Like father, like son, AEDC's Ray Powers is proud of his traditions

  • Published
  • By Philip Lorenz III
  • AEDC/PA
ARNOLD AIR FORCE BASE, Tenn. --  When Ray Powers heard his father, an ironworker who worked for 32 years at AEDC, talk about his job, the young man was intrigued and thought welding would be his calling.

Ray, a boilermaker at AEDC, said joining the Navy in 1967 only served to steer him closer to a future involving welding. Shortly after enlisting and completing basic training or "boot camp" at San Diego, Calif., the South Pittsburg, Tenn., native was given a choice to train for clerical work or steer toward the job done by the Navy's boatswain's mates. He chose the latter and never regretted it.

"I had the option of going on to office work or on the barge, 40-foot boat," he recalled. "I chose to work on that 40-foot barge for the admiral - that was boatswain's mate work, tying the lines up, ox-splicing knots, tying bowlines [and] so on. [Our crew included] a 1st class boatswain mate, engineman, 3rd class boatswain mate, a seaman and myself. That's when I really wanted to be a boatswain mate like [my] daddy was in World War II in the Navy."

A boatswain's mate is responsible for the ship's maintenance, including boat seamanship, painting and upkeep of the ship's external structure, rigging, deck equipment and boats. They also operate and maintain equipment used in loading and unloading cargo, ammunition, fuel and general stores. Another facet of the job, the ability to tie all types of knots of varying complexity, is a skill Powers still enjoys sharing with others.

After working on the admiral's barge, including a stint as the coxswain, Powers was ready for another opportunity.

"The admiral said I did such an outstanding job he didn't want to let me go, but that fourth set of orders was so good he didn't want to hold me back and allowed me to go on to duty on board the USS Wichita (AOR-1), the lead ship of the Wichita-class replenishment oilers, only the second ship to bear that name," he said.

Welding was not part of his job on the ship. However, since the recently commissioned vessel was still undergoing its post-construction outfitting for sea trials at its homeport of Long Beach, Calif., Powers saw what those professionals do first-hand.

"We had the whole main deck re-worked [during my first months of duty] and there were all kinds of welders who came on board and I said, 'I'd just like to be a welder when I get out,'" he recalled.

Powers also enjoyed his travels as a crewmember on the ship, once it had made its initial 'shake-down' cruise. The young man from rural middle Tennessee particularly enjoyed passing through the Panama Canal on two Wes Pac (western Pacific) cruises aboard the USS Wichita which included port calls to Hong Kong, Bangkok, Thailand and Yokosuka, Japan, where he saw Sumo wrestling for the first time. He eventually served aboard the ship when it was stationed off of the coast of Vietnam.

After four years of active duty, the 2nd Class Boatswain's Mate decided he was ready to return to civilian life. Powers was honorably discharged from the Navy on Dec. 9, 1971.

When he told his father about his desire to pursue welding professionally, the older man told his son "No, you don't need to do that, that's too hard."

Instead, Ray attended Chattanooga State College and graduated with an associate's degree in electrical engineering. Even before completing the program he knew his heart wasn't into it.

However, he emphasized, "I always finish what I start. [But] I just had that in the back of my mind; I still wanted to be a welder."

Fortunately for Powers, like other students on the G.I. Bill, there is an opportunity to change direction academically if certain guidelines are followed.

"So, I went to welding school at Chattanooga State Area Vocational Technical School," he said. "I came out as a combination welder a year later."

His career as a welder wasn't all smooth sailing and a number of job layoffs made life difficult in those early years.

His first welding job was with a company called Chattanooga Boiler and Tank, where he worked on large tanks, welding huge panels together. The experience only served to solidify his passion for the large-scale welding that boilermakers do versus the work ironworkers usually do.

A position for a boilermaker trainee opened up at AEDC in 1977 and Powers didn't hesitate to apply and was accepted, which took him a little by surprise.

"It was hard to get on with AEDC at that time," he said. However, he was laid off a few months later and he took a job with Bellefonte Nuclear Generation Station in Alabama.

Powers was able to return to AEDC in 1979 as a boilermaker in a two-year apprenticeship program and he has been working at Arnold's Model Shop ever since.

He acknowledged another reason he chose boilermaker as a profession was because his father, Fred Powers, was an ironworker at AEDC. He did not want to work for his father and wanted an independent work environment. Father and son rode to and from work together for the next 10 years.

"He would come by and check my work out every once in awhile," Ray said, referring to his father. "[He would] put the red pencil on those welds. He carried a red pencil in his pocket all the time and he'd mark where the defects were in the weld. It's hard to get a weld to a 100 percent without a defect somewhere. You'd have a ripple out of place just a little bit, might be a little bit too high in one spot and a little bit low in another spot, might skip a beat a little bit, there's a lot of things there."

Approximately five years ago, Ray Powers took on a new assignment as the tool and equipment custodian at the Model Shop - a role that has benefited everyone who works there. Equipment includes everything from ladders to chains and fasteners to weld test stations and the tools range from hand-held wrenches, hammers and mallets to power tools.

"Ray is very organized, prompt and pays attention to detail," said Vaughn Wilson, Model Shop supervisor. "He serves as tool control custodian and also helps control other equipment for the model shop. His relentless desire to be the best he can be at whatever task he is given makes our ability to stay in compliance with policies and procedures easier."

Ray's attitude toward a welding job or ensuring all the equipment and tools used in the Model Shop are accounted for is the same.

"It's got be four-oh (4.0)," he said, referring to the Navy's grade of excellent or what would translate in more common usage to something being perfect.

"I like everything four-oh - there isn't any half way about it, you've got to be po-zact, as my daddy used to say."

Powers, who has served as chief craftsman and lead man for the boilermakers in the past, takes tremendous pride in his custodial job, but welding is never far from his thoughts.

"It's not hard to find boilermakers, but to find the type of boilermakers that AEDC requires is a little bit [of a] different story," he said. "Here you've got lot more complex blueprints to read and there have been a lot of intricate drawings - a lot of it is really technical, pretty hard work. You see things here you wouldn't see anywhere else - it's just a different world."