Success Stories
After 18 years in manufacturing, Jeff Lande’s pursing a new career in radiology
Story by Joan Aschim
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Jeff Lande |
Jeff Lande worked at PW Pipe in Eugene for 18 years. It was a good job. It paid well and provided health insurance, and along with his wife’s income as an educational assistant for special needs kids, the couple was able to buy a house, drive new cars, and look forward to a good future for themselves and their four children. Jeff even bought a fishing boat.
“I wasn’t a millionaire, but we were happy,” says Jeff. “I thought I would retire from there.”
Last year, everything changed. A competitor bought the company and Jeff was out of a job.
He made an appointment with the workforce center at Lane Community College and took a series of tests. By fall term he was enrolled as a full-time student with a new career goal—x-ray technology. He’s taking math, writing, speech, anatomy and physiology, and other prerequisites.
“It’s been hard. I don’t have time to do anything anymore. It’s been tough financially, it’s been tough mentally.”
Nonetheless, he is pulling a 4.09 GPA thanks to the “phenomenal” faculty at Lane, like math instructor Charlotte Boehm. “She has a doctorate in structural engineering. She’s super-educated, really smart. She could be doing something that pays a lot more money but she likes to teach.”
When he’s done with prerequisites Jeff will apply to the Diagnostic Imaging Program at Linn Benton Community College. He’s dismayed to have to leave town to complete his degree but that’s the closest program. His son goes to Oregon State and he hopes they’ll be able to bunk together weekdays. His wife dreads this next phase of their struggle to restore fiscal stability to their lives. They’ve been a couple since she was 16 years old and they’ve never been apart.
To pay for college, Jeff has depleted his retirement savings and drawn unemployment. The unemployment ran out in December and he may have to start selling off possessions. It shouldn’t be that way, he says.
“People are losing their jobs left and right. You pick up the paper and every day and you read about 30 people losing their jobs, 15,000 losing their jobs. This state’s going to be in a whole lot worse shape than it’s already in if we don’t have the funding to get people educated and make this a better place.”
In the meantime he’s staying focused on the future.
“I’m so looking forward to getting this over with,” he says. “I want to go back to work.”
Published by Marketing and Public Relations, Lane Community College, December 2008.
