Hi everyone,

It has been a wild roller coaster ride these past forty years. 
Chapter one... I went to YVC for one year then spent 15 months in Vietnam.  I was wounded in action a couple of times so my college was completely paid for at Central ending in a Physics degree.  Later in life I attended U. of Santa Clara where I was one class shy of an MBA.  (In Memoriam: While in Vietnam, I was returning from R&R and I had the good fortune to run into our classmate Doug Jones who was just coming in country.  Previously, on R&R I had met a member of his unit who had told me about them being overrun and resulted in hand to hand combat.  Doug was with a tough bunch of guys and three of them were lost on March 8th, 1970, including Doug.  We can be proud to have known him).
Next Chapter..... I headed to San Francisco to enter the Wholesale Optical Business (eyeglasses) with my Grandfather.  I wound up supervising three labs in San Jose, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.  Eventurally, I bought the San Jose lab.  Our own K.L. Johnson and his now wife, Carol, worked with me.  Bob Allwardt entered the picture for a short time also (he made me get a pilot's license).  Even with that much West Valley horsepower we couldn't pull it off and had to sell it before it closed  I only lost a house on that one.  Somewhere in there I got married and had two great sons, Andy and Matt.  I worked ther for a while longer until one of the new owners explored another opportunity with a Japanese company.
Chapter.... We headed for Portland, Or. and went to work for a Japanese (Norita) firm doing Anti-Reflection coatings on eyeglass lenses.  These coatings are one quarter of a wavelength of light thick.  It turned out to be a good skill to learn, because, in stepped SOLA optical, a large lens manufacturerwho was looking to buy Norita.  Negotiations broke down, and as it turned out, Sola bought me instead.  
Chapter... Headed back to California, in Petaluma, to work in Research and Development. Sola handed me $1.5 million for my project to set-up an AR coating lab. Now that was some fun! I was fortunate enough to travel around the world picking up new technologies and to also set-up their lab. Oh, oh this is too easy...time to leave..
Chapter.... Here I go again.  Partnered up with a couple of guys in Portland, Or. again and started my own company to do AR coatings.  We mortgaged everything and started on a shoestring.  I was sleeping in an old trailer behind the lab, broke, but determined.  With some very committed employees we worked around the clock to build our business.  We found some old junk compact disk coating machines and turned them into Optical AR coaters.  (We were told it couldn't be done but we were too dumb to believe it.)  The business grew to approximately 1000 jobs a day so we opened a branch in Los Angeles.  Somewhere in this chapter, I got a divorce.
Chapter....Here comes Sola again.  They bought us out and franchised my technology to other locations in the U.S.  I spent three years traveling for them and finally retired at 53.  Oh, yes, got married again and have an 11 year old son, Spencer.  That's our picture doing the Macarena at his grade school (provided my wife doesn't delete it).  I am proud to say that my business with all of our employees was recently purchased by Zeiss Optical from Sola.  Everyone has done well.
Chapter.... Let 'er buck!  Who doesn't want to be a cowboy?  Well, I moved to the Wyoming boondocks where we have a 475 acre ranch (small by Wyoming standards) with 3 miles of river on it.  I commute to work on an ATV (no horses for me) and my best clothes are jeans and a Carhartt jacket.  I help my neighbor run about 100 cow/calf pairs on our ranch.  (We do the branding exactly like it was on the Horse Whisperer).   'Git 'er done'.  My son Spencer and I grow hay on about 100 acres (at 9 he was driving the tractor and doing the baling, this is a great place for kids.)  I only raise about a dozen head for myself which we finish for the natural beef market.  Currently, We are building a new house on the ranch.  The pay is terrible, work is hard, but the "Ranch Lifestyle" is great for us boys.  Unfortunately, Mom, a city girl, (you know the type, Green Acres...give me Park Avenue) isn't digging the bobwire repair and lifting bales of hay.....still I can hope.  In my spare time I volunteer at the local Community Center as the Treasurer/bookeeper/computer network administrator.  We furnish after school programs for the kids and some Senior activity programs.  I'm even learning how to camp!!!!  Whoopie!!!
Chapter.... Not sure what's next......we'll have to find out @@@@@@ the 50th.

Take care to all!

Forty years in a paragraph or two?? Let's see...

We moved to Spokane the day after graduation, and I attended Eastern in Cheney for a couple of years before moving to Seattle to work for Air West (you remember Air West--"the On-Time Airline"!) When Joe finished his Army stint, we were married in 1970 (it'll be 37 years tomorrow, on the 10th). We honeymooned in Mexico, where we shared our bed with bedbugs.

When his company offered him a transfer to the San Francisco Bay Area, we considered it a two-year adventure, and accepted. Twenty years later, we were finally back in the Northwest. It was an adventure, though; we raised a wonderful daughter and son there, and it was great timing for Joe's electronics background. I worked and volunteered in the school district, we were lucky enough to travel to some amazing destinations (Australia, England, Scotland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Mexico...)We thought we had it all!

We were getting really homesick for the Northwest, though, and when the computer industry slumped in the early 1990s, we bit the bullet, chucked everything and moved to Coeur d'Alene. Our daughter, Sarah, was finishing up at UW by then, our parents were aging, and it seemed like the right time to come back. I began working for the Kootenai County Sheriff's Office, and Joe worked in the computer industry in Spokane, eventually retiring as Director of Operations with a company that builds ruggedized laptops. I stayed with the County for twelve years, and retired also in 2004. We're currently being mini-cattle barons, raising a few natural beef cattle, doing lots of fishing, camping, playing in the lake, growing the biggest garden on record (I didn't have much turf in California!), snowshoeing, skiing, and hibernating. I do an extended kayak trip here and there, mostly on the Flathead, Clark Fork, and Missouri Rivers.

We still think we have it all. We live in the most beautiful place imaginable, but we commute frequently to Alaska since both of our childrens' families live in Anchorage. We have the three smartest grandchildren on the planet. Tragically, we lost our son just last month, to a sudden cardiac arrest. Tom was 31, a wonderful son, husband and father, and we will miss him terribly. We'll be in Alaska even more often now, helping his wife and daughter as needed. We feel so privileged to have had him in our lives, but it's still a little too new to know where we go from here.

I guess that's all the news that's fit to print. Like everyone else, I suspect, I re-read what I've written and realize that for everything I've said, there are mountains of things unsaid. Anyway, the journey has been, for the most part, an experience I wouldn't trade for anything. We've been touched by teenage years, old-people aches and pains, tragedy and more, but I'm still looking forward to the next adventure.