CLEARFIELD—When David Black graduated from high school in California he didn’t have any real direction of what he was going to do next. He was floating between small jobs and living with friends and family and kind of bouncing around until he got connected with Job Corps in Clearfield. 

That was 33 years ago and the skills he learned launched him into a machining career with  the same company, where he advanced into leadership and managed multiple production departments.

“One of my best friends found out about Job Corps somewhere,” said Black. “She recommended that her son and I go look into it and possibly go to it. There was a recruitment center pretty close to where we lived. We just jumped on the bus and went down there and talked to them.”

Black said they decided they were going to come to Utah and try the Clearfield facility. “It was one of the biggest facilities. It had a ton of different trades and it just looked really cool. We weren’t doing much so we thought we would just go ahead and try it. We signed up and then we came up to Clearfield.”

When he first got to Job Corps, Black said he wanted to get into the electrical program. “But at the time there was a one year waiting list to get started on that. I didn’t think I'd be up here (Utah) for more than six or nine months but I’m still here 35 years later.”

They took a tour and looked at all of the trades, he said. “We walked through the mechanic shop, so the machining program, machine technology. You could get right in. There was no waiting list and it seemed really cool using machinery and tools and making things and we just kind of decided to do that.”

That’s basically how he got into the trade, said Black. “Then it just stuck after that. I finished the machining program at Clearfield and then a group of us, three or four, that graduated around the same time went on to DATC.”

Black said while he was enrolled in Job Corps he lived on campus. “My instructor got a phone call from a guy that he knew at the company I eventually worked for my whole career. He was looking for an entry level machinist so I went down there and interviewed and then did on the job training while I was still at Job Corps.” 

They hired him, he said. “They actually called Job Corps and said ‘we need to get him out of the program as fast as we can’ and I started working full time for them.”

Black said Job Corps kind of sped up the program a week or so and got him going. “I was actually getting dropped off by a little van in Salt Lake City and working for a half a day and then coming back to Job Corps for a couple of weeks and then I just moved out and was full time at this job.”

The company recently sold the division he worked in, said Black. “So that was kind of the end of the road there. It was a great job and it was really good for me. It helped me buy a house and raise a family.”

That decision to go check out Job Corps paid off, he said. “I was kind of sitting in a dead end situation in California. I had a good family but it was the environment and the neighborhood. Things were probably going to go south if I didn’t put myself in a different direction.”

Black said he can’t imagine what he’d be doing now or where he’d be. “Things worked out perfectly by going to Job Corps. It was two of the funnest years of my life for sure.”