From Jeff Hampton. After HF, I bargained with my parents to go to WFB High, with the promise to attend a Catholic college. I Graduated from U of Notre Dame and fulfilled the promise. With graduation came the US Marine Corps and all the thrills that military service offers! With the Viet Nam war in full swing, the first order of business in the Corps was to attend Infantry Officers School, better known as TBS (The Basic School). Due to a bureaucratic mix up my orders were lost and I was able to travel to Europe for 5 months until my slot opened up. During those travels I met my first wife in Vienna. Well I survived the Marine Corps, but the marriage didnt survive much beyond that. After the Marines I worked for Michelin Tire Corporation as a Territory Manager. During this period, the divorce came about. Not unexpectedly as it seems. Took this opportunity to restart my live and career… quit Michelin, went to Graduate School at UW Madison. One Christmas I was visiting my sister in Ohio and she thought it would be a good idea to even up the sides and fix me up with a blind date. As it turned out, it was a pretty good idea; I asked Bonnie to marry me 5 days after we met and have been married for 37 years now. With Bonnie came 3 teenagers...no idea of what I got myself into, way to idealistic to be a parent. But through it all we managed to form a new family. We lived in Naperville for 22 years before moving to San Antonio in 2000. Two years ago we moved to the Hill Country outside San Antonio: Fair Oaks Ranch, TX. The family has expanded: we have 4 grandchildren and (hold your hats) 5 great grandchildren. Two of the children (Brenda and Steve) live in San Antonio, quite close to us. The youngest (Craig) lives in Bloomington-Normal, IL, has 2 beautiful daughters, Jena a senior at Mizzou and Baylee, a senior in high school and a terrific wife, Debi, who can manage him very well. Brenda, our daughter has her son, Stephen, here in San Antonio with his 3 sons, her daughter, Bonnie Sue II lives in Bakersfield , Ca with her a great hubby, Jacob and two daughters, Lilly and Piper. Now once a year, Christmas, we do manage to get them all together here at the Ranch. So career wise - After graduate school I became involved in the telecommunications and high tech area: first Western Electric ( morphed into ATT Network Systems, the Lucent), moved on to Digital Equipment Corp as the computer competition began, realized that the value proposition was moving to software, so went to this small company called Oracle. Rode that wave till I burned out, then was recruited to another start up, Genesys Telecommunications. Went through the IPO and eventual sale to Alcatel. Subsequently did several more startups, some good, some poor and some still TBD. After the sad ending of the last of these ventures, we spent an extended period living in France. One day I got a call from a friend asking me to join a new group in Verizon that was to become the Business Consulting org. Too young to fully retire, we came back, went to Verizon and stayed there until Feb of this year, when I decided it was time to hang it up. Now spend the days, bicycling (heading to France next week to ride the Loire Valley, going to the Tour de France next July) , golfing, traveling, collecting wine (with consumption in mind) and some volunteer work. Looking forward to next Sept to be in Milwaukee and hear all the great life stories. PS. Understand there are great trails in Milwaukee/Madison, will bring bike, hope someone else does also.
Posted on: Fri, 03 Oct 2014 00:54:14 +0000
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