How I Spent My (last 50) Summer Vacation(s):

"Forget it I'm too old. You shouldn't start with an old person, too difficult."

"You're not old. You're dead."

The woman shrugged. "Dying is only a particularly exact way of getting old."

Mr. Gwyn

By Alessandro Baricco

"The pictures seem to be a day old to her. She still laughs at the drama club portrait, still remembers the shouting when the football team won the regional."

The Water Museum

By Luis Alberto Urrea

Life is in the details, all you have to do is pick up a James Michener novel to understand. I always thought you could tell more about a person from the songs they had on iTunes than their resume. It is said that most of our cells replenish every seven years, (not entirely true, but a nice notion) and if this is true, then our bodies have changed seven times since we graduated in '65.

Chapter 1: How can I be expected to go to school on a day like today? (Ferris Bueller's Day Off)

Admittedly I was not a good student in high school, the classic under achiever. It is surprising to me how much I really absorbed just by being there. So no surprise when I barely managed to scrape by at MCC after graduation. The only difference being, the draft lottery at that time and my birth date granting me a very low number.

Chapter2: Apocalypse Now!

No one was more surprised than I, to find that I had some talent for the military. I never really bought into the whole military attitude, but found that I could play the game as well as anyone else. Besides, I needed to survive.

Because I had some college and because I was always good at taking tests, they sent me off to Officer Candidate School at Ft. Benning, GA. I was commissioned a second lieutenant and sent off to Ranger School.

My first real duty assignment was Schofield Barracks, HI where we trained as a battalion before deploying to Vietnam.

I managed somehow to survive Vietnam and managed to earn myself a Purple Heart (for catching shrapnel in my right shoulder) and two bronze stars. My mother would often write to me in Vietnam and forward me things from home. Of particular note was when I was on an extremely remote mission right on the Laotian border west of Da Nang. We managed on one day to have a helicopter drop some supplies to us and among the dropped supplies was an invitation to June Nickel Gullace's wedding, which my mother had sent on.

After Vietnam I received orders for Staff & Faculty at West Point where I taught small unit (think squad and platoon) tactics to cadets and was also the assistant Protocol Officer. Fate intervened again when my mother forwarded an invitation to Lynn Gardner's wedding in Syracuse. I drove up to Syracuse a couple days early to stay with an Aunt and Uncle before the wedding. My Aunt was insistent that I call Linda Fix while I was there (playing the match maker). I on the other hand being the eternal procrastinator was reluctant. After my Uncle offered to drive me over to see Linda I capitulated. Linda and I went to Lynn Gardner's wedding and it turned out that she knew Chauncey Young who was one of the houseboys at her sorority at Syracuse. Two weeks later I invited Linda to the Army/Navy football game in Philadelphia and the rest is history.

Now in a steady and serious relationship, when my tour of duty ended, I decided to leave the military. I went back to school on the GI Bill taking both part time and full time courses at FLCC and Syracuse University while Linda was doing the same thing working on her Masters.

Chapter 3: My Big Fat Italian-German Wedding! And Parenthood

We were married in Syracuse in 1972 and bought our first house there. Linda was teaching and I was working for Hoffman Air and Filtration.

Our daughter Ellen was born in 1976. Linda continued teaching for a few years until our son Chris was born in 1979. I was also recruited by Ingersoll-Rand in 1979 and we moved our young family down to the Corning/Painted Post area. This was a great job and a great company to work for through the 80's. I traveled all over the world for them, (often on corporate jets) as a Senior Buyer. Business was good and they spent money like it was water. But all good things come to an end and no good deed goes unpunished so when their business started to decline I began looking for other places to work. We ended up back in Fairport where I became the Materials Manager for Alliance Metal Stamping, then when they went out of business, the Operations Manager for LEDCO, and then a consultant and Systems Analyst for CPI Business Groups. I started my own business in 2004, but sold all the assets at the end of 2008 when the global economy crash made it unsustainable.

Chapter 4: Yadda, yadda, yadda....

During those years Linda and I managed to travel a bit, besides summer vacations with the kids to the Outer Banks (which I always loved) we managed a trip to Paris and a trip to Italy. Our daughter is married and lives in Pittsford, so two of our grand kids Ben and Anna are close by. Our son Chris is married and lives in Charleston with two more grand kids, Audrey and Easton. In 2007 I celebrated my 60^th birthday with family and friends from every chapter of my life, including June Nickel Gullace and John Morrissey.