Alan Sinclair
General Information:
School Activities:
Freshman Year - Basketball, Track
Sophomore Year - Basketball, Track, Speech-Dramatic Arts
Senior Year - Student Leadership
Married to Carolyn
Alan Sinclair
After graduation I attended 10th Street Tech in East St. Louis and managed to flunk out in a year. Too much time playing basketball and not enough attending class. The summer of 1966 my father died and I got my draft notice. I joined the Air Force and they sent me to Monterey, California to study Chinese. So I was in Monterey in the summer of 1967 and got to go to the Monterey Pop Festival. After completing Chinese classes I was sent to Texas for Intelligence training and then to Okinawa. From Okinawa I went on a four month TDY (temporary duty assignment) to northern Thailand.
When I returned to the States I met my wife, Carolyn Wilson of Granite City. She had attended SIU Edwardsville and knew a lot of my friends from Collinsville. We got married in July 1969 and I returned to college in Edwardsville majoring in Physics and Philosophy. In the spring of 1970 we had our son. After graduating from SIUE in 1973 I attended graduate school in Monterey majoring in Chinese and international management. In the summer of 1974 when Viet Nam fell all multinational corporations pulled out of the Far East which left me with few job prospects. While at SIUE, Randy Thomas, Bill Seib, myself and other vets had worked with the SIUE based Veterans World Project and so, with that experience, I was able to land a job with VA in Phoenix, AZ. In 1977 we transferred to Sheridan, WY and I worked guardianship issues at a VA long term care psychiatric hospital. In the winter of 1978 our daughter was born.
Two years later I was selected to open a VA outpatient clinic on Guam where we spent three years before moving to Alaska. After 2 years of freezing our nether regions off we transferred back to Arizona. 3 years later we moved to Virginia and I became Executive Secretary of VA. While there I served as point man on the Nehmer decision and negotiated on behalf of VA with OMB to allow VA to promulgate regulations concerning the process we would follow to recognize conditions related to Agent Orange exposure. I became ill in Virginia and we returned to Arizona in 1991, where I had cardiac by pass surgery. In 2003 I retired from VA 2 years after having a sub arachnoid hemorrhage.
In retirement I have been able to watch my two children succeed in their careers and spend lots of time with my grandchildren and Carolyn, my wife of 43 years. We love traveling to Cambria, CA and British Columbia. I have spent time volunteering in a PACU at a local hospital and enjoy golfing, swimming, walking and just plain relaxing. Life has given me far more than I ever gave it so I apologize to whomever is paying my way.
Alan Sinclair
"There's always that song that brings you back to the past. That makes you pause in the middle of what you're doing just so you could hear it clearly. The words bringing you back to a time that seemed nearly impossible, the words making you think for one moment that time itself has actually stopped. And there's nothing but you & perfect melody that brings you one step closer to what used to be.” Kira Jeffries