In September of 1965 I joined the Air Force in contracting. While with the Air Force, I was sent to the Air Force Institute of Technology where I earned an M.Sc. degree in Logistics Management in 1972. I retired from the Wright Patterson Contracting Center on January 2, 1992.

Since I retired, I have become interested in genealogy. My main goal right now is to get what I have organized. I am using Family Tree Maker on a Macintosh. I f did not gather any more data, I think it would take me a year to enter the data I now have.