Hardhats/Original

The original Hardhats (also known as the VA Underground Railroad) worked from several different parts of the USA. Some of these places in California were at the San Francisco Veterans Administration Medical Center (VAMC), the Martinez VAMC, Livermore VA Nursing Home, Palo Alto VAMC, and the Loma Linda California, One area was San Francisco, where the FileMan and Scheduling packages were first developed by George Timson. Marty Ivers was the manager. Michael Distaso worked from Livermore on the Pharmacy package. Jim Bell started at Palo Alto Menlo Park (original VA based on Camp Fremont affiliated with Stanford built in the 1960s as a 1600 bed Mental Health care hospital) in 1980 using a PDP-11/70 with the Scheduling application and 1010 application. A few years later Ingrid S came to work there. Later Ingrid who was very athletic, had a heart attack swimming across San Francisco bay.