Biographies
Bios 1965-1969
Since AXP or EQV
or
Bios by them that are living it
Table of Contents
I came to Wesleyan with a strong orientation to activism
and reforming society. While there, I developed an equally compelling attraction
to introspection and to understanding living at a more intimate level. After
graduation these contrasting impulses led me to go from teaching high school to
work in Washington for LBJ's Office of Economic Opportunity, to getting an Ed.D.
at UMass during its radical reform phase, and then to be a principal and teacher
educator.
In 1983 with a sense of a mid-life resolution, I returned
to school for an MSW at Syracuse and have since stayed on to practice
psychotherapy with some additional teaching and service on the NY State Board
for Social Work. Along the way I have continued to summer at my family's place
on an island in Lake Winnipesaukee, NH, while also briefly living in South
Jersey, London, and
Dusseldorf.
During junior year at Wesleyan, Faith Saunders and I
began a relationship. We have now been married 41 years with two children and
soon-to-be 4 grandchildren. Faith has been retired for two years from a career
as a high school English teacher. We now travel regularly to visit our children
in Charlotte, VT. and Newmarket, NH and to my
parents outside Washington, DC. Remarkably, my father who was appointed
Commissioner of Social Security by President Kennedy while I was at Wesleyan is
still at 91 a primary actor in the current political debates.
After graduation, married Sylvia Daley (my three-year
"date" at WESU) and headed to Cornell for a PhD in Linguistics which I got in
1972. Joined the Linguistics Faculty at the University of Utah in 1969 and have
been here ever since. Served as chair of Linguistics for 12 years and assoc.
dean of the College of Humanities for 13 (way too long). Left administration 3
years ago and plan to go on partial retirement after next year.
Sylvia and I have two daughters (26 and 33) and two
grandsons (5 and 9). Sylvia, after nine years in private law practice with a
large Salt Lake firm, is now with Wells Fargo doing mergers and acquisitions.
Lewis Kurlantzick, Professor of
Law. A 1965 graduate of Wesleyan University, Professor Kurlantzick received his
law degree in 1968 from Harvard where he was a member of the Board of Editors of
The Harvard Law Review. He teaches Contract, Copyright, Sports and the
Law, and Arbitration.
Professor Kurlantzick writes on
copyright and sports law issues for both popular and legal newspapers and
journals. His most recent book is Copyright Duration: Duration, Term
Extension, The European Union, and the Making of Copyright Policy (1999).
Professor Kurlantzick sits
regularly as an arbitrator for the National Association of Securities Dealers,
the New York Stock Exchange, and the American
Arbitration Association; and he has served as a Special Master for the United
States District Court in Connecticut. He is a member of the American Law
Institute, the American Arbitration Association, and the American Law and
Economics Association.
Rather than start at my graduation from Wesleyan, I
thought I would first tell you that I retired last June after thirty–two years
as an educational administrator. I am very happily married, having wed my wife,
Madeleine, in September, 1993.
She was an elementary school music teacher in a Long
Island district, and loves music as I do. Being “married” to my job for so long,
I was lucky to find her! It’s been great. She retired at the same time I did, so
we are sort of making up for lost time. Having had some major health issues over
the years, including a heart attack in 2000, I count my blessings and am intent
on making every day count.
As for my professional life, when I graduated from
Wesleyan, I had no clear idea what I wanted to do. I took a year off to work as
a teaching assistant at a progressive private school in what was then West
Germany. (My mother’s parents had known the founders of the school, which had
been closed down by the Nazis before the war.) It proved to be the seminal
experience in my life. I was inspired by the unique milieu of the school and by
the people who worked there to become an educator.
Fortunate enough to maintain my deferment, I returned to
get a Master of Arts in Teaching from the Harvard Graduate School of Education
and began my career as an English teacher in Brookline, MA. I got an advanced
degree in educational administration (also from Harvard) five years later and
began my administrative career as an assistant high school principal in Scotch
Plains-Fanwood, NJ.
