Rick Curtis
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Rick Curtis |
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| Silver Spring, MD | ||
| [email protected] | ||
| Rick attended U of M where he
enjoyed and learned from a variety of extracurricular activities and inadvertently did
well academically. As an undergraduate he concentrated on economics and obtained a
graduate degree in public policy. He reports ongoing friendships with several of his
college friends, one of whom (Arthur Tai) is the namesake for his son Tyler and is his
dad’s physician in the Ann Arbor area. He has worked in the health insurance policy
field (e.g., covering the uninsured, not fixing the human body) since graduate school
— first for four years in Lansing, then two in Denver. In 1979 he and his wife and
son Tyler moved to the Washington, DC area intending to stay for two or three years, but
he has been there ever since, and nine years ago initiated the small Institute he
continues to head. Rick and his wife were separated about three and a half years after their arrival in D.C. and Tyler’s birth, but he feels very fortunate that she had the heart and the wisdom to want him as Tyler’s father in their son’s life, and that they have remained good friends. Rick’s girlfriend is a biophysicist with NASA (but by her own admission has no sense of direction) who has a 10-year-old daughter and the energy to keep up with her despite being only one year younger than Rick. This May, Tyler graduated from Beloit College in Wisconsin, and Rick describes him as warm, smart but balanced, funny and self-effacingly self-aware. He looks at least enough like Rick to fall for the show-your-son-your-high-school-picture-and-ask-him-when-it-was-taken trick. Like many of us, Rick indicates he has been somewhat floundering for a centering identity now that he’s an empty nester. Rick also relates: For the last several years my major mistake — er, avocation — has been the acquisition, renovation and expansion of an old house, under the untutelage of a contractor whose physical demeanor and worldview bear a remarkable resemblance to those of Archie Bunker, with the added attribute of extreme attention deficit disorder. The original owner had been a mason who built it himself — howevert the proud first owner was a specialist — a sewer mason — explaining some unusual design and structural configurations. So many things have gone awry that I named the house Character Building a couple of years ago — that’ll also be the name of any book or movie. But the (can’t afford it) space is gratifyingly pleasing as it nears completion; aspiring realtors say it’s beautifully marketable; and the experience has been good for a lifetime of character-building stories. |
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