Wayne Jasper Fluent

Wayne Jasper Fluent Jr.
TRAVERSE CITY – Wayne Jasper Fluent Jr., age 87, of Traverse City, passed away on Sunday, April 21, 2019 at his home in the loving care of his family.
Wayne was born a junior in Charles City, Iowa on February 4, 1932 to parents Myrtle E. (Damro) and Wayne J. Fluent. He attended school in Charles City for kindergarten and first grade. The family moved to Ames, Iowa, where he then attended the Ames School System from grades 2 through 9. While in Ames and when he was old enough, Wayne traveled with his dad, who was the IHC Auditor, all over the state meeting lots of political people throughout the state. Those were the days of WWII rationing and one of his remembrances was that the government selected Ames as a test town for seeing what the population would do if they were flooded with a rationed commodity such as sugar, so they brought all sorts of white sugar, brown sugar, powdered sugar, decorative sugar, candy bars and pastries into the grocery store. The experiment only proved that people (maybe just in those days) did not hoard, but bought only what they needed and maybe a bit for a treat. Wayne had three jobs there, one was with Moore's Dairy unloading raw milk cans from the farm pick-up tricks, emptying them into the processing machine, washing and sterilizing them and loading them back onto the trucks. Now-a-days, the milk comes in those big stainless tanker trucks. Another job was cleaning and stocking at a neighborhood grocery store. His first job was delivering the Des Moines Register and Tribune every morning to his neighborhood.
The family moved back to Charles City at the end of Wayne's 9th grade, so Wayne attended Charles City High School for grades 10, 11 and 12, graduating in June of 1950. In the three years back in Charles City, Wayne had three jobs. The three actually ran together.
Wayne did broadcast engineering for KCHA-AM, and was doing house wiring for Culbert Electric. The electrical work and the electronics work were probably the reason he pursued his electrical engineering career.
He entered Iowa state college in the fall of 1950 but was inducted by the Korean draft in the middle of his first year. After two weeks of testing he was deemed 4F, due to allergies and was rejected by the service. After losing more than two weeks of classes he had to drop out of school. Not wanting to wait for college to start a new trimester, he went to Chicago and entered DeForest (later DeVry) trade school to earn a certificate in Radio, TC and Electronics. With that certificate in hand, he returned to Iowa, Cedar Rapids to be exact, and went to work for Collins Radio Company. Here is also where he met his future wife, Harriet Marie Woods. Harriet and Wayne were married in Iowa City in June of 1954. Harriet continued teaching in the Cedar Rapids School System while Wayne continued to work for Collins and attend Iowa University where he got his Electrical Engineering Bachelors of Sciences. Not being a sit-behind-a-desk and design person, Wayne convinced Collins they needed a field engineering group and they agreed and started Alpha Installers. After an assignment in the Pacific Theatre installing radios and large antennas on Wake Island for the Pacific Missile Range, Wayne met Harriet in Hawaii after her school year ended. As a sidelight, Harriet had lucked out and had gotten an earlier flight from the mainland which meant she would arrive about an hour and a half early and would have no one meeting her. Wayne got a call at 3:00 am from the FAA (he knew them well from doing work for them before) saying he had better get his butt to the airport because Harriet was coming in early. When Harriet saw that Wayne was there with lei in hand she started to cry with joy.
After returning to Iowa, both Wayne and Harriet traveled around the country on a huge contract from the Air Force installing radios, large antennas, tracking radars and switching centers at Westover in MA, Barksdale in LA, March in CA and at SAC headquarters in the greater Omaha, Nebraska area.
To close his time with Collins, Wayne went to Norway to install radios and antennas in fiords to be able to communicate with submerged submarines using very low frequency radio waves. Harriet was with him and they decided they had had enough traveling and can move back to the United States where Wayne did some work for the Office of Civil Defense and Mobilization (OCDM) where Wayne had another great experience. He was on his way to his morning round robin radio check with his staff around the country from his classified headquarters site in VA (later declassified when a disastrous plane crash happened at the site, the site was underground go to site for the executive branch of the federal government) when he was stopped at the gate by security. A helicopter landed and someone deplaned and was driven up to the blast doors on a golf cart. The passenger had the driver stop and asked Wayne if he was late for work and if he needed a ride. Wayne said yes and that he would really appreciate the ride. He said hop on. Turns out it was John F. Kennedy. This was three months before he was assassinated.
After this contract was completed Harriet and Wayne decided to move to Florida and try to settle down and adopt two kids. Wayne applied and got a position at Honeywell who was starting an aerospace division in St. Petersburg. He was with the Parts Application Engineering Group for 17 ½ years specializing in passive components especially connectors. He was primary designer of the miniature main engine controller connector for the space shuttle. He also assisted Rockwell with the SS wiring and connecting in the mock-up in Houston. Later in the program he was called in to correct a connection error in the Enterprise. It took two days to get to and into the skunk works and two days to fix the problem but he got it done. In his tenure at HI, he designed and assisted in the manufacturing of many of the first generation of microminiature circular, rectangular, and strip connectors. While in Florida, Harriet and Wayne adopted two children and were active in the school system as well as two of Largo recreation department. The two of them and nine other couples formed a little theatre group names Footlight Theatre, and started putting on musical productions. The group was pretty poor to start with, so Wayne designed and built a control panel and a dozen SCR dimmer units. After the group saved enough money and with a few donations, Footlight added a Century Electric Unit more than doubling the control capacity. Having spent quite a few years working in the field he loved, Wayne tried to semi-retire and move everyone to Colorado.
Thinking he could do some consulting and a bit of relaxing, he and the family, holed up in a mountain home but, through the consulting, Ball Aerospace of Boulder Contacted him and hired him to come back to work in their newly formed parts engineering department. This lasted (believe it or not) another 27 ½ hears. Again, these years were spent mainly working with connectors but doing less traveling. Instead of the theater work, both Harriet and Wayne volunteered with the Boulder Heights Fire Protection District. Wayne stayed with the department for nearly 20 years both as a board member and a firefighter. In full retirement now, Wayne and Harriet were able to do some traveling. They bought a 21 foot class C RV and took it to California, Washington and Oregon many times, to Alaska once, and to the East coast and Florida through Texas a few times. After Harriet contracted ALS they sold their RV and Wayne took full time care of Harriet. Harriet passed at home in July 2013 at 82+ years and 59+ years of marriage, a good life!
After Harriet passed, Wayne and Roxanne's wonderful loving relationship developed. Roxanne brought Wayne to Michigan as they could be with her and her children. Steven Roy Hunt and Shelly Adaire Hunt are Wayne's step children. They all loved each other dearly. Roxanne put her life on hold for six years to care for her husband. They traveled, laughed and loved together. Wayne loved Roxanne in spite of the fact of his 26-year age difference. Needless to say Wayne's male friends were a little bit jealous of his young bride. All in good fun.
Wayne and Harriet have two adopted children Holly Fluent of Longmont, CO and Jay Fluent from Denver, CO.
A visitation for Wayne will take place at the Reynolds-Jonkhoff Funeral Home on Tuesday, April 23, 2019 from 4:00 – 6:00 pm. A memorial service for Wayne will take place at 11:00 am on Wednesday, April 24, 2019 with a visitation one hour prior to the service.
Please share a memory with Wayne's family by visiting his tribute page at www.reynolds-jonkhoff.com . The Reynolds-Jonkhoff Funeral Home and Cremation Services is serving the family.