"Brief" Autobiography of
Luis Arellano, III
Born: 11-19-1948 at Delaware County Memorial Hospital, Upper Darby, Pennsylvania USA.
Died: Don't get impatient, please.
Formal Education:
Fernwood School Kindergarten, Upper Darby PA
Stonehurst Hills Elementary School. In the Sixth grade, they were just introducing the
"New Math," which I studied through Grade Ten. For a sixth
grade science project, I built a 120-volt binary calculator in a wooden box
using some old switchboard switches, indicator lamps and several relays.
It took a prize at the District Science Fair.
Beverly Hills Junior High School, where I sang for three years with the
extracurricular non-select Boys'
Glee Club (and the privately sponsored, select Spencer T. Videon Boys'
Choir), both directed by vocal music teacher John David Ralston. My
science focus was on Biology. They were also just implementing the
Language Lab as I began four years of French. Oui. My favorite
class: 8th Grade Science, because almost every day, PRR's local freight train to
Newtown Square passed in plain view through the former golf course just outside
our classroom window.
Upper Darby Senior High
School for three months. Ah, the Chess Club! In November of my Freshman year, the family
moved to Willow Grove, PA.
Abington Senior High School (College Prep), Class of 1966. They
put me in Biology II. There was something familiar about it. I
realized I had the same course the year before at Beverly Hills. It may
have been a mistake to protest. They moved me to Advanced Biology, where I was
the only freshman. (To compound the problem, with my November birthday, I
was younger than the majority of freshmen.) It was bar none, the most
difficult course I ever studied. Unfortunately, Chorus was a scheduled
class, and they couldn't adapt my roster to it because of my stronger desire to
study printing. Ah, the Linotype! That began a long
dry spell away from singing. One of my favorite and most valuable elective courses
at AHS was
Creative Writing. Thank you, Mr. Young. One of these days, I'll
create some writing.
Eastern Montgomery County Vocational-Technical School. During the Eleventh and Twelfth Grades, I
studied the field of my passion, Graphic Arts, for half-days, first at Abington
High, then at this brand new facility.
U.S. Navy, 1968-1972: Basic Training (San Diego, CA, Companies 421
and 443); Submarine
School (New London, CT); various sonar, advanced electronics, electronic countermeasures and
Maintenance Data Collection System schools.
Other. 1980-present, various manufacturers' training
courses in fire and security systems; and numerous trade association-sponsored
seminars on business-related issues.
Other Education:
One of the nicest compliments I've received came from one of my boys. In essence, some electronic task that needed to be done at work was creating a problem. He stepped in and handled it, no sweat. "All the years of being around Dad's electronic stuff and getting help with projects really paid off." I have to say the same about my father and his workshop. I got a tremendous variety of experience just from being around Pop.
When I was about six or so, maybe even younger, I got a hold of Dad's 10-foot retractable steel tape measure and was playing with it. I would pull it out, let it go, and watch it get sucked back into the case by the powerful spring inside. I progressively pulled it out further and further, until I reached the end... you know, where it's painted red and says in big letters, "STOP!" Curiosity got the better of me and I pulled it a bit further to see what the secret was. The joint appeared at the beginning of the blackened steel spring. It was a slot where the tab on the measuring section interlocked. Darned if I didn't get it sideways trying to tuck the joint back into the case. When the tab broke off or came apart, the spring disappeared and began spinning inside. The metal case leaped out of my hand. The disconnected tape itself clattered to the floor with it. I picked up the end of the tape and tried pushing it back into the case without being connected to the spring. It would only go in part way and jam, of course, so I took the cover screws out of the case and pried the lid off. With very little provocation, the entire spring leaped out, spinning crazily in joyful relief from all the years of tension. Attempts to rewind the powerful coil were futile. Those were the days when we got our behind warmed by "The Big Block" when we got in trouble. Panicked and mortally fearful, I dragged the whole works into my parents' bedroom and shoved it under their bed. The ten feet of tape and ten more feet of unruly spring had a natural tendency to straighten out and wouldn't stay hidden. I took the whole thing and stuffed it into their closet. Wayward loops of metal had to be repeatedly tucked into the partly open door until they no longer crept out through the crack at the bottom. Any time Mom or Dad got near the bedroom, I made myself scarce. I wonder what they thought when it leaped out as they opened the closet door. To my relief, no one ever said a word, and an anxious chapter in my life closed when one day a few weeks later, Dad was casually measuring a board with it as if nothing ever happened.
