McLaury earned a master's degree in math from OU and taught for a time before returning to OU to work in the meteorology department.

"Then I started doing programming for different departments," and finally he took his computer skills into industry. He developed software for several commercial outfits, including a food broker. "I didn't even know what a food broker was when I got that job."

He now works for the Department of Education where he developed the software for the school lunch program and now oversees the computers that monitor the distribution of more than $40 million each year in lunch funds for day care homes and centers.

It was in the early 1970s when he got his first personal computer, a Zenith. Even having worked in the computer industry for nearly 50 years and having transitioned through several programming softwares, he isn't speculating on what the future holds.

"I hesitate to predict," the Lawton native said, but he believed it is possible that one day no one will use a keyboard with the computer responding to voice command, software that is in its infancy now.

"It works, but it will get much better. I have seen some of it (translation software) and it is hard to make sense of it. All of these things will get much better."

McLaury doesn't spend much time online on his own computer, preferring to spend free time with his collie Megabyte and playing handball. His wife Ann is also a computer programmer, working for Seagate Industries. He and their son Daniel, a recent OU graduate, are looking into joint ventures in the computer programming world.