Could be dangerous, this looking back…ask Satchel Paige. The years certainly are gaining (inevitable). As is the weight (my bad). One thing receding is my hairline. Well, and memory.
Fortunate that 50 years just happens to fall in 2026. The memories of Tappan Zee High School have come flooding back, thanks to my classmates. Our class reunion organizers are saints for affording us this chance, perhaps a last, to return to the scene of the times. Growth times. Change times. New York times. Good times.
As good as they were, the whole idea was to graduate and leave. I got that part. So, I did. Fortunately, TZ made that eminently possible. A robust, challenging and fairly diverse curriculum included the shop wing on the lower floor with a mechanical drawing room. It came complete with state-of-the-art equipment: T-squares and bumwad, and an ammonia tube for developing blueprints which probably took 10 years off my life. Nevertheless, it also provided the inspiration for a career in architecture (thank you Mr. Bromm). Five years later Cornell gave me a B.Arch. and a future of endless alumni fundraising requests. After a very short time in NYC it was back Upstate to Ithaca, the Finger Lakes and a real job.
After 45 years at the same firm, having held every position from lowly, oppressed draughtsman to the last eight years as company President, I chose COVID as the time to leave. That was the plan; not COVID per se, but retiring at the right time. Okay, the pandemic delayed that, but it was time to go. And it was a great run. We did creative, fun, inspiring work; mostly health care and higher ed but also affordable multiple-housing. Very rewarding right livelihood in service to people and their needs. Additional good karma came with a library for His Holiness The Dalai Lama. Who knew there are Buddhist monks in Ithaca?
Of course, there was so much more to offer Upstate. Such as the opportunity to raise two children with my late wife in a beautiful, bucolic region, with a right-sized city dominated by institutions of higher education. Nevertheless, my son couldn’t wait to get the heck out of town after high school and beat it back down to NYC for university and work and the Big City life. Daughter is an adventurer: Uni in Scotland, travels/volunteering in South and Central America, the Galapagos, snorkeling in Thailand, farmer and artist in North Carolina, now in Wisconsin.
Then more life. The parents passed — that’s hell, isn’t it, friends. Wife passed way too early. Work, work, work. Finally the sun shone: on a pilgrimage in 2010 to Nova Scotia for a Gathering of my Scottish-American clan association (that’s clan with a “c”). There I met a Southern Belle who seven years later, in a moment of weakness, agreed to save my soul and say “yes”.
As a lifelong denizen of North Carolina she knew about this awesome, remote retreat we now call home: the Great Smoky Mountains. Debby brings her own two children to our blended family, with their own careers, so we spend a fair amount of time in Charlotte, NYC, and Wisconsin when we can. Otherwise, it’s rise and shine to the sun peaking over the mountain ridges, hiking, kayaking, supporting the burgeoning craft beer industry, avoiding bears. Life is good.
Looking forward to March and a reconnect, if only for a short time before we all return to where life has led. If nothing else, the In Memoriam page speaks to that importance.
See y’all soon!