My
name is Johnny Weissmuller, the same as my
Grandfather’s cousin who won 5 gold medals in the Olympics
and played Tarzan from 1932 to 1948.
His son, Johnny Weissmuller, Jr, has a new book (click below left) documenting his
father's life. (That was written in 2003. -- Sad update --
Johnny Weissmuller, Jr. passed away in July
2006).
My
Grandfather, Adam Weissmuller, was the American welterweight wrestling
champion in 1929. (I
have his scrapbook with newspaper clippings (many in German which I cannot
read) and photos). He managed “The
Arena Gardens” in Detroit that ran multi-purpose events ranging from
roller-skating to wrestling during the depression. This picture shows a wrestler (Lou
Talaver), My
Grandfather (Adam Weissmuller), Peter Weissmuller (Johnny's younger brother),
and Johnny (Tarzan) Weissmuller - from their Chicago days in the 1920s.
My father, Adam
Peter Weissmuller, was the first American born-generation of my family.
The families came from what was Austria-Hungary when his parents left as
pre-teens circa 1905. Their families independently immigrated from two
villages, forty miles apart in the Transylvania region. They moved to the
German-speaking neighborhoods in Chicago. My dad was born in Chicago and
raised in Detroit Michigan. He left High School
early to attend a commercial art school.
This is Romeo and Juliet by my Dad.
He was drafted into the Army in 1945. World War II ended while he was in training as a small combat arms specialist. Upon his arrival on Saipan (near Guam) his assigned job became that of an explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) specialist -- he used a bulldozer to push surplus bombs off the cliff so the Army wouldn't have to ship them home. He came home to be an electrical helper, a carpenter, a draftsman, an artist and a designer of pneumatic tube systems. He is now retired and holds eight patents:
3,288,394; 3,756,536; 3,790,101; 3,790,102; 3,830,446; 3,985,316; 4,032,082; and 4,189,260.
My son, Adam Dale Weissmuller, was born here in San Antonio in 1977. As of 18 Apr 2006 he and his wife Debbie have two girls, Abby and Morgan. Adam is currently a computer customer engineer and trainer for ServerBeach (a Canadian-owned Internet hosting company here in San Antonio). He is a certified Microsoft MCSE, MCT as well as Master Linux instructor and fixes my network problems every time I break something.
Both my children have more potential than I do. I expect my daughter (who was home-schooled and turns 20 in May 2006) will be a world-class author. In respect for her plans for world domination, more information about her is not forthcoming...yet.
Other than my Grandmother who raised me and read me books like "Danny Dunn and the Anti-Gravity Paint," the biggest influence on my life came from my sixth grade teacher, Mr. Simon Morris. He wrote in my final grade school report card in 1961
:
Based on my sixth-grade teacher's conference with my folks, my original career plan was to
teach mathematics in junior high schools.
While at Bentley High School in Livonia Michigan I was the President of the Future Teachers of America Club and was awarded the outstanding student in Science from my graduating class of over 900 students in 1967. After graduating from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1971 with my BA in mathematics, I started out as a programmer for the Air Force Human Resources Laboratory (AFHRL). My life story up to the point I entered the Air Force is in Chapter 1 of a book I am writing - "Would You Buy a Used Unified Field Theory from This Man?"
In the eleven years that followed, I migrated from the enlisted ranks to civil service and rose from a GS-9 to a GS-12 while completing 30 hours towards a PhD in Educational Psychology (Quantitative Methods) at the University of Texas at Austin. During my first federal career I served as a programmer, analyst, personnel researcher on operational Air Force studies, principal investigator on Air Force Basic Research projects, and as a transfer of technology focal point offering Lab products to allied nations as well as other federal agencies and state & local governments.
Upon leaving civil service in 1982, I founded my own company, Sensible Systems, Inc. I used my "vacation" time from my full-time (mortgage-paying) jobs to consult around the globe in large-scale personnel systems dedicated to improving organizational competency in recruiting, selection, training, promotion, and career development of employees.
Click on Pic for Close-Up
My full-time jobs (1982-2002) continued to service federal and private sector agencies. I worked for three minority-owned companies during this time - OAO, Maxima and Metrica. Because of the flood of requests following 9/11, I was unable to get my security clearances upgraded and my HR work for federal clients fell off sharply.
In 1998, while I was working at Metrica, the Air Force shut down its broad personnel research function (once known as the Air Force Human Resources Laboratory - AFHRL). It was like someone drove a stake into my heart. Because my family lineage flows from the Transylvania region, I take this seriously... AFHRL was my Camelot. My life's mission since then has been to ensure that the ideas they developed would not scatter and fade away. My <http://www.icodap.org> non-profit has amassed and scanned into PDF a very large collection of hard-to-find Technical Reports from AFHRL (n=1100+) and a complete set of PDF files of the International Military Testing Association (IMTA) proceedings from 1959 to date!
Partly to support the traditional AFHRL mission, I've been a principal in not-for-profit research organizations and I am still an internationally recognized occupational analyst as my current resume shows. My interests, however, are varied. For a list and links to my public "Project Pages" click here. I also have some, not-so-public projects that I can give you links to if you qualify for project membership.
For a full profile of my professional capabilities, check out my self-aggrandizing web page that I put together during my two-year job hunt. If you are considering any interesting personnel testing/occupational analysis projects and want to brain-storm, send me an email and I'll get back to you -- give me your phone number and I'll call.
I am back in civil service, so don't contact me to "bid" me on contracts. As the Executive Director of the not-for-profit, ICODAP, however, I make my advice and many resources available to everyone with Internet access and I will mail things to people without web access. My nights-and-weekend professional advice (or via email) on projects is free, open, and if you tell me so in advance, confidential.
Now that I find myself back in civil service, I find it exhilarating to be able to bring my private-sector experience back to the roots from whence I grew. Moreover, I get to participate in the regeneration of broad personnel research in the Air Force. Life, once again, is good.
-- Never daunted -- Johnny
Hope to hear from you soon.
Johnny J. Weissmuller
<mailto:johnnyw@icodap.org>
Last Page Revision: Saturday March 22, 2008
