I was born in Houston, TX where my parents were both in their post-medical school residencies. I am the oldest of their five children, all of whom chose careers in the medical field and none of whom became MDs. We lived in a Houston garage apartment for three years that I don’t remember and then moved to Rochester, NY, where I learned to appreciate grey, snowy winters. I carried a paper route and was active in boy scouting. My first pair of skis were solid wood, no edge, cable binding hand-me-down’s from my dad’s Swedish colleague, Svend Jorgensen. After many yearly swaps of black leather lace ski boots, I graduated to Cubco bindings on different hand-me-down skis and promptly tore my meniscus in a wipeout at Bristol Mountain. My Olympic hopes dashed (LOL!), I figured out that biology and even pre-med might be a good career path.
I attended Wittenberg University in Ohio because it had a good pre-med program and it was an 8-hour drive from Rochester. I had been a very good boy in high school, and I needed to fix that. Fix it I did, pledging an animal house fraternity and deciding that the pre-med kids just weren’t who I wanted to be hanging out with. Completing degrees in biology (botany and ecology) and geography, I stayed in Ohio for 6 more years, earning a Master of Environmental Science and working in Ohio’s Department of Natural Resources as the author of the state’s outdoor recreation policy plan. A fantastic job with small pay, I decided I needed an MBA to help me pivot.
After two years in Northwestern’s program, I finally found my way into the hospital – through the back door – and started a long career in medical device sales and marketing. Moving to Boston as a Medline rep, I met the only girl in the world who might possibly fall for a bedpan salesman. Susan and I married and moved to Chicago for my Medline marketing job and then back to Boston. My career took me from bedpans to brain surgery in product management, with intermediate stops in interventional cardiology and radiology.
We raised two sons, both Eagle scouts, and I was our town’s cubmaster and troop committee chairman. The AMC hut system was a great way to hook the boys at a very young age, and they stuck with it. We mostly skied in New Hampshire’s Whites and enjoyed backpacking and climbing and canoeing there. Scouting was the beginning of my community service problem, and when the boys aged out, I actively shopped for how I could fill my newly-found free time. Our local Rotary club had funded Drew’s Eagle Scout project, and when he engaged in Rotary’s RYLA experience, I knew that Rotary was a good fit for me. I was our Bedford, MA club’s president 2-1/2 years after joining in 2010.
Susan had a rewarding career as an elementary education literacy coach in the Newton school system, and when she was approaching retirement age, we began to think about “what’s next.” I heard New Hampshire’s mountains calling, and she heard Vermont’s. Both boys had attended Vermont colleges and we did some exploring of potential retirement homes and communities up around Stowe. Our oldest son, Tom, was guiding with True North, then a Waitsfield wilderness therapy company, and said “Mom and Dad, the Valley is way more your vibe.” He was very right! We met a fantastic realtor, Brooke Cunningham, who helped us find our home, and when we signed the purchase agreement, I had never skied Sugarbush or Mad River Glen. What a lovely bonus it was that they are here, too!
I felt connected to the land here immediately. Our homesite along Shepard Brook spoke to Susan and me immediately; the house was just a nice bonus. I volunteered to help write the management plan for Boyce Hill as a way to engage with our Fayston neighbors and that special place more deeply, and I’m now on the conservation commission helping steer its implementation. When you fall in love with the land, you can’t help but connect with others who also feel the responsibility to steward it, be they recreationists, farmers, ecologists, regional planners, or tree huggers. That’s been my experience, anyway.
I knew that Rotary would be the perfect vector into the community for this Massachusetts flatlander who knew no one here when we moved here full time in 2018. I engaged in helping us figure out how to make things work during COVID. It was a period of much change for the club, and I took the reins as president in 2021-22. What I’ve enjoyed the most about our club is that anyone can offer up a new idea and, if they’re willing to work it, the club will get behind it. I’m so grateful that we supported shifting duck race sales to online during COVID, the Rise Against Hunger meal packaging events, expanding our use of the Valley Rotary Foundation, and most recently, the We Are MRV community volunteer weekend. Our club has become a much more visible element of the Valley’s philanthropy ecosystem, and the fact that we have so much fun doing this work just fills me up.