AUTOBIOGRAPHY
by
Me... Alan Freeman
for Chronological Autobiography
including
special events [ Click Here ]
Hello, and thanks visiting my Web site. If you'd like to get to know me a little, I have prepared this very page just for you. I will rattle on about myself, briefly, for the length of this page only! <GRIN> I will call this page, "My Personal Home Page", since of all the 20 something web sites I own not one has hardly anything specifically about me. Aren't we the lucky ones? Anyhoot, you already know my name is Alan Freeman. I was born in Murfreesboro, Rutherford County, Tennessee. Murfreesboro is known by natives as either M'boro or 'the Boro'. It was named by a Civil War officer named Captain William Lytle, who donated about 60 acres of land for the town proper. He suggested the town be named Murfreesborough in memory of his friend Colonel Hardy Murfree. So it was to be, that Murfreesboro also became the captial of Tennessee from 1818 until 1826. Obviously the name was shorted... a little bit... as time went by. I am the son of Kenneth Allen Freeman, born in Fort Worth, Tarrant County, Texas in 1931, and Lee Cole (Freeman-Spence) (known by her friends as Lee), born in Murfreesboro, Tennessee in 1931. My parents met in 1950 when my father was stationed at Sewart AFB, Smyrna, Tennessee, and my mother worked at a theater in the BORO. I have an older sister named Glenda Lee, who is about two years older than me, and lives in Milton, Florida. Our mother and father divorced when I was about two. Mother later had two other daughters, so I have two younger half-sisters as well. Jennifer lives in Nashville, Tennessee, the Country Music Capital of the World, and Donna who lives in Gilroy, California, the Garlic Capital of the World. I love them all and they are the best sisters a guy can hope for. Dad now lives in Saraland, Alabama. We chat regularly via the web and work on genealogy and web pages together and fly Microsoft Flight Simulator together over the Internet every Wednesday with about six other guys. We have a "virtual" flight squadron. It's a blast! Mother died in 1997 of congestive heart failure brought on by pneumonia and lung cancer. We miss her very much. I have a biography and pictures of her on our genealogy site at www.ifreeman.com. I grew up in Murfreesboro (the BORO) , the exact geographical center of Tennessee. In the first grade I attended McFadden Elementary School. After that I went to same grammar school for the next seven years; Crichlow Elementary School. It was located exactly one block from my home. No excuses for being late. I could comb my hair, brush my teeth, and get dressed 9 minutes before school time and still not be late! The city demolished the school in 2003 and built an educational office facility for the independant school district. RIP Crichlow! I was reared by my Mother and my grandparents, Robert (Bob) and Mary Cole. We lived in the same house on North Church Street, five blocks from the city courthouse, until I graduated in 1971 from Central High School. We still own the house and it has been declared "historical" by the Rutherford County Historical Society. My best friends back in those days was Wendell Lehew, Steve McGill, Andy Shepard, Judy, Julianne, Janice Bugg, Jon Nixon, Mark Cramer, and my cousins Field Earp, Mark and Steve Cole. In high school I became fascinated with music and I played drums, tympany, and bells my freshman year. I went on to learn guitar afterward during my teen years and I still play to this day. I love folk and rock such as Pink Floyd, Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, Jackson Browne, Dan Fogelberg, Kenny Loggins, James Taylor, Carol King, etc. Mostly classic rock stuff, but I do love Matchbox 20, Sting, Counting Crows, John Mayer, Phil Collins, and some of the newer bands. It's an understatement to say that I love MUSIC. I have a 1976 Alvarez Glenbrooke Pro. I have 2 electric guitars; a white three pickup, 1975 Gibson SG Custom (the last year for that model). I also have a black 1998 Fender Stratocaster Standard, similar to the kind that Eric Clapton & David Gilmour of Pink Floyd plays. If only I could play like them! My amplifier is a 50-watt (stereo) Fender Princeton Chorus. I have a Yamaha synthesizer and my son has a full set of drums, but plays guitar and piano too. My daughter plays the Flute, Oboe, Clarinet, Guitar and some Piano. She and my son are both good budding musicians. Frances used to play violin. We can get noisy! In high school my cousin Mark Cole, and our friends Jon Nixon, Sean Stickney, and Danny Jackson started a band called the "Iron Horse". I was more electronically gifted than musically gifted at that time, so I became the 'roady'. I worked the sound gear and ran the light shows mostly. We were on TV once in Nashville, on a teen dance show called "Turn On" on channel 5, We also won a shopping center battle-of-the-bands talent show our senior year. After I joined the military the other guys had several other bands, one called "Stray Cat", but not the Brian Setzer one. They played for the Air Base Teen Club, NCO Club, college fraternities, and local clubs, etc. There's some interesting pictures on my cousin Mark Cole's site about the old band days. I had two high school sweethearts at Central High School. I dated them alternately during high school. By that I mean that I never dated them both at once; none of that cheating stuff! There names were similar, so I got slapped a few