My son, David read this. He said to me, "That's a pretty good story. I've got a couple of them, too."
Career:
I became a subcontractor in the Fifth Grade, by collating reams of technical bulletins which Pop brought home from
the electrical connector
manufacturer Elco Corporation. He was the Applications Engineer. I
put the stacks of printed pages on the dining room table and walked around it, once per
bulletin, then bopped the corner with a stapler. Later, we got a few vertical file racks to save shoe leather.
I still have a couple of them. For Christmas this Seventh Grader received a
much coveted Chicago platen printing press. About the size of a large car
battery, it would handle a form of about 3" x 5". I
printed many thousands of business cards, tags, envelopes and letterheads to earn spending money.
A highlight occurred every couple of months when I had saved enough money to
take the train to Reading Terminal. From there I walked a couple of blocks
north to Cherry Street, where a small shop bristled with used type cases, hand
type, strip material, ink, tools and other pressroom supplies. I still have
all of my equipment in the attic, except for a couple of the type cases that now adorn our walls,
filled with small trinkets, including a footless Jiminy Cricket from my
childhood. After High School, I
worked for Erwin Printing in Hatboro for about two and a half years, mainly
setting hand type and running a Heidelberg Platen press. Sam Erwin always
ran the flatbed cylinder press, even though he knew I could do it.
Aside from the fact that a loose line could break his bread and butter machine
rather easily, it was his pet, I think. Sam Erwin's shop had always
been a letterpress shop, but offset printing was beginning to dominate the industry.
The trend dictated that Sam update. He got his feet wet by buying a used offset press, which I helped him set
up and run. We limited it to "slop jobs," still sending out
the fussy work.
To get to work, I used a faded gray 1951 Ford that Pop bought. It had a 3-speed stick. It was a bit of a let down after sharing the family cruiser, a '59 Pontiac Catalina. Because it was prone to stall, I picked out a route between home and work that minimized the number of uphill starts. One day it rained really hard, causing roads to flood. On the way home, I drove through a foot of water on Old York Road, before turning right onto Lincoln Avenue. I knew those old drum-and-shoe brakes were wet, and I held some pressure on them as I drove, to dry them out. That wasn't enough. As I approached the next stop sign, practically bending the seat off the floor with pressure on the brake pedal, I was just barely able to stop with my fenders hanging out into the four-lane traffic by the Post Office on Easton Road!
Shortly after that, I took the plunge with my official "first" car, a 1966 Chevelle SS396. I spent many hours under the hood and behind that wheel, as cars suddenly became my main hobby. I installed my first burglar alarm in it, with a circuit board and a 4-button keypad I designed and built from scratch. It was mounted just under the front edge of the hood. I installed an Ampex cassette player that got me started making cassette tapes.
In 1968 came my U.S. Navy enlistment that ran four years and three months. I spent about four months in San Diego, signed up for Submarine School, and spent the remainder of my enlistment based in New London, Connecticut. I made five Polaris patrols, the longest of which was about 91 days, aboard the USS George C. Marshall, SSBN 654 (Blue Crew). I visited Spain, Scotland, Charleston, SC and Newport RI.. When the Marshall went into the yard at Bremerton, WA, for adaptation to the next generation of missile, I was transferred to the USS Bang, SS 385, a WW II diesel boat. We participated in several sea operations, with stops at Bar Harbor Maine, Miami, St. Thomas and Bermuda. While on board, I achieved the rate of E-5, Submarine Sonar Technician Second Class. Later, our crew got Bang ready for decommissioning. Shortly after I went to separations, she was sold to Spain, re-commissioned as Cosme Garcia. A few years later Bang was retired permanently and scrapped. I was fortunate to receive from the Chief of the Boat a short piece of her teakwood deck while at our crew reunion in 2001. No so, the George C. Marshall, cut up for scrap in the early 1990's. A private web web site covering the Navy's Ship Recycling Program in Washington State shows all that is left: her entire reactor compartment, ends sealed tight, with numerous others, lined up in a long term storage pit. I get a strange sensation thinking about the numerous times I walked through it on my way to the engine room to get spare sonar parts from the store keeper's cage. What a beautiful machine it was, and what a noble purpose it served. All the disappeared, grand steam locomotives I ever lamented can not compare in mystique or majesty. Two of the things I learned well in submarines were the need to cooperate while working together in limited quarters and most importantly, the need for reliable mechanical and electronic systems. Without a serious and constant effort to maintain quality, we could have suffered all kinds of catastrophic failure ranging from broken plumbing to accidental radiation release, loss of ventilation, electrical fires, collision, sinking and more - well, okay, you can't do much more than sink. I have written a more detailed diary of my Navy career, which I intend to publish. Order the Latest MS Word Revision of my "Subs" story here.