After three years, I took a job at Mamaroneck High School
in Westchester County, NY and became principal of that 2000-student school in
1978, at the relatively young age of thirty-four, and remained there for twelve
years. Over time I served in a number of other positions and finished my career
as Director of Human Resources at Southern Westchester BOCES, a regional
consortium that provides a variety of educational services for local school
districts. It was a challenging and rewarding career, one that brought me in
contact with a host of wonderful people. I am certainly glad I made the choices
I did – and just as glad to be retired.
It was great talking by phone to Dave Iannucci, and I am
disappointed that I will miss the chance to be with EQV-ers at the reunion.
Unfortunately, I have a professional society meeting at the same time.
Having lived 12 of 18 years outside the USA, we are
feeling pretty settled now after 14 years in Norman, OK. I am Associate
Professor of Geology and Geophysics at the Univ. of Okla., and my wife, Frances,
does freelance editorial work on publications of the OK Geol. Survey. We are
faithful to swimming, running, and weight training twice a week, but, without a
doubt, I’ve run my last triathlon.
Atrial fibrillation was threatening to disrupt
geophysical field teaching and field work last year, and I didn’t like the
higher probability of stroke. So in November I had an 11-hour catheter ablation
by pioneers of the procedure at the OU Medical Sciences Center, and I am now
arrhythmia free. I am a 5-year practitioner of Yoga, bike to work, and climb 9
flights of stairs to my office several times daily. We are happy and contentedly
resigned to the prospect of working until 68 when retirement seems feasible.
Below ( find the picture in the
scrapbook) is a picture of me and
Frances above the town of Te Rerenga on the north island, New Zealand, from a
2003 sabbatical to NZ and OZ highlighted by reunions with old friends there.
Norman isn’t so exotic as Perth and there are no parrots in the trees, but we
are on a major flyway and love navigating our 31-year old fiberglass canoe
around lakes, bird watching.
I left Wesleyan after my second year, spent a year in
Edinburgh, and graduated from Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia in 1969.
I worked as an editor at Reuters, the news agency, for
more than 27 years. At various times I was stationed in New
York, Washington, London and Nicosia,
where I was head of the Middle East and Africa desk from 1994-97. After retiring
in 2002, my wife Wendy and I moved back to Cyprus.
We have two daughters. Ann, 28, works for a cosmetics
company near Chicago. Elizabeth, 22, graduated
from Wesleyan in May with a degree in English and is job-hunting in the
New York area.
I attended our 20th class reunion in 1986 and returned to
the campus to visit Elizabeth and attend the commencement, but otherwise have
lost track of most people I knew at Wesleyan. Friends of Spike D'Arthenay may be
interested to know that in 1972, about a year before his untimely death, I
succeeded in tracking him down in New York and we
got together a couple of times.
Where I am right now physically is in Santa Rosa,
California, in the wine country north of San Francisco,
where my wife and I have lived for the last two years. Vocationally, I spent two
years in the Peace Corps in Turkey after graduating from Wesleyan, then nine
years in teaching and college administration in New England, picking up an M.
Ed. along the way, but basically bottomed out in the weak job market in academia
in the '70s.
We then moved to California, where I went to work for
Bank of America in San Francisco. I had a 22-year
career with BofA, mostly in corporate communications, and ended up as a vice
president. I did media relations, editorial work, and spearheaded the
development of the media relations area of the bank's corporate web site. I
retired – of my own volition, actually -- in 2001.
I’ve been active most of my post-Wesleyan life in two
areas which I had been involved in before I came to Wesleyan but totally ignored
for no good reason while I was there. First is singing. I’ve sung with community
choral groups since the mid-70s and presently sing with the Sonoma County Bach
Society. Second is swimming. Ever since my kids followed in my footsteps and
started swimming competitively back in the ‘80s, I've been very involved in the
sport, and I’m staying busy in retirement with service as a volunteer official
at swim meets up to the national championship level and as a member of the board
of directors of Pacific Swimming, the regional swimming association. I was named
volunteer of the year of Pacific Swimming in 2001; in addition, I served as
chairman of USA Swimming's volunteer communications committee for several years.
The one activity that retirement has truly given me time
to enjoy is backpacking. In the past four years my hikes have included 600 miles
on the Appalachian Trail in New England, through-hikes of the John Muir and
Tahoe Rim trails here in California, and a through-hike of the Tour du Mont
Blanc in Europe. That’s over 1,100 miles with a pack on my back. If my knees
hold up I would love to do a major trek on each continent.