times for getting the names mixed up. One I met when we spotted each other when our band was playing for her friends birthday party. We started dating mid-way through our Freshman year in 1967. We dated on-and-off through-out high school. The other I met in the hallway at Central High School when the other one and I was broke up during my Junior year. I kept noticing the second one in the halls between classes. Finally one day I got the nerve to introduce myself and found out she'd been noticing me too. She was of Cherokee descent and had long beautiful brown hair and dark brown eyes; much the image of a young Indian Princess in my mind. Her parents didn't much care for me since I was two years older than her, but we did manage to date on-and-off until the end of my Senior year. Then I went off to the Air Force; she went on to college, married, and lived happily every after, I am told. At 18, I was eagerly plotting my future. Not being from a wealthy family, I turned to the Air Force. I figured I could a). avoid going to Vietnam in the Army (I had a low draft number) , b). accrue college benefits, something I really wanted to do, c). get a career started, something I needed to do, d). get out of Murfreesboro (the BORO). ALL of the above were the main objectives. I aced the Air Force electronics exam with a 98. They made me take it again because they claimed no one could score that high. I aced it again with the same score, so I was given the job, Telephone Switching Equipment Repairman. In the civilian world of telephony, that's a job where someone has to die in order for you to move into that position. It's an "inside plant" job where you don't have to climb telephone poles and pull phone wires through peoples dusty attics and dirty basements to install phones. After basic training and my first assignment of six months was at Scott AFB, Belleville, Illinois, close to Homer Simpson in Springfield. <GRIN>. Afterward I went to Sheppard AFB, Witchita Falls, Texas for nearly a year of electronics training. My mother remarried December 22, 1972 to Hollis Lester Spence. In the Air Force, I worked on the computers and equipment used to route telephone calls. I held that job for five years. I went to some of the finest electronics schools the Air Force had to offer at that time in Texas, Okinawa, and Japan. I spent over three years in the Philippines working at the Clark AFB telephone exchange, and in the 1st Mobility Squadron, during the time of the Vietnam pull-out. Luckily I never saw any combat. I was stationed at Sheppard AFB in Texas, Tyndall AFB in Panama City Beach, Florida, and Norton AFB in San Bernardino, California. What a GREAT TOUR of DUTY! Plus, a lot of the schooling that I got while in the USAF tranferred to college credits later when I was discharged. As my USAF duty was ending, I decided I wanted to go on college for four years. I went to college at Middle Tennessee State University. My college major was Mass Communications with minors in English and Psychology. While at college I managed an apartment complex and was a disc jockey at a local radio station serving Murfreesboro, Nashville, and the surrounding communities. It was previously owned by the country singer Jim Reeves and his wife Mary and was bought out by radio sports veteran Monte Hale. The call letters were WMTS-FM & AM. Monte, who became a friend and an inspiration to me, has since died. There's a story about the radio station and Monte on my site. See the history at http://www.cdcontrol.com/alanfreeman/wmts.htm and http://www.cdcontrol.com/alanfreeman/montehale.htm . From there, I met some new friends, Jim Gilmore, now chief audio engineer for Viacom, the Nashville Network at Opryland, MTV, CMT, Nick, TVLand, etc. etc. and Larry Burke an electronic genius. Jim was my broadcast mentor. Larry was my electronics mentor. I worked with Larry's company making 'electronic gadgets' for the US government. Larry, rest his soul, has since passed away. Jim owns a recording studio in Nashville as well as the other jobs mentioned above. I last visited with him in October of 2006. His site is www.audioproductions.com. In 1979, my maternal
grandfather died, and then my faternal grandparents died. I moved to Granbury, Hood County, Texas in about June 1980. Between 1980 and 1984, I worked for Tandy Software Assembly, worked as a computer mainframe operator for Texas Utilities Nuclear Plant in Glenrose, worked as a country DJ, program director, and chief engineer at a AM directional radio station KPAR, all at the same time, in some instances! For info on KPAR see my history of the station at http://www.cdcontrol.com/alanfreeman/kpar.htm . In 1984 I began DJ'ing in nightclubs in Fort Worth for extra money. As the video revolution took off, I switched to designing Hi-Tech video nightclubs and light shows. I wired some of the best clubs in Fort Worth and Dallas during that period, South Fork, Uptown, EFX, Lace, as well as a club I designed in the US Virgin Islands on St. Croix Island. One of the clubs I helped design was a dance club in Arlington, Texas that had 5 satellite dishes on the roof with 8 individual receivers (back when the dishes were 10 foot in size), and over 40 video monitors. The system had the ability to play six (6) ballgames at once on the array of video screens. The lighting system was on an movable electronic truss, and my favorite creation, GIANT neon VU meters, about 20 feet tall and 5 feet wide. The video nightclub