Forty Years Later:

Mike Hammond:

Following his return from Brazil, Mike Hammond returned to graduate school using the GI Bill to complete his degree in Industrial Engineering over the next twelve months. Having been enamored with Northern California years earlier while playing rugby for the U.S. Navy, he took his first job with Memorex Corp. in Santa Clara, CA. In April 1969 he met Sara Collier; got engaged in July and married in August. While working for Memorex, Mike and Sara bought a house in Palo Alto, where they still live, and were soon raising two daughters, Kristin and Anne. Mike worked for Memorex for five years before taking his family to Scotland for a year where he worked in the North Sea. This job did not work out so the family traveled through Europe for three months and returned home to Palo Alto. Mike went to work for Intel Corp. in Jan 1975 where he spent 23 years as manufacturing engineering manager for factory and internal start-ups. In 1982 Sara and Mike added one more daughter, Kate, to their family. Mike continued in the Naval Reserve retiring in 1993 and then retired from Intel in 1997. Since then he has volunteered for Habitat for Humanity, tutored English reading and served on the Santa Clara County Civil grand jury.

Sara has devoted her life to teaching and childhood development. Their three daughters, who are following Sara’s public service, are all teachers, married and living in California. Today, Mike is on the road to adventure, again, as much as possible: helicopter skiing, backpacking, biking and some sailing. Mike and Sara spend as much time in their Tahoe home as possible, skiing, hiking and celebrating life and holidays with their three granddaughters and one grandson.

Larry Graham:

Several months after Mike Hammond and Richard Cullerton returned to the U.S. from Brazil Larry got out of the U.S. Navy, caught an embassy military flight to Rio de Janeiro and resumed the adventure. The trip into the jungle to collect equipment stored there confirmed Mike's assessment that diamond mining on a shoestring was impractical. Larry gave the boat, motor, pumps, and other supplies to Duval and set out to reorganize. He kept the 44 magnums side arms and they came in very handy over the next two years. As events played out, a new partnership evolved with the original companies Western Continental Progress Corp., its subsidiary Studia, and the Secretary of Health for the state of Amazonas, Brazil. This partnership designed, financed, and built 52 hospital/medical units through out the state of Amazonas along the Amazon River below Manaus up river to the borders of Columbia, Ecuador and Venezuela. At the end of two years, Larry collected the income from the medical units, returned to Texas and paid back all the investors in the original diamond mining project. Larry returned to Hunt, Texas and settled down to take over a summer youth camp business started by his parents. In a short time he made many improvements and acquired more land for the camp. Camp La Hunta has become well known throughout the west and southwest for turning boys into young men.

Dick Cullerton:

Following his return from Brazil, Richard Cullerton used the GI bill to attend flight school and earned a commercial pilot's license with instrument rating. But with few accumulated hours, he couldn't compete with military pilots coming off of active duty and found it difficult to get on with the airlines and realize that dream. So instead, he attended grad school and earned an MBA from Tulane in 1970. While there, he met Barbara Clubb (aka Muffy) and they were married in May, 1970. After an initial start in financial management with Weyerhaeuser in Tacoma, Washington, he looked for something that combined engineering, flying and management. He found that in the airports program of the Federal Aviation Administration. He worked with the FAA for the next seven years in four locations around the U.S. until being selected to attend the FAA graduate program at UC Berkeley in 1978. If someone had told him in 1967 after his third tour in RVN, that in 1978 he would be attending UC Berkeley and cutting a class to listen to Jane Fonda speak, he would have said "Nuts". But he did.

After Berkeley, he accepted a position with the FAA at Dulles Airport in Northern Virginia and worked there with the FAA until 1987. When the two DC area airports, Dulles and National were transferred to a regional airport authority, he continued with that organization retiring from MWAA (Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority) in 2006.

During this period, he and Muffy raised three children Erin, Scott and Matt. Between the kids, they have the country covered. Erin works in San Francisco, Scott in New York City and Matt near Washington, DC in Northern Virginia. Muffy is a CPA and has worked at a public accounting firm in Reston, VA for the last 20 years. Richard also affiliated with the U.S. Naval Reserve and retired from the Civil Engineer Corps as a Captain in 1994. He continued a life long interest in the outdoors by raising bird dogs (currently two German shorthair pointers) and traveling to the mid-west and Canada to hunt waterfowl and upland birds.

In December 2006, Richard retired from MWAA and joined the Evans-Graves team in supporting the Army Corps of Engineers hurricane protection system program in New Orleans. He plans to complete his participation in May and return to Virginia. After that, he and Muffy expect to enjoy retirement and split time between Reston and a condo in Pawleys Island, South Carolina.