Theses and Dissertations Collection

AbstractThis is a life-story of David Shelton Cochran, who is also my father. This ethnography is an attempt to use my father’s own voice gathered over the course of his 90 years of life in a way that shares his perspective through his more personal memories and information gathered from various other sources. He began an ambitious biographical writing project about a decade ago, when he was still a youthful octogenarian, but has long since set it aside, incomplete, and unfinished. He is now hoping that this work here will create the fuller and richer life history of both his personal and professional life beyond those documented by mostly technology writers and electrical engineering enthusiasts. I have built a bridge between ethnographic narrative and history by conducting interviews of my father while researching the well documented historical context of his career achievements. Using my father’s personal documents as a take-off point, I focus my interview questions on those areas that he had at one time begun to recollect and write down but needed to be expanded and more fully developed. I spent many hours both in person and virtually to assist him with his autobiographical work, helping him to accomplish his dream of leaving a legacy for his family beyond just his professional achievements. What we accomplished together here is to illuminate his unique string of pearls of a life actively, voraciously, and fully lived. In the process of interviewing my father, it transformed us both in a way that was enriching as it was delightful. This work is a gift to both my father as my subject and myself as the interviewer; for what is a life that bears rich fruits if not one of compassionate and generous reciprocity.