My college years …Hmmmmmmm…oh, yeah, I was a technical Theatre major at Santa Clara, and worked at the Golden Hinde Boatel (Inverness), California Shakespeare Festival (Los Gatos), and an apple/pear orchard (Yakima, WA) during the summers. I got my sheepskin in 1972, and lit out for New York in my ’66 Volvo to become a theatrical lighting designer.

I spent three years at the New York Shakespeare Festival, primarily as a sound tech. My last NYSF job was mixing sound for A CHORUS LINE before it moved to Broadway, after which I decided to pursue my future on the Great White Way. I joined the Alvin Ailey Dance Theatre, where I spent three years doing US and international tours, along with several New York engagements every year. The highlight was a round-the-world State Dept tour in 1977, which included dinner with Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos, a swim in the US ambassador’s residence in Teheran, and two weeks at the Festival d’Avignon.

In 1973, I had enrolled in a year-long lighting design course at a studio in the West Village, which was where I met a smart, gorgeous redheaded Texan named Nancy. In 1976, we bought a decrepit brownstone in Brooklyn (MOONSTRUCK neighborhood), and were married in 1977. We are still at the same house, although it is a bit less decrepit.

After three years with Ailey, I worked on several Broadway musicals, and then moved to Radio City Music Hall in 1979. I mixed sound there for three years– everything from THE CHRISTMAS SHOW to the 1981 GRAMMYS. I followed that with a year on the show NINE (sound mix again), during which time I got bit by the telecom/high tech bug, and enrolled in a Master’s program in Interactive Telecommunications at NYU in 1983. I was hired at Citicorp to manage their video conferencing technology in 1984, and graduated from NYU in 1988.

I stayed at Citicorp as a technology manager for 15 years, until the outsourcing demon finally caught up with me in 1999. I was hired by AT&T, but continued at Citi doing the same job. A year and a half later, AT&T and Citi ended their contract, and I moved to the Merrill Lynch account (still as AT&T). I am still with AT&T/ Merrill 2 ½ years later, although I now implement ultra highspeed optical fiber networks.

I am a member of the Gowanus Dredgers Canoe Club www.waterfrontmuseum.org/dredgers/. We are a non-profit group devoted to promoting the unique pleasures of exploring the urban waterfront, particularly the Gowanus Canal, a dilapidated but navigable waterway a block from my house. We organize clean-up days and provide free canoe rides to the community. Last year, while canoeing to Governor’s Island to celebrate the return of the island to New York, I capsized in 30-knot winds, and was rescued from Buttermilk Channel by the Coast Guard. It was one of those “your tax dollars at work” moments. Actually, they were in close proximity because they thought six canoes and forty kayakers might pose a security threat to the island. You know, radicals with paddles.

I also did two years of frostbite sailboat racing in New York harbor, but that was interrupted by 9/11 events. I haven’t sailed much lately, although I was a volunteer crew member on a restored 1893 Gloucester fishing schooner (the Lettie G. Howard, owned by the South Street Seaport Museum) from New York to Maine two summers ago.

Other hobbies – I go on organized bike rides, although I haven’t done any overnight trips yet. And I guess you could call our ongoing home renovation project a hobby, or perhaps a Sisyphean labor of love/hate. I confess to collecting Roseville pottery – the Green Pine Cone pattern only.

Nancy is my partner and safe haven. We don’t have kids (damn, I forgot), but we have a fine trio of cats, foundlings all. My cats are much more civilized than I am.

“How do you describe your guiding philosophy? What changed your life? What have you learned that helps you live well?”

My guiding philosophy is “love your neighbor as yourself”. New York changed my life. What I have learned is to “measure twice, cut once”.

“Are you glad you went to Midland? Why?”

While at Midland, I became more self-confident, articulate, and aware. Midland helped teach me how to love. My friends from Midland have become my friends for life. Midland taught me to be self-sufficient, and to rely on my own ingenuity to solve problems. I will always be grateful for Midland humor. Thank God for it.

Here is what I remember most fondly about Midland: hiking up Grass Mountain at midnight to watch the sunrise; grilling quail on our Panabode wood stove that Ruric Nye shot up on the Serpintine; shelling walnuts on the Mungers’ porch for lap duty; playing Poit Ball in the Hay Barn, bridge in The Studio, and Animal Soccer on the field; breaking my finger on Varsity Hill during Mud Day; being teased mercilessly about everything by Richard Smiley; having Archie explain what ordure means; singing hymns at evening chapel while Mr. Rhodes wailed away on the organ; watching all the faculty laugh at some private joke during assembly; and performing outrageously funny (to us at least) skits during the Spring Dance.

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