Throughout my Navy years, I took a little bit of home along with me by spending weekend nights at home recording Philadelphia's WFIL Radio music on my portable cassette player. I took the tapes wherever I went, beginning with Sub School. While on the Marshall, I made some reel-to-reel tapes that the IC men played over the general broadcast system. I still have most of them, although they are badly worn and they make for difficult listening when evaluated by today's recording standards.
I might have shipped over but in 1970 I met a beautiful girl named Barbara Dennis and made a "four engine run" to win her over. I could not wait to get home and I hated leaving her to go to sea. We married in 1972, and I worked with Pop until I became a full time electrician for William Thome, Inc. of Horsham. Barb and I lived in a Blair Mill Village apartment while we saved our money for the six-acre building lot we bought in 1975. When the Recession set in, I took advantage of the situation to become the General Contractor building our own home. In 1976 we moved in and began our family. The house was not quite complete, though. For example, we washed dishes in the bathtub for a few weeks until the kitchen cabinets arrived, and we put up with splintery plywood floors until we could afford to finish them.
I went back to work for Pop for a few months until an opportunity surfaced with B.C. Associates. The owner, "Jack" Bechtel, was a close friend and lodge brother to Pop. Both Pop and I had done alarm installation work for him from time to time. Jack had also worked for Pop doing CB radio repairs. A large project Jack proposed to The Philadelphia National Bank materialized in 1975, and I worked hard on it as Senior Technician for almost three years. We started by installing security systems in their top executives' homes, then went into the branch offices and several downtown Philadelphia office buildings. One of my favorite projects was the Central Station switchboard I designed and built for PNB's Alarm Control Center at 5th and Market Streets. For reliability, the Control Center had two of each critical receiver component. It needed transfer switches to quickly select the alternate devices in case of failure. My graphic arts background came in handy when designing the 19-inch rack mounted faceplate. I have a decal of the graphic on my office wall, which I would use for reference when assisting the Operators by phone.
Overworked and burning out, I went back to Pop's shop for about a year to market the next wave in electronic communications. When we learned in late 1979 that Jack was seriously ill, I offered to help out. In 1980 I succeeded him, purchasing the business from his estate.
In 1981 I needed a biography for a company brochure. At the time, I was trading under the name of Arellano Alarms. Here's what some soul wrote:
About the Owner
Owner Luis Arellano, III has hands-on exposure to electronics dating back to about age four, as his father's business involves two-way radio. An FCC-licensed radio technician, a graduate of numerous military electronics courses and a former nuclear submarine Sonar Technician, Arellano has rich experience in managing electronic systems. As Senior Technician for B.C. Associates, he installed systems in many prestigious private homes, and participated in a formidable four-year project, creating a made-to-order system for The Philadelphia National Bank. The result is a unified proprietary Central Station system that is now one of banking's most advanced security systems. Other clients include a priceless National Historical site, a major hospital complex, and scores of private residences and businesses.
Due to the death of B.C. Associates' proprietor, John B. Bechtel, Jr., in 1980, Arellano Alarms was organized principally to complete and service PNB's system.
PNB's marketing department roughed me up a bit, but approved the text for publication. .
By 1986 we had largely finished the installation phase of the bank's system, and were starting to shift toward a service phase. We noticed a general relationship between lightning storms and damage to the fire alarm systems. Many occasions required us to drop everything and rush down to a site to stop a stuck fire bell. I can still picture those poor tellers trying to count out money with a ten inch fire bell ringing just a few feet away. I began installing small protectors called "varistors" on the panels, in an effort to prevent these incidents. There was never a repeat occurrence where they were installed. Accordingly, we made them standard in all systems, and my urging encouraged their adoption at the manufacturing level.
