User:Jdiverson
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James David Iverson II was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma on December 16, 1962, son of Caroel Anne Spangler (m) and James David Iverson, a prominent attorney and public defender. The couple had two other children, Sidney Elizabeth and Kimberly Dianne, aged 3 and 4 when James was born. Their city of residence was Tulsa, a picturesque Midwest city known for its urban forest and park system.
‘David’, as he was known at home, had an ideal early childhood until tragedy struck at the age of 8 when his father was killed in a car accident. The family recovered and was close and supportive of each other. When James was 11 he went on a sailing trip with his mother and a local physician to the Lesser Antilles islands. James thought the experience was incredible and it helped to open the boy’s mind to different forms of exploration.
James attended local public and private schools until the age of 12, when his mother married Jon Noel Chafin, a successful industrialist and former Naval Intelligence field operative.
After marriage, James' mother moved the family to Alderson, West Virginia, where Mr. Chafin had a coal mining operation. At that time he was sent to the prestigious Cardigan Mountain School for Boys where he received an excellent education that was strong in the sciences, history and athletics.
It was at this time that James began to show promise in the sciences. During his first year at Cardigan James began to exhibit profound insight into the workings of the physical world, his inventive mind came up with concepts such as fiber-optic conductors and a novel method to bend tubing during his first months there. He was seldom wrong on any of his test questions in science-oriented class-work and often had to contend with the displeasure of his classmates at his endless string of ‘100s’ in the class rankings. Intelligence testing revealed an IQ approaching 200.
After high school James began attending college at Oklahoma State University but stopped attending due to financial problems after one semester. Music was his art, and he spent several years in the music industry before returning to college at age 26. Graduation with a bachelor’s in engineering occurred in 1994.
James began the usual payment of dues for a rookie engineer out on his own and worked his way to a job with F.W. Murphy Mfg, in Tulsa. That experience was to have key impact on his future. While employed there Iverson designed a small control unit for use on Trident nuclear submarines. The design was simple but functional and he considered it a nice accomplishment to have the privilege to build something for the military. Using that experience he then went to work for companies such as Northrop Grumman and Pratt & Whitney.
Today James Iverson is one of the country’s top engineers of jet and rocket propulsion systems and is living on the west coast.
