William and Sharon (Sutton) Waggoner Family

William and Sharon (Sutton) Waggoner Family
William and Sharon (Sutton) Waggoner Family family tree

Places Lived

Vehicles Owned

Family History

Bill was a student at Purdue and worked part time in a grocery store called “Smitty’s” stocking the dairy department. The deli was adjacent to the dairy. One day, a pretty girl with long blond hair was talking to Donna, the deli attendant, and Bill noticed her. After the girl left, Bill asked Donna who was that girl and how could he meet her. Donna said her name was Sharon and she worked at a pastry shop in Lafayette a few blocks from the Purdue campus.

Bill got his courage up and walked to the pastry shop, introduced himself, talked with her a while, and asked her if she would like to go out with him. She said yes at the end of October 1975. This is how Sharon and Bill met.

They began dating each other. One day Sharon came to the mobile home where Bill lived driving her brother Rick’s car, a Corvette convertible. She brought an apple pie in the car with her. They took a ride in the Corvette, and she let Bill drive. At that point, she had him hooked.

A few months later, Bill called his parents and asked them to meet him at a coffee shop in West Lafayette to talk about something. Bill told them he had fallen in love with a girl named Sharon, and told them he wanted to marry her. They gave him their blessing to get married. Bill asked Sharon to marry him in January 1976, and they were married in May. Their honeymoon consisted of driving to Canada and seeing the sights along the way.

That summer in 1976 Bill got a job working at a nuclear power plant, the Donald C. Cook Nuclear Plant in Michigan which was under construction. They rented an apartment in Niles, Michigan, for the summer and Sharon worked at a local deli. Bill and a co-worker tested the continuity of electrical cable runs between the control room and equipment located throughout the plant.

At the end of the summer, they returned to Purdue for Bill’s senior year and lived in married student housing on campus. They went to a movie theater across the street to see the first Star Wars movie. It was amazing!

Bill graduated from Purdue with a BS degree in Mechanical Engineering at the end of the 1977 summer semester. During placement interviews at Purdue, Bill looked for a job at a commercial nuclear power plant but was unable to find one. He had a campus interview with a company called Babcock and Wilcox, Naval Nuclear Fuel Division (NNFD), in Lynchburg Virginia that built nuclear reactors for the US Navy. It fit his nuclear and engineering educational background, and Bill accepted a job offer as an Engineer.

Bill and Sharon moved to Lynchburg and rented an apartment. Bill started work at the NNFD and Sharon got a part time job at Leggett’s, a department store in Lynchburg. She worked there for about a year. It was there where Sharon met Adelaide Draper who became a lifelong friend.

Bill and Sharon bought a five acre tract of land in Lynchburg out in the country adjacent to Long Mountain. Sharon put up a wire fence around the property for her horses. In the summer of 1978 they drove back to Indiana and brought Sharon’s horses, Stormy Eagle and Silver to Virginia. She carried water and food to them in five gallon buckets for several months in the cold and snow of winter.

In September 1978 Bill and two of his work friends started building a barn after work and on weekends. When the barn was finished in November, the barn provided the downpayment equity to approve a loan to build a split level brick house. They hired a contractor to build a split level brick house. Work started in May 1979 by drilling a well. Home construction was finished in October.

Bill and Sharon had two children born in Lynchburg, Philip in 1983 and Joshua in 1986. After Philip was born, Bill worked second shift at the NNFD and went to Lynchburg College during the daytime to study computer science. He ended up a few courses shy of a BS degree in Computer Science.

Bill introduced new technologies at the NNFD that involved using one Digital Equipment Corp. (DEC) PDP-11 computer and new electronic measuring devices to orient nuclear subassemblies to their optimum dimensions. Computer printouts were sent to the machine shop with the assemblies where they were setup and machined to the specs on the printout. Bill presented the technology to government engineers at Bettis and Knolls Atomic Power Labs.

Expecting to stay in Lynchburg, Bill and Sharon had an in-ground pool built, and enjoyed it for a short while. The US government cut back on the number of reactors that needed building and added a second vendor to build them, taking work away from the NNFD. Bill decided he needed to avoid the cutbacks and work changes that were coming to NNFD.

Bill retired from the NNFD with ten years’ service and accepted a job opening at the Illinois Department of Nuclear Safety (IDNS) in Springfield, Illinois as Manager of Computer Operations. IDNS monitored thirteen nuclear reactors in Illinois and used DEC computers to receive continuous data which engineers and scientists evaluated. The job was a perfect fit for Bill, and the location was closer to his and Sharon’s parents.

After just completing the pool, they sold their home in Lynchburg, bought a home in Springfield Illinois with a barn and some land, and moved the horses and their family to Springfield in August 1987.

Sharon and the boys drove to Springfield in the Chevelle, and Bill drove the truck with Stormy and the dogs in the horse trailer. The water pump on the truck failed in Roanoke around 5 pm. Bill was lucky and very thankful to find a shop owner who would stay late and replace the pump after quitting time while the animals waited in the trailer.

Sharon raised the boys in Springfield while Bill worked at the IDNS. She was an active Den Mother in the Cub Scout and Boy Scout programs and helped each son earn the rank of Eagle Scout. Bill helped the boys make wooden Derby cars, attended meetings, camped out, and drove for some long distance Scout camping trips when he could.

In 2003, the Illinois Governor, Rod Blagojevich, merged the IDNS with the Illinois Emergency Management Agency (IEMA). Bill took on the role of Network Engineer for the newly merged agency. Bill and a co-worker visitedall of the Illinois nuclear power plants to perform network maintenance activities.

In 2004, Illinois needed to build a bigger and more modern facility where people meet when an emergency is declared in Illinois. The new facility would be called the State Emergency Operations Center (SEOC). Bill was tasked with designing the IT infrastructure for the new facility, documenting the plan, and overseeing the technical testing and implementation phases of the IT project.

The new SEOC facility was completed and commissioned by the Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich in September of 2007. Bill and some of his co-workers presented the SEOC Data Center to the Governor just before it’s official opening. The Governor also toured the other Centers in the SEOC.

After it’s completion, Bill’s work location became the data center in the SEOC facility. Bill and Sharon bought a new home that was under construction at a location which was easier for Bill to drive to his job at the SEOC. They sold their Springfield home in the country and moved their family into the new home in November 2004. Bill officially resigned from IEMA on June 29, 2012 and retired from IEMA with an effective date of July 1, 2012 after 25 years of service with the State of Illinois.

After Bill’s retirement, he and Sharon became Springfield grandparents when Eli Waggoner was born. We cared for him for three years at our home while his parents were at work. When Isaak was born, we cared for him for three years, and we did the same for Charlotte when she was born. Helping the grandchildren grow and thrive, and bonding with them in friendship and love, was a highlight of our lives for both of us.

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After Wedding Voices
Wedding Ceremony

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