No matter how hard I tried to diversify, the bank kept giving us ever more to do. It always accounted for about eighty percent of our total income. Costs skyrocketed when the insurance crisis arrived and the Schuylkill Expressway was being rebuilt. The bank decided it was time to create its own service department. I took the non-bank customers I had and began to rebuild by "pounding the pavement" for work. Knowing that it would take a long time to reach our prior size selling systems one by one, I sought to acquire another company. In 1990 I purchased the alarm accounts of Argus Security Corporation of Huntingdon Valley, whose owners were retiring. This essentially tripled the company's size, restoring our scope to approximately what it had been with the bank. We spent several years visiting our new subscribers, getting new paperwork signed, ironing out accumulated system problems and upgrading systems. The advent of personal computers made it possible to carry out the same size workload with fewer people.
In 1984 I incorporated as Arellano Alarms, Inc. We are a Pennsylvania Subchapter "S" Corporation.
In 1990, a customer said, "I wanted to give your name to a friend, but all I could remember was 'Alarmo.'" I asked Barbara if she liked "Alarmo." She said no. I collected eleven names, including a few names of real companies, and put them on a questionnaire. The only name chosen from the list was "Reliance Alarm Company." The people picked it for me!
The logo I designed is extracted from a photograph of the steel railroad locomotive "tire" that is suspended from a pipe crossbar at the Dublin, PA fire house. In days gone by, if there was a fire, someone went to the fire house and struck the rim to sound the alarm. If you look at it closely, you can tell the tire was photographed from an angle to the right of the tire, otherwise, the inner and outer surfaces would not show. Unfortunately, this perspective made the circular shape turn into a big oval. To make it round again, I mounted the photo with the bottom much closer to my camera lens than the top, and re-photographed the resulting illusion. Then I "posterized" it into a black and white image by overlaying that photo with thin drafting tape, India ink and commercially set photo type.
Our approach has always emphasized the need for reliable solutions, while respecting the customer's decision as to what they could afford to invest in a system. I will always remember the days we served the bank. The banks were a very dynamic commercial environment. Our duty man's phone would usually ring several times a night for operational support, and at least two or three times a week we had to get out of bed to go fix some problem at a branch. Once in a while Barbara and the boys came along either for the adventure, or because they were out with me when the call came in and they had no choice. At the peak of that operation we had about fifteen people on the payroll. Today our subscriber base is better balanced with residential business. Our systems have also developed to the point that it is not only unusual, but rare to have a night service visit. Much of the credit goes to computerization, remote alarm panel downloading, a trend toward individual zoning of detectors, more false-alarm resistant detectors, and an aggressive incentive program to trade in troublesome older equipment. We have to take some of the credit ourselves, too, for careful equipment selection and installation. It has always been my policy to use only proven, reliable equipment and to allow a technician the time he needs to install it right the first time. Unlike mass marketers, I don't push productivity to the stratosphere with piecework incentives. As a result, I get a lot more quiet nights, and so do my customers.
Computers have become an important part of our business. Jack Bechtel had just started experimenting with a Tandy computer when he became ill. I still come across his little silver printer tapes in our job folders. I was one of the first of the small dealers in the business to successfully use a small computer, a Vector 3 with a 5.1 Megahertz Z80B processor, 128 kilobytes of RAM, and an integral monochrome screen. There was no hard drive, it ran from two 5-1/4 inch floppy disks. Prior to purchasing it, I had studied the magazines. An ad portrayed an elated executive standing in front of his computer, hopping up and down with his hands in the air. The first time I powered up my new computer and actually started printing out a letter, I found myself doing exactly the same dance! Since then, I have progressed through about nineteen computers, more than half of which I assembled, dismantled, reassembled and upgraded myself. I have written hundreds of software routines and documents to help manage my business.
The rest of this Web Site should tell a lot more about who I am than I could possibly express in this brief autobiography, but for those who insist on "Just the facts, please," here is a capsule update:
Family:
While in the Navy, I habitually returned home from New London on weekends and during our training weeks, to hang around with friends. Upon returning home one Friday night in 1970, my brother, Paul was there. His girlfriend, Maureen, stopped by on her way to a dance or something. Accompanying her was the gorgeous brunette who instantly became the love of my life. In 1972 I married Barbara Joan Dennis. Barbara is currently a greeting card merchandiser for Hallmark. She especially enjoys walking, gardening and Bible study.
