I returned from the Army in June of 1969 and when back to working at the diary I had left when I was drafted.  The diary is how I managed to fund my record business.  I also went back to college at Western Michigan University and in August 1971 I graduated with a degree in Business Management.
I am often asked why I did not return to Broadcasting and restart StingRay Productions and Discotheque Records?  The answer is, everything changed.  I was changed by the Vietnam War and was no longer interested in Broadcasting.  The recorded industry had changed because Garage Rock was as good as gone.
I did receive several phone calls from Bands around Michigan who wanted me to bring back Discotheque Records but I always doubted that AQ and RAG would have been willing to get back into it in any fashion.
It was time to move on.

I went to work for a trucking company call PreFab out of Farmer City, IL.  I worked in their offices in GR.
I was there only a short time when I decided to go to work for RadioShack as a store manager.  My first store was in Battle Creek, MI.  I suppose I could write about my time as a RS store manager but there would not be much to tell.  I worked a lot of hours and moved around Western Michigan from store to store.
I did receive a Leaders Club Diamond Ring, for meeting store sales goals which later helped me get the job a corporate HQ that allowed me to continue to create.
Moving ahead in time to my time at RS HQ.  My first experience at true creativity was the 10 dB In-Line Amplifier with Phantom Power.  This little in line amplifier would amplify an RF signal and send it up the coax.  Seems as if it was no big deal right?  Well, at the time this type of device was not marketed to the DIYer or anyone else for that matter.  This little amplifier made for RS by Goodmind Industries originally,  has sold in the 10's millions of units and 100's of millions of dollars in profits industry wide. Used in many of the early consumer satellite systems and TV antenna installations this little bullet amplifier is still in use today.

The next big item for me was the Pre-learned Universal Remote Control.  Of course the story is never a straight line.  GE had developed a learning remote control that you took several remotes and taught the IR (infrared ) signals from each remote to the GE remote and then you had one remote control, the GE, that controlled up to four different things. (i.e.TV, Cable Box, Stereo system, etc)  RS decided to get into the remote control business and using the GE system and developed several learning remote controls.(i.e. 15-1901, 15-1902, 15-1903)  The problem was that the store people were spending too much time with the customer showing them how to teach the learning remote control all of the commands from the customers remotes.  BA (Bernie Apel, President of RadioShack) was getting complaints from Store Management that these remotes were taking up too much of the sales-makers time.  The learning remotes were selling OK but they were not a big deal and BA and BBM (Bob Miller, Vice President of Merchandising) were not happy about the complaints.  I asked them, that if I could come up with something better would they give it a chance.  BA said that if I could he would let me buy 20K pieces of them.  Ah the challenge.  I attended a Consumer Electronics Show that year and met Tom Tyler from Universal Electronics.  Tom showed me a computer program that would program a learning remote.  All the person had to do was enter the brand and the model number of the product that had the remote and the computer would program the learning remote control.  Seemed simple enough.  The problem would be for a large retail chain like RS is that each store would have to have a dedicated computer for use with the learning remote and that update disks would have to be sent out often as the number of remote controls coming into the market at that time was very large.  That would not work.
I stayed in touch with Tom over the next few months, he really wanted to sell something to RS.  Much later he told me he was reaching near desperation because the company seed money was running out.  I remember the phone call that started the pre-learned remote like it was yesterday.  I said to Tom if you can get me a remote that has all your remote control codes already built-in I'll order 20K pcs.  Folks, in those days that was a huge number.  The phone was silent for a long time and Tom's voice showed his disappointment.  He said he would see what he could do.  I did not hear back from Tom for weeks.  When he finally called back, he said that his engineer had found an Integrated Circuit that might be able to hold the codes but how would the user interface with the code library?  I told Tom to have his engineer call me and we would work it out.
I can't remember the engineers name but he and I spend 12 hours on a long distance call defining how a user would interface with the pre-learned remote control.  For example you had several electronics manufacturers that had different names on their remote control buttons that effectively gave the consumer the same end result when pushed (ie Fast Scan Forward and Fast Jump Forward)  We had to define how the Universal Remote Control[URC] (pre-learned) would handle this.  If you for example were controlling a remote control CD player with the URC and  pushed the power button for the CD player to turn off  before you pressed stop how would the URC handle that.  I am happy to say that we defined all that stuff and much more and today most all of the URCs in the market place use the URC rules that were set up in that 12 hour phone call.
Steve Wozniak, from Apple calls RS with a new idea for a remote control.  I attended another Consumer Electronic Show and had Steve show me how an Apple computer could program a learning remote control.  I did not have the heart to tell him I had already passed that and my new remote control had all of the programing and control codes built-in to the remote. 
The RS 15-1904 URC hits the market and starts selling much to BA and BBM surprise.  The sales at first were small but steadily growing each month.  What we found from talking to customers is that consumers were not consolidating many remotes into one but replacing a lost or broken remote with our URC.   Manufacturers of equipment that used remote controls were charging as much as $100.00 to replace a lost or broken remote and the 15-1904 was less than $25.00.  What a savings.  Sales the first full year we had 15-1904 exceeded 100K units and it was not long before we sold half a million units and the rest as they say is history.
Today 100s of millions of units are sold and I am proud to say I was there at the very beginning and put my two cents in.
 As a side note, during the 3rd year of selling the 15-1904 George Stevenson the founder of X-10, who builds most of today's remote controls under private label, said "that while I had created a nice little business for RS in remote controls, that over all the category would never amount to much".  Just goes to show you.

Years later and several remote control models later my good friend Chuck Collison who was the industrial designer for RS and myself created the ITZA line of remote controls.  Those very colorful remotes aimed at kids.  And to the lady whose name is and was Itza, thank you for the very nice letter you sent Chuck and I.  And you thought you would never be famous.  As Chuck would often say to me privately, What a ITZA? ITZA remote. (Sorry Chuck). 
Chuck was the guy a RS that helped me with design.  Many of the button lay-outs used in today's remote controls came from ideas Chuck had.  The fact that you press the red record button twice to get the remote control to start the recorders record function came from Chuck.  The first full key board light up URC idea came from my wife and Universal Electronics made it happen.  Universal Electronics and RS were quite a force in the early years of URC development.  Thanks Tom and your team for all the great help, and for making me look good to RS Management at the time.