Melvin H. (Mack) McKinney Seaside Software (dba askSam Systems) Records

Melvin H. “Mack” McKinney was born in 1938 on Aruba in the Netherlands West Indies while his father was working for Standard Oil. His father was an engineer who designed and built refineries and other chemical processing facilities. Mack grew up in Pecos in west Texas but spent his last two years of high school at New Mexico Military Institute in Roswell NM. He went on to study Industrial Management Engineering at Oklahoma University. As he was discovering his path in life computers were emerging and becoming accessible to a broader audience.

He was at Oklahoma University when they received their first computer and took the only computer course available at OU. He subsequently worked at IBM and other tech companies as the field of computer science grew. Mack wrote programs for many businesses and moved around the country exploring the developing field and possibilities. After writing a program to automate Bee County College facility maintenance Mack tried his hand at teaching data processing there. As he enjoyed teaching, he opted to go back to school to get more degrees to teach at a higher level. He then obtained his MS and PhD in Computer Science from Texas A&M University. He then taught for three years at what is now the University of Louisiana before joining the Computer Science program at Corpus Christi State University (Now Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi).

Mack met Belitha "Bea" (Buzard) (Brandon) while teaching at CCSU. As a Consultant for Corpus Christi Independent School District in charge of Inservice Training Bea attended Mack's class "Computers: A Layman's Introduction" in May 1978 and then in September 1978 met with Mack and the head of the CCISD's Data Management Department. At the end of this meeting, Mack asked Bea to go sailing and they continued dating until they married on their sailboat, KARMA in the Corpus Christi marina on June 11, 1981. While recovering from back surgery in 1983, Mack began the development of what became askSam, and Bea became a strong supporter and promoter of their company, Seaside Software, Inc. serving as Vice-President from 1983 until 2002. Together they moved from Corpus Christi, TX to Aptos, CA, then to Casey Key, Keaton Beach and Spring Warrior near Perry, FL, then to DeWitt County, TX and are now retired in Silver City, NM. Throughout the years, Mack and Bea enjoyed traveling to promote askSam with the press, at user conferences and during trade shows in both the United States and Europe.