Barbara and I built our home in 1975. It was designed to resemble an old farm house, and has successfully fooled more than a few people. Unfortunately, nothing lasts forever, and at the rate things are breaking down these days, it actually is an old farm house. In 1985, I needed more office space in the basement. We built the addition we had drawn in the original building plans. The HO train layout with its extension under my workbench moved into the addition to free up space.
We have two grown boys. They are both out of school now with well-earned degrees. One is a B.M. and the other is an A.S.
Michael Robert, b. 10/5/1976, played alto saxophone in school for five years, then shifted to guitar and voice. Jazz is one of his passions, attributable to playing in the Jazz Band at Quakertown Community High School. He was always a far better scholar than I was, if grades are the measure. In high school, he was remarkably well cast in Oklahoma! as Judd Fry. He spent one year at Ithaca College, and four at Temple University. He can often be found at open-mike sessions around the area. Some of his appearances included the Allentown College production of Evita; the Allentown State Theater production of the rock musical Tommy (that's almost continuous guitar playing - Bravo, Mike!); the Dorney Park stage show, All about Country and a few nights a month on the Spirit of Philadelphia, a Delaware River cruiser. He has an even greater passion for Rock and through 2003 has been playing clubs and private gigs in the Philadelphia area, Sea Isle, northern New Jersey and a couple of times a month in Boston as lead guitarist with the rock band Flavor. He has also subbed on guitar for other local bands. Through 2003 he has had a daytime job with Hoshino USA, importers of the Ibanez line of guitars and amplifiers. The company has featured Mike in a couple of full-page, 4-color ads in several guitar magazines.
David Luis, b. 2/9/1978, studied piano and trumpet for seven years each. Dave, too, played in Jazz Bands throughout his school career, winning among others, a best soloist award at Great Adventure for a flugelhorn improvisation he wrote of Secret Love. (It's one of my favorite tapes.) He studied a year at Bloomsburg University (where he participated in marching and concert bands) and then took an intensive thirteen month engineering course at Full Sail Center for the Recording Arts in Florida. He worked for a couple of years as a recording engineer at Sigma Sound Service in Philadelphia, racking up album credits, after which he became a freelance recording engineer. Some of his claims to fame include a Christmas album for Helen Reddy, an infomercial for Chubby Checker and some tracks for jazz singer Jane Norman (better known to those of my generation as "Pixanne." He has engineering credits with numerous well-known jazz artists from his work on a music show series for the cable channel BET. For fun, Dave and a group of friends formed a Rock cover band and through 2003 have played numerous gigs at local clubs including Ed's Quakertown Tavern. For two years he worked in the daytime for Reliance Alarm Company while after hours doing live sound gigs and operating his own private recording studio in Spinnerstown, PA. In 2003 he began installing powerful "surround sound" systems for a chain of upscale movie theaters.
Church:
I was baptized at Belmont Baptist Church, and raised in the Stonehurst
Hills Methodist Church while we lived in Upper Darby.
In my Navy days I attended
occasional nondenominational services. Although I had undoubtedly
heard the message many times before, it was at one of those services that the
principle of redemption finally sank in.
Barbara's family was affiliated with St. Paul's Lutheran Church in Glenside PA, where we were we were married. Pastor Lester Fetter persuaded us to get confirmed before marrying us. We continued to attend there during the years we lived in Horsham.
While we were building our home in Bucks County, Bill Ash, our next door neighbor, stopped by and invited us to attend his church. We ultimately joined St. Paul's Evangelical Lutheran Church in Applebachsville, which was very conveniently close. Barbara and I became very involved there. Barbara taught Sunday School for seven years and especially enjoyed the Quilting Group. Around 1980, the Pastor's wife needed relief from typing the weekly bulletins. A gigantic typewriter and a mimeograph machine suddenly appeared on our doorstep, with Barbara somehow elected to handle the job. She soon decided it wasn't what she wanted to do. Being into graphic arts, computers and word processing, I took it upon myself to computerize the operation. I printed the stencils on my dot matrix printer and ran them off on the A.B. Dick. (A fringe benefit of that was having the equipment to produce my annual newsletters.) I did the bulletins for about four years until I, too, needed relief. I made a deal to sing on the choir for a year in exchange for a replacement. My assistant, Wendy, took over the bulletin job. Barbara and I found ourselves singing in a wonderful church choir, at first under the direction of Chester A. Walck, and later under Valerie Derstine.