revolution fizzled as music videos got worst (well, for a while), so I moved on to another job. I had gone back to work with a Tandy Computer Store for a while, when I got an offer to work for a broadcast software company, Electric Works Corp. Wow, two of the things I loved the most; broadcasting and software programming. After two weeks on the new job, the owner gave me my notice, telling me they had over extended their budget. Well, with two weeks of work left, I got busy and dreamed up a clever idea to store radio station broadcast music and commercials on computer hard drives using the new digital audio cards for PCs that had just came out. I convinced him to let me stay, he found an investor, and we did the project. Six months later in December 1989, we digitally automated our first US radio stations using digital audio from computers, allowing the stations to run without DJ's at night and on weekends and later, full time. The stations were in Carlsbad, New Mexico. This invention replaced automation equipment larger than the size of side-by-side refridgerators, and worked uncomparably better. It revolutionized the radio industry and plunged them into the computer age, which many station owners had been resisting. It made my boss rich. After our initial ad in Radio World, a broadcast trade magazine, everyone jumped on the wagon and for a while we had over 14 competitors. I still consider myself to be one of the pioneers to come up with the idea, even though it was bound to happen eventually. CBS televisions 48 HOURS produced a feature in 1992 called "Radio Wars", where they featured our creation dubbed Digital DJ and nick-named it Jock-In-A-Box. [ Click here to watch the seven minute 48 Hours video of Digital DJ.] After a pay dispute I went to work with the Fort Worth Star Telegram, owned by Capital Cities/ABC (American Broadcast Company), and wrote a browser for their online service called StarText, back before the Internet had come of age. I had developed the project on my own, and they hired me to get control of it, basically. Later I went back to work with Electric Works Corp. Another programmer and myself created Digital DJ's successor called AXS. In 1994 I met and made a bid with Mark Cuban (creator of Audio.Net and Broadcast.Com, and which sold in 2001 for several billion dollars to Yahoo.Com). I bid to write an application that would allow him to create automated radio stations on the Internet, but we did not reach an agreement. He wanted open source code in Java and I didn't. I saw the value of it and wanted continued profit from it, so I overbid. Oh well. He is now one of the richest men in the USA and owns the Dallas Mavericks Basketball team, along with Ross Perot Jr. Not to mention his brief reality TV show 'The Benefactor.' I eventually got discontented with my pay and the working arrangements at Electric Works Corp., and was hired by their largest competitor, Scott Studios LLC of Dallas. They in turn bought out Electric Works Corp, the company I had left, less than a year later, regaining control of the software I had developed. With Scott Studios I was a lead programmer. I wrote a system called Voice Tracks which allows a radio station to automate the talking for an entire four hour show in about 10 minutes. I subsequently wrote a system called SpotBox, which replaces broadcast tape cart machines with a simple graphical touch screen. I also wrote an Automated School Closing Reporter System that would automatically answer telephone calls from kids, parents, teachers, and principals, on bad weather days and inform them if their school is closed, open, or running late. It was spec'd to post bad weather school closing information to the Internet as soon as a school principal updates their closing information, requiring NO BODIES to answer the phone. DJ's and News Directors would have loved it! I left Scott Studios in May of 2004 when they sold to deMarc Corp and subsequently to Google.Com. They have 4600+ radio and TV station clients and are the largest broadcast automator worth over $2 billion dollars according to some figures. I own my own company, Wintek Software Company. We design and sell music automation software for radio and home., and hardware that controls the 301-400 discs Mega/Giga CD and DVD changers from Pioneer and Sony. The software, called Wintrax, allows the CD/DVD changers to be controlled like a jukebox or in broadcasting, allowing you to pick songs from the screen, or build custom play lists using touch screen, IR remote control, or keyboard, much like you would from a jukebox control panel. Many hi-tech electronic homes, low power radio stations, cable companies, and retail outlets use it for their music control as well. Time to backtrack however. In 1985 while designing video nightclubs, I started my family. Brian Alan was born in 1986. In 1988, my daughter Hayley Elyse was born. Hayley was named after Hayley Mills and an actress that Jane Seymore played so well in the 1979 movie "Somewhere In Time", Elyse McKennah. That movie also featured Christopher Reeve (Superman) and the fantastic oldest hotel in America, "The Grand Hotel" on Macinaw Island, Michigan. I must visit there sometime. You should see the movie, it's great. My son graduated from Texas Christian University last year with a BA in Computer Science. My daughter is in her at year at University of North Texas, working toward a journalism decgree. Hayley played flute, clarinet, and oboe in the