Chapters of My Life

Starting on the family farm in Northern Wisconsin, Dave Roach benefited from competing with and learning from his eight siblings about self-reliance, problem-solving, and learning how things work so he could fix almost anything. He continued that learning throughout his journey. Struggling with the death of his brother and the roller coaster ride of tremendous success to castigation in high school, he garnered a Navy ROTC scholarship and turned it back to success in college. Experiences with the Kennedy campaign in 1960, dinner with the Apollo 11 astronauts in1969 and later the recovery missions for Apollo 16 and 17, and from Vietnam to Desert Storm, Roach's learning spanned many historical events. During his twenty-five-year Navy career, retiring as a captain, he traveled the world and learned the hard lessons of leadership as the Navy moved him and his family through multiple distinctively different positions of responsibility. Benefiting from those years as a Navy Seabee, Roach progressed to become a senior vice president in the fifth largest construction company in the world before retiring for the second time. Lessons learned on those vastly different projects, and the need to pay for college and weddings for his five daughters were a natural precursor to new career as a manager/mentor in the construction management world before his third retirement at age sixty-nine. When California went crazy and it was time to move, a thriving construction business found him and challenged him to work, learn and teach while providing for new clients and industries. Lifelong learning experiences during the journey are chronicled in many stories documenting the lessons of life.