After about fifteen years at St. Paul's, Barbara and I decided to shop the open market due to some unrest with the published Lutheran doctrine. [We later learned that my Multi-great Grandfather, Hans Ulrich Zwingli, had similar problems with the Catholic and Lutheran doctrines. He was a bit more proactive about it, though, fueling the Reformation. Run a search for the name "Zwingli" if it interests you. You can also find a couple of pages about him in just about any encyclopedia. Warning: It's a PG-rated story for violence and gore.] We tried two small churches, spending the better part of a year at one that had no choir but wanted one rather badly. I volunteered to direct it, and we had a brief but nice season. Meanwhile, friends had suggested East Swamp Church because it had an excellent reputation for its choir. Ultimately, we began attending there. At first, both of us sang in the choir, but Barbara took a break from choir after a couple of years. Later, I was asked to assist with the Adventure Club, a Wednesday evening youth activity. I started with the Second Graders, and as each year went by, I elected to move ahead a grade with the same boys. (They are members of the Class of 2007.) A highlight of my time at East Swamp Church was the trip a group of men took to Georgia to help rebuild some structures destroyed by a series of killer tornadoes. (I wrote a detailed account of the trip in one of my annual newsletters.)
My hobbies. I have had quite a variety of interests. Those that are in bold type are currently pursued. They are generally listed by age and order of obsession: Crying; diaper wetting; breast feeding; train watching; sledding; comic books (especially the ones that had trains in them) (I liked the cheerful old ones, like Disney's Comics and Stories, not the modern superhero-versus-dark-enemy ones) (I still have about half of my collection. The other half, which Pop affectionately called "College Reading Material," got the heave-ho one day when they were in his way); roulette (the home variety); pyromania; model railroading; hiking (especially where there were trains); bicycling (especially where there were trains); go-cart construction; choir singing (especially if there were trains on the way to or from rehearsal); basic electrical circuit design (some of it learned hooking up the train layout); graphic arts; lathe machining; auto repair and home improvement; photography (especially trains) (See samples of my Kodachrome Slide Collection Here); personal computers; writing (some of it relating to my train watching experiences) (Order the Latest MS Word 6/95 Revision of my "UBB" Story Here); silk screen printing; genealogy; videography (especially trains) (See my Catalog and order copies of my many Train Videotapes here); audio and video recording of school and other concerts and events. (Have a peek at my Event Archives Index.) I also collect those little wooden sticks that you get in the corn on the cob from Long John Silver's (See what they do for me Here), and I save used staples because they make excellent freight loads for my model railroad. (Please, don't send me yours, it's more personal when I pull my own.) Probably the most over riding of all my hobbies is listening to music for the pure enjoyment of it. I enjoy a broad variety of genres, but I have an aversion to hack music that is just plain moronic.
Favorites. My favorite TV shows include The Tonight Show with Jay Leno (Ah, "Headlines!"), the News (Ah, Channel...never mind, any channel will do), Comedy Showcase and Seinfeld. There are a few hobbies listed above that I don't care to take up again, including God willing, the diaper wetting. (I got over the pyromania while still in childhood. Unlike a couple of my neighborhood buddies, I wasn't into simply setting things on fire. I did "controlled experiments." I was shocked to learn just how powerful gasoline is when in the basement I used my train transformer and some thin wire to electrically detonate a coffee can containing just one drop. [Please don't try it yourself!] I forget what I said when Momma asked down the stairs what caused that loud boom. It ended that hobby permanently, but I still love a good fireworks display when somebody else is doing it. My favorite foods include both fish and chicken from Long John Silver's and Arthur Treacher's. I am a chocoholic, with my favorites being Cella's dark chocolate covered cherries, and Necco Sky Bars. My most admired celebrities: Walt Disney, Johnny Carson, Jay Leno, Mike Myers (who would portray me in a movie), Thomas Edison, Sean Connery.
