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Personal
History
Born in 1946 and raised
in Stratford, CT, I graduating from Stratford High School in 1963.
I was fortunate to win the Rentschler Four-Year Mathematics Prize;
Rensselaer Polytechnic Math and Science Award; Bausch and Lomb Science Award, and
American Chemical Society Award in my senior year. (I was also the first
student from SHS to be awarded a National Merit Scholarship.) I also played a bit of
basketball in the local YMCA Church league and was president of my church's
Youth Fellowship. A lifelong love of music began in 6th grade when I
started playing drums.
I attended MIT on that fully
funded four-year National Merit Scholarship – tuition
in 1963 was $1500! My BSEE
Thesis for Prof. Cam Searle was the development of a solid-state oscilloscope,
during which time I started as a TA in an upper-class solid-state lab
my senior year. (I was inducted into the
Sigma Xi research honorary society my senior year, based on this thesis.)
I stayed at MIT for
my MSEE – my MS thesis for Dr. Amar Bose (yes, that Bose…) was improving
speech recognition using compandering. I
also received my EE (professional or 6th year) degree from MIT,
while being the lead TA in that solid-state lab.
During
this time I was also involved with the MIT Radio Society, W1MX, played a bit of
intramural hockey and softball, and was heavily involved in the MIT Concert
Band, the MIT Gilbert & Sullivan Society, and what was then known as Tech
Show, a student written and produced musical, as a percussionist. Along with my
MIT diplomas, I am equally proud of receiving the Baton Society (MIT's musical
honorary) Award, one of four given to seniors my year, "for His
Outstanding Contributions to Musical Life at MIT." I still play
the drums now and then. While at MIT I also learned to play tennis, which
became my "lifelong" sport.
During college I worked for
three summers as an electrician's helper at Carpenter Steel (a steel mill) in
Bridgeport, CT, where my Dad was an electrician.
Then, after I my SBEE, I worked for two summers at Singer Metrics in Bridgeport
( a part of Singer Sewing Machine Co.) as a development engineer on an RF signal
generator. This is where I first heard of Hewlett-Packard, a competitor.
Early in 1969 I was hired by
HP Medical R&D in Waltham, MA. At HP I initially
worked on early computer aided electrocardiographic
diagnostic systems.
I also enjoyed going back to MIT to recruit new HP employees. In 1976 I
was fortunate to be one of seven engineers to start a new and
ultimately successful business within HP's Medical Group in Real-time
Diagnostic Cardiac Ultrasound.
(It
is now a major part of Philips Medical Imaging.)
Outside
of work, while living in Burlington, MA, with my first wife and two daughters, I
was on the town's Finance Committee, a member of Town Meeting, and the Treasurer
of the Burlington Swim and Tennis Club.
Back at HP, in 1985 I was looking for
another challenge and became the Section Manager for a new group in the Ultrasound Lab,
responsible for improving The R&D Process using the concepts of
Total Quality Control – applying
TQC to R&D Labs was a new
concept at the time. This included establishing the lab’s Computer Aided
Design (CAD) environment, the SW Testing and Quality group, and technical education for all
engineers (along with inheriting the Industrial Design engineers and Printed
Circuit Layout group) for
all Ultrasound products. By default, I was the R&D lead for the
division's ISO9000 effort. I learned
more about engineering – and people – during this part of my career than any
other. I was also the Medical Group representative on a couple of HP corporate level technical
committees.
We moved to Winchester,
MA, in 1985, where my two daughters graduated from High School. In
Winchester I became heavily involved with the Winchester Unitarian Society, ending up on the Board of
Trustees from 1991 to 1999, including Chair of the Board during the last three
years. I then served as Moderator of the church's congregational meetings
for four years. Robert's Rules rule! I also was involved
with the Winchester Players, a community theater group, serving as
their set construction crew chief (and now and then set designer) for many years.
By 1993 I had become
disenchanted with R&D Management and its budgets, personnel evaluations,
etc., and “quit” the Medical Ultrasound R&D
Lab. Moving to the Medical
Group’s education department, I was responsible for all of HP Medical R&D
engineers’ technical and project management training. This included
writing and teaching a project management course for non-project managers and
engineers, which helped technicians and administrators support R&D
projects. When
Agilent Technologies split out of HP in 1995, I became the WW Program Manager
for Agilent’s corporate Learning Management System (LMS). Retiring in
2005 from Agilent Technologies (when Agilent split out their
semiconductor business as Avago Technologies), I became an independent
consultant for Avago in eLearning, education platforms, and their
LMS. I finally retired for good in January 2012.
(Avago is now Broadcom.)
Nineteen Ninety Three was
also the year when my first wife
and I decided to separate. After three years in an apartment where I became
involved again with Ham Radio (see above), I finally moved to my present home in Woburn in 1996, met my new
wife Maren,
and remarried in 2003.
Between July 2008 and July
2021 we also had a second home in Harpswell, ME, where for eight years I was the President of the private
road association. I learned a lot about roads!
Maren and I spend
time traveling as much
as we can and attend as many jazz and classical concerts as we can fit in.
(Well, when we could before COVID-19, and now after.) My daughter Em is a High School science teacher in Maine and my daughter Kate
lives in Ipswich MA and has a small business, The
Monarch Gardener. I have four grandchildren.
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