Wow - thanks for all the replies here. Note, I only have a few hours at night spread over the week to do this, so I'm a bit slow with replies and followups.
I took the initial posts realizing I needed to make a small test circuit to "prove" I could get the transistor working. As it's been pointed out there, I've had the transistors turned the wrong ways at times - looks like there's no consistency on the pin connections even using the model number - well, another newbie lesson learned. And yes, it is really confusing when most data sheets just shows the metal cap and others are bad photo-copies scanned in. That said, I managed to get a very simple 5v setup working. When I applied current through a resistor on the base, rgw LED turned on. I even got it to reverse so the LED turned off when I applied a current to base. Happy camper, it works as I hoped it would. So that got me thinking that all I needed was ONE transistor so I created this small circuit This is part of a slightly larger of my EEPROM writer/reader thing - I've left out a lot details that doesn't deal with the transistor side.
In essence I'm getting outputs from a 74-595. Only ONE line is going to be active at a time (software controlled). When the A line is high, I want to apply 14v, when the B line is active, I want 12v and when the C line, I want the lined grounded. This goes into a W27C512's OE line needed to indicate the state of the operation (read, write, erase). I combine the emitter output through a diode so there's no feedback current/voltage. Now, I wouldn't be writing this if this worked.
So I started out with the two transistor option, as that is what searching around seemed to indicate I needed. Since I'm not able to fully explain WHY I need 2, I have attempted what I thought was a more straight forward solution. Since I got a bunch of 3906 and 2222As for a few dollars on Ebay I have plenty to experiment with, to destroy so if that happens it's not a big deal. Perhaps they're not the best ones for this, but my simple reading of the data sheet seems to indicate they're safe up to 20v and since my current need/input is low I didn't think I needed "specialized" transistors for a small proof of concept.
Of everything written so far by everyone, it's clear "I don't get it". The simple math stuff being used to explain the resistor sizes is foreign to me. Not the math itself, but why it's used. So I definitely need to go back to basis. I'm slowly going through the book "Practical Electronics for inventors, fourth edition" when I have time. But so far it's been great at putting me to sleep - talking quantum physics when all I want to do is figure out how to do simple logic based circuits is a bit too much for me. I've not yet gotten to the transistor section yet so I probably should give my experiments a rest and do some reading (I learn best by doing). I definitely need to get a better understanding of hFE and similar concepts so I can measure/plan out what will work. A lot of what I've done so far is simply trying things out with low voltage and limiting the current to 200mA (or use a battery).
So if the original layout/schema is the way to go, I'll setup another separate circuit and give it a try. I did try with 14V on the collector and that seemed to work. Only problem is that I always get the potential voltage when I measure the C/E of the transistor - so I'm not really sure it's actually working with 14v. It didn't get hot etc. so it looked like it was working.
So now that I've showed a rough diagram of what I now thought was the better solution, I'm sure the feedback will be even heavier on what not to do. Anyway, my problem is that when I measure on the voltage where pin 14 will be, I do even remotely see the voltages I see on the collector. And the emitter currents are MUCH SMALLER (50% or so) than what's coming in on the collector (voltage potential) so well, I'm not sure why that is.
Thanks again for the feedback. Amazing forum and people here.