By NORINE ROWE
Public Affairs

NAVAIR PATUXENT RIVER, MD—Six months before retiring as an aircraft mechanic and metalsmith at Atlantic Ranges and Facilities, Paul Lloyd was ready to try something new.

“Everyone around me knew computers,” Lloyd said. “My wife knew computers, my kids knew computers, but I was the old plow horse out in the field.”

Fed up with feeling like he’d been put out to pasture, Lloyd enrolled in the “Bridging the Digital Divide” computer training class offered by the Southern Maryland Applied Research and Technology Consortium, Inc. He had read about SMARTCO’s Computer Technology Learning Center in the Tester and thought it sounded like the perfect opportunity to tackle computers.

“I didn’t know a nanobyte from a gigabyte, but when I read the newspaper article, it got the wheels turning and the blood pumping,” Lloyd said. “I hate it when everyone else knows something but me. I felt left out, and I just wasn’t going to tolerate it any more.”

Shortly after enrolling in the computer class, Lloyd noticed a lot of activity taking place in SMARTCO’s computer warehouse. When he asked what was going on, he learned that volunteers came to the warehouse every Wednesday evening to rebuild donated computers for local schools and non-profits. Once again, the wheels started turning and the blood pumping.

“I love tinkering, and it looked like more fun than I could possibly stand, so I just had to do it,” Lloyd said.

Signing up as a SMARTCO volunteer, Lloyd began learning about computers from the inside out. He started disassembling computers, then moved on to checking out monitors, floppy drives, hard drives and memory. Finally, he graduated to reassembling computers.

“I found out that it wasn’t rocket science,” Lloyd said. “I used to look at computers with wide-eyed wonder. But once you get to know them from the inside out, they’re very logical. It looks like magic, but it’s not.”

While learning how to rebuild computers, Lloyd continued in the computer training class where he learned his way around a computer keyboard and how to navigate the Internet. He also learned about word-processing, database and presentation software. When he graduated from the class with a certificate of achievement, he didn’t feel like an old plow horse anymore.

But graduation day didn’t mark the end of Lloyd’s leap into the world of computers. When a Volunteers in Service to America position opened up at SMARTCO, he jumped for it. Lloyd had retired from Pax River in August 2001, and although the VISTA position didn’t pay much — only a small monthly stipend — it seemed ideal to him.

“My wife told me, ‘It’s your home away from home. You love it there so much, why don’t you give it a try,’” Lloyd said.

So, in November 2002, Lloyd became a VISTA volunteer. In his position at SMARTCO, he serves as administrator of the Computer Technology Learning Center where he assists instructor Teri Berrian with the computer-training class. He also coordinates all SMARTCO volunteers, maintains the equipment inventory and database, and monitors the workflow between computer requests, repairs and donations.

“He makes a good traffic cop,” said Ed Forsman, SMARTCO’s project director, who said that it can get a little chaotic at the computer warehouse when as many as 70 volunteers “rush the doors” on Wednesday evenings to disassemble and reassemble computers. Forsman, who helped launch SMARTCO’s non-profit computer donation program in 1995, selected Lloyd for the VISTA position.

“I was delighted to have Paul come aboard because I knew he would be really good,” said Forsman, explaining that Lloyd brings continuity by administering the program, coordinating volunteers and keeping SMARTCO’s doors open on a daily basis.

“He’s a very mature person with years of experience in dealing with people,” Forsman said. “He knows how to handle people so that they feel good. That’s key to our operation and a very, very important role.”

With Lloyd’s extensive background in aircraft maintenance, Forsman said that Lloyd’s mechanical savvy and trouble-shooting skills are also highly valuable to the computer-donation program. But after 40 years of working on aircraft, how has Lloyd weathered the transition to working on computers?

“I’m having a wonderful time here. It’s lots of fun,” Lloyd said. “Every day I learn something new. It’s just mind-boggling and so out of the realm of what I did before at Pax.”

While the stipend Lloyd receives is only about $900 per month, he said it does manage to cover gas and other incidentals.

“I don’t do this for the money, but because I love what I’m doing here,” Lloyd said.
Giving back to the community is also part of the reward for Lloyd. He said it gives him the “warm fuzzies” when he helps an adult learn about computers for the first time or arranges a shipment of refurbished computers for underprivileged youth in a summer camp program.

“I’m not like the kid who put his finger in the dike, but more like the ant moving a tiny grain of sand,” Lloyd said. “I like to think that maybe I’m making a difference.”

Part of what Lloyd enjoys about his new job comes from the other SMARTCO volunteers, each with their own particular knowledge and specialty.

“This place is contagious,” Lloyd said. “Everybody is really friendly, and everybody is willing to teach you. If you want to know something, ask someone and they’ll tell you. If you still don’t understand, they’ll show you and then leave you alone to figure it out. And if you break something, they’ll give you another to work on.”

Talk about lack of pressure.

“Do I like this job? I’m tickled with it, tickled all the time,” Lloyd said. “It’s just like spreading bread across the water. Somebody who’s not here would find it hard to fathom. You simply have to be here to see what’s happening and to understand what I mean.”

—USN—

NAVAIR provides advanced warfare technologies through the efforts of a seamless, integrated, worldwide network of aviation technology experts. From aircraft and weapons development to carrier launch and recovery, from sensors to real-time communications to precision targeting, from aircraft and weapons sustainment to state-of-the-art training, NAVAIR provides dominant combat effects and matchless capabilities to the American warfighter.