FAVORITE MEMORIES OF WILLIAMS

I was a member of the Berkshire Symphony Orchestra during my years at Williams, which I enjoyed a great deal. Irwin Shainman, who was then the chairman of the Music Department at Williams was a good friend and mentor to me for a number of years. I was perhaps most influenced by my French Department professors, in particular Professors Savacool and Pistorius—both of whom encouraged me to take my junior year in Paris, which turned out to be the most pivotal year of my college education.

CURRENT INTERESTS, PASSIONS, AND ORGANIZATIONS

My wife and I are supporters of the arts, especially opera. We are members of the Metropolitan Opera Guild in NYC. I enjoy film, theater, and playing the piano in spite of my arthritic fingers. I also enjoy hiking, gardening, cooking, reading, and yoga to keep my body moving.

LIFE SINCE GRADUATION

Greetings, everyone! I’m looking forward to the Williams 50th reunion with anticipation. My wife, Alison, and I have been married for 46 years, and we have two grown children (a son and a daughter) and two grandsons, ages nine and four. The Washington, DC, metro area has been my home for many years; I recently retired after a long career as an executive in the information technology industry, and I’m now enjoying my favorite leisure pursuits with Alison, which include the arts, travel, yoga, gardening, and time with the kids and grandkids.

Having returned to Williams in September ‘71 after spending my junior year in Paris, I found myself adrift during my senior year. Upon graduating, not having a sense of what I wanted to do careerwise, I ended up at the University of Chicago (by default, I have to say), enrolled in a French PhD program. That lasted all of three weeks, as I quickly came to see that my heart wasn’t in it. So I unenrolled myself, packed up my car, and regrouped. I had several Class of ‘72 friends (Chuck Downs, Bill Thorn, Lindsay Beaman) who had found work in the Washington, DC, area, so I moved there, hoping to do the same. Chuck was working at the Library of Congress, in the Congressional Research Service (CRS), and he thought I might be able to find a position there. As it turns out, the gentleman who interviewed me was a Williams alum (Dic Barian ‘44, head of the American Law Division at CRS), and lo and behold, I got the job. I ended up working at the Library for four years, enjoying firsthand the drama of the Watergate hearings and Nixon’s resignation, and gaining an appreciation for the attractions of the nation’s capital.

At CRS I was working with some of the first online information retrieval systems developed in the US. This interested me and led me to get my MBA in information technology management at the George Washington University. I then left the Library for the private sector, joining a start-up IT consulting firm in DC (American Management Systems), where I stayed for over 25 years. During the 80s I worked on projects for many Cabinet-level federal agencies, including multiyear assignments with the Department of State and US Agency for International Development, implementing worldwide financial, procurement, and real estate management systems. My work included travel throughout much of Europe, the Far East, Africa (with a memorable stay in Kinshasa), Mexico, and parts of Central America. I even got to conduct a few business meetings in French with local embassy officials whose English was even less fluent than my rusty French.

The ‘90s brought some interesting work challenges for me, all of them based in the US. I set up regional offices for my company in New Orleans and Austin and spent a good deal of time in both locations. In 2007, I joined a new start-up software company and enjoyed a “second career” in the IT industry until my retirement in 2018.

For many years, opera has been a passion for both Alison and me. We are frequently in NYC to visit our son’s family and take in performances at the Met whenever we can. Our travels have taken us to many of the world’s great opera houses, including Covent Garden, Glyndebourne, Paris, Vienna, La Scala, Sydney, Santa Fe—and we’re hoping to expand our list as we learn to deal with the challenges of travel in the age of Covid. I’m very much looking forward to reconnecting with my classmates in the Purple Valley this June.