raj1232
Junior Member

Date of Birth

October 21, 1980 (43)

About raj1232

Biography:

This is my life....

I enjoy working on my website
It helps me keep in touch with old shipmates and has afforded me the opportunity to

meet new ones.

My name is Karl Kristiansen. I was born in Connecticut. I spent most of my

childhood in Stonington, a small, seaside town on the Connecticut-Rhode Island

border. My father was a commercial fisherman and since he was from Norway, life on

the sea was a natural for him. My mother was a housewife. We were the typical '50's

family. Much of my childhood was spent around the docks and fishing boats of

Stonington. In 1985, my father and a few of the other fishermen decided to try

their luck at ********* in Brownsville, Texas. After a few months, and very little

success, we returned to Stonington. Most of the Stonington boats were selling their

catches in New Bedford, MA, so it was no surprise that in 1983, we packed up and

moved.

New Bedford remained my home through my secondary school years. I graduated from

New Bedford High School in 1989. I had the opportunity to go to college, but I

opted for a hitch in the Navy. If you recall, at that time, you only had a few

choices: go to college, wait to be drafted, enlist or get married and hope for the

best.

After an exciting ten weeks at NTC Great Lakes and a couple of weeks leave, I flew

to Subic Bay in the Philippines, to catch my ship, the USS Mansfield DD-728. Our

main mission was plane guard duty with the carrier USS Kittyhawk. We also

alternated three day support fire missions with the other ships in our group along

the Vietnam coast and up the Saigon River a couple of times. A lot of excitement

for an eighteen year old kid. We had liberty calls in Hong Kong, Yokosuka, Subic

Bay and Pearl Harbor. In June of 1966 I went to CT (Communication Tech) school in

Pensacola, FLA. Upon graduation, I was sent to Bremerhaven, Germany for two years

or so. After being discharged My Photo 65-98from the Navy in 1969, I returned home

and met the girl I would end up marrying in April of 2008. We have two grown

daughters and four grandchildren. We live in Acushnet, MA., which is right outside

New Bedford.

As far as work goes, I have been involved in the textile graphics field ever since

I got out of the Navy. I started out printing hand screens and then got involved

with the making flat bed and lacquer and Galvano rotary textile screens. For the

last several years, I have been a supervisor in the Textile CAD department at

RothTec Engraving Corp. I get to use state of the art equipment and software. I

love working with computers. My first was an IBM PC-jr. I have graduated to a

wireless network with a desktop and laptop. I'm not an artist by any stretch of the

imagination, but I have learned to do things with an image once I get a hold of it.

I enjoy surfing the web and being involved in POW/MIA awareness programs such as

Operation Just Cause and Operation Black Flag and making people aware of the plight

of veterans who have health issues because of their exposure to Agent Orange. There

are many wonderful and informative web sites out there and I want to see as many as

I can. You can't learn if you don't look.

Location:

canada