marching and concert band. She also plays guitar. Brian plays drums, guitar, keyboard, baseball, basketball, and is a computer and video game lover. Hayley used to collects Beenie Babies and Barbie Dolls. She was a Girl Scout and took dancing lessons. Now she is a computer lover, likes music, drama, and dancing. She used to compete in many band talent shows and marches on the televised TV football games. She and Brian both have their own Web sites with links on my main page. My wife Tina and I own a home in between Fort Worth and Dallas TX. Oddly, I am now very near the same area where my paternal ancestors settled back in 1872 after migrating to Texas from Georgia. Tina and I are active Christians and love to worship God and attend church regularly. We like camp every other weekend practically in the spring summer and fall. We like concerts, movies, Ranger Baseball games, and anything that involoves water. Two years ago we read the bible in chronological order. You should try that. It's amazing how much easier it is to understand; reading it in order. In 1994 I got my FCC Amateur Technical Plus Radio License (Ham), and I have radios for 70 cm, 2 meters, 6 meters, and 10 meters. I've talked pretty much border-to-border in the US, but haven't done any HAM work now in about three years. I became seriously interested in genealogy in 1998 and have published two books (Vol I & Vol II) on our Freeman Family ancestry. I also have written a couple small articles for the Rutherford County Historical Society's "History of Rover County, The 10th District". My first book was only about 100 pages. This last one was over 300 pages. You can see more about that at the site www.ifreeman.com. I found we are related to three presidents by blood: Zachary Taylor, Jefferson Davis, and James Madison. We're related to two more by marriage: Abe Lincoln and George Washington; and a number of other folks responsible for helping make this nation what it is, like Robert E. Lee, Daniel Boone, and Henry Clay. I am proud to our our families' military and political heritage. Several of my grandfathers faught in the Revolutionary War. Several others in the Civil War; on each side. We are also distantly related to some Kings, Lords, and knights (Sirs). I even found that my first cousin, seven times removed, was Statesman William Few, Jr., who signed the US Constitution as the Georgia deligate in 1776 convention. My 2nd great-grandfather was a Civil War commander, Marshal of Americus Georgia, and helped found the town of Bluff Dale, Texas, in 1877. His brother and my second great-uncle David Bailey Freeman, was the youngest confederate soldier! See also http://www.ifreeman.com/freeman/davidb.htm . In the Fall of 1999 I had a dream come true. I have always been an admirer of the works of singer and song writer Jesse Winchester. Several years ago I met him on-line and helped him design his Web site. In 1999 he wrote and produced his 10th album, and in the Fall when he toured to promote it, I finally got the honor of meeting him eye-to-eye in Dallas. In the CD insert, Jesse even mentioned a "thank you" to me in his credits! Recently in October of 2007 he played at the University of Austin's Cactus Cafe. He comped Tina and me into the show and we got to hang out with him after the show for a brief time. We got to see him and hang out with him again in May of 2010 at the Cactus Cafe, Austin TX. Between 2000 and 2004 I was employeed as a Senior Programmer at TXU/Oncor Electric & Gas Corporation, the provider of electric power and gas for most of Texas and many other places around the globe. I programmed in VB6, HTML, and SQL. That's where I met Tina, my wife. In May of 2004 my company was hired by Dave Scott (former owner of Scott Studios Corp, my former boss) to write software for Radio, TV, and Cable broadcasting automation. I am currently writing software that takes text based weather feeds from the Web and converts them into an audio forecast to be used on radio, TV, and cable stations. I just finished writing the software to automate XM Radio's 28 weather channels. I also write other audio and video applications and program in Microsoft VB.NET, Visual Basic 6, Java, and ASP. For hobbies I camp, play guitar, collect and listen to music and movies, do genealogy research, design web sites, read, and I fly flight simulators and race Grand Prix cars over the Internet with my father and some friends. I love being outside and enjoying the Sun and nature. Last year Tina bought me a X-Box 360. I am learning to use it, but only have a few games right now however. Tina and I work as contract programmers and work from home most of the time. We love to camp, travel, enjoy concerts, and just hang out with friends and family. We're night-owls and go to be about 3 AM and wake up about noon-ish. Well, that pretty much brings us up to date. I'll close by thanking you for reading this, for visiting our site, and by expressing my favorite philosophical quotes: For more entertainment, see my chronological biography, for the year-by-year story of me and the world. It has a little bit of humor and off-color wit intermixed within it. "Trust in your Lord God, praise him, bless him, and ask for his mercy and forgiveness, as you pray regularly." -Me. "Never take an enemy." (I.E. "Make No
Enemies") "The ultimate secret of life, is the
sure knowledge of death; "As soon as you learn, you don't
live forever, "And now I'm glad I didn't know, ©2010 Alan Freeman |