Activities/hobbies: antiquing,car show,Yankees
and Notre Dame games

1959-1962. I went to work for general foods [birds eye] and became production team leader.

1962-1964. I volunteered for the military. After basic training. I was assigned to 210th Group in germany. There I turned out for the 210th Group baseball and basketball teams. I was lucky enough to make the traveling team and traveled most of Germany. At least it got me out of most of the field maneuvers.

1964-1976. After my discharge,I went back to work for general foods [birdseye] in walla walla.

1976-1986. General Foods sold the walla walla facility and I was transferred to a new facility in Quad City, IA. I worked there 10 years as production supervisors

1986-2006. General Foods sold to Phillip Morris and i was again transferred to a new facility in Fulton, New York near syracuse.

September 2006-present.
After 46 years 5 months,I decided it was time to retire. Even though I liked New York, the winters were long and tons of snow to cope with. On August 2006. I purchased a new home and moved back to Walla Walla. Where they have 4 great seasons and less traffic.

After graduating from Wa Hi, I immediately began a high-paying career pitching peas into a viner. The cramps in my scrawny arms, the long monotonous days and a lack of any marketable skills convinced me to attend college. I spent one year at the University of Oregon and way too many years at the University of Washington, where I completed B.A.’s in Business and in English.

After a year at a bank in Portland, a year on the family farm north of Walla Walla writing unpublishable stories and poetry, and a year driving truck for a paint company in Kirkland, WA, I settled into family life and teaching English in Seattle. Along the way I met and married Jonlee, a wonderful woman from West Seattle.

Although in high school I had played handball and skied--my only sports--with Gary Snyder and Gary Forrest, my physical activities were soon limited to practicing basketball, soccer and tennis with our son and two daughters as they grew up. All three kids played soccer for many years and we watched what seems like hundreds of soccer games as well as basketball, tennis matches, band concerts, crew races and high school plays. Our son Chris, his wife and two children presently live near Vancouver, WA. Chris attended Walla Walla Community College, in the machinist program and took welding classes from Gary Buttice. Chris and his wife run a prototyping business, machining and finishing prototypes for companies like Intel, Microsoft, and Hewlett-Packard and continue to play indoor soccer together.

Our older daughter Wendy was a mountain guide in British Columbia before she began teaching History and Street Law at the high school I retired from. She and her partner are presently living in Winthrop, WA to be close to the mountains they both love. Our younger daughter Elizabeth, whose poetry and prose are much better than her father’s, lives with her husband in Lowell, Ma where she is Director of Cultural Affairs. The two of them hike, bike and cross-country ski and are looking forward to starting a family.

When I was 35 and trying to quit smoking, a co-worker mentioned that people who jogged found it easier to quit smoking. And so began an activity that lasted for nearly 30 years and engendered a commitment to what my cousin Robert (Bobby) Davidson (who attended Pi-Hi) calls “the fitness lifestyle.” My jogging worked not only to help me stop smoking but also seemed to help Jonlee leave tobacco behind as well. For a number of years I ran 15 to 20 miles a week, took our family cross-country skiing each winter, and trained for and road the Seattle-to-Portland Bike Classic three times. 

In 1996 Jonlee and I retired, she to paint watercolor and I to write a novel—an occupational hazard of many English teachers. After writing a hundred pages or so, I realized that writing a novel was way too complicated for me. I switched to black and white photography which came in handy when I started putting together hiking books for the Yuma, Arizona area. Yuma is a farming community not unlike Walla Walla near the California and Mexican borders, only Yuma has summers with 100+ degree days for seven months. We have been traveling to Yuma for 11 years, but only for the lovely, sunny winters. During that time I have published three hiking guides for the area. It turns out that there were plenty of trails and even a few mountains, but no one had written any hiking books. So far, I have had the market to myself.

In summer we bask in the moderating winds and frequent rains of Puget Sound where I grow raspberries, string beans, lettuce, spinach, etc. “You can take the boy off the farm, but you—“ I’m sure your can fill in the rest. Between walks on the beach at Edmonds, visiting family, and reading books, we enter our work in local art shows.

Over the past dozen years I have enjoyed swapping life histories and old memories with Bob Baker, Gary Buttice, and Gary Snyder. Although I haven’t attended any of the Wa Hi reunions, I recall a number of you fondly and have many pleasant memories gleaming brightly from the darkness of adolescent angst. I hope you all are enjoying this portion of your lives; I certainly am.

Children:  3 Sons and 2 Daughters
Grandchildren:  10 Grandsons and 6 Granddaughters
Activities/Hobbies: 
Formerly Oil Painted - Now I do crochet, reading, crossword puzzles, jigsaw puzzles, go to plays and go hear music