I met my wife Pam when I was in the Peace Corps and we
were married in August 1969. We have two daughters, ages 28 and 34, both living
near us here in the San Francisco Bay Area. Our
older daughter Jessica graduated from Wesleyan in 1992, one week before my 25th
reunion, and is now a freelance copyeditor. She and her life partner Gwen
were among the first lesbian couples to marry in San
Francisco when Mayor Gavin Newsom opened the floodgates in February
2004. After numerous academic and vocational twists and turns, our younger
daughter Damaris is attending the California Culinary Academy in
San Francisco, where she is eagerly pursuing her longtime dream of
becoming a pastry chef.
As I reconstruct things,
I was President of EQV the year we moved to (what was then) the John Wesley
House at the corner of High and Washington Terrace. I believe this was 1966-67
and very near to the end. The year before, we had no building, and we took
dinner in an early sitting at Alpha Delt – an arrangement that did not work
well. Once we moved, we at least had our own kitchen, which the University
installed. I recall that when we "rushed" our senior year the freshmen were
turning us on to drugs. There had thus been a sea-change in the cultural
landscape; in my first year at Wesleyan, we sipped sherry at Friday afternoon
cocktail parties at the old Alpha Chi Rho building with Louis Mink.
I was born in
St. Louis, Missouri, 1945. Graduated from St. Louis Country Day School, 1963, and then Wesleyan,
1967. I was a Marshall Scholar at Brasenose College, Oxford. During my second
year of graduate study, I lost my Selective Service deferment. I staved off
induction for the year, took my written exams for the B.Phil. at Oxford, but
missed the viva, owing to my induction into the military.
I was less than fond of
the Vietnam War and not about to offer the military more time than necessary. So
I was inducted, as a two-year enlistee, with no guarantee of so much as a
military occupational specialty. After basic training at Ft. Campbell, Kentucky,
I was sent to Ft. Holabird, Baltimore, for training as an "image interpreter." You
look at some minute speck on an aerial reconnaissance photograph and determine
whether or not the truck is a Russian PT-76 (well, maybe that was a tank) or
not. It matters because the longer the truck the larger the artillery piece it
could be transporting. Now, that slightly larger (or maybe it was the smaller)
truck had rounded wheel covers, so that – if the image was shot in the sun – you
would, sort of, see a concentrated spec of light. Basically, it was like
wine-tasting.
Having trained for image
interpretation, that is not what I did at all. I was assigned to a distinctive
intelligence unit at U.S. military headquarters, Tan Son Nhut Airbase. We did
estimates of overall "enemy" political strategy, which meant that I was not
involved in anything operational. With one exception – during the cross-border
"incursion" into Cambodia in February, 1970 –, when the military tried
desperately to play catch-up so that the operation would conform to Nixon's TV
billing for it. This was classified, but I'd be glad to tell you all about it.
No one had the operational info they needed anyway.
It was surreal to don
pressed jungle fatigues, take a jeep from the motor pool, lock the hood and gas
tank lest someone slip in a grenade and drive into Saigon for a French or
Vietnamese meal, or Chinese in the Cholon district. Or to enjoy shrimp baked on
sugar cane at an American Embassy reception, courtesy of brother Jan De Wilde.
Another amusement was teaching introductory philosophy to army colonels and
others in the University of Maryland's Far East Extension program. Someone had
to do it.
By extending my one year
tour two weeks, to insure that I returned to the U.S. with fewer than 150 days
of my service commitment (taking care not to mess up the calculation for
crossing the international deadline), I was released from active duty early in
1971. Brother John Lipsky kindly met me at the Oakland Army Base and cooked me a Chinese meal – not
Cholon, but good.) Tom Hanks' The Castaway gives a good sense of the
disconnect upon returning from such an experience. The period in the military
was worth much more at the margin than, say, another year of philosophy (though
those were to follow shortly). I learned a lot about how we went so badly wrong
in the Vietnam venture and failed to learn from our mistakes, and also a lot
about large, bureaucratic organizations, deciding that I did not want to be
enmeshed in them.
I hurried through the
doctoral program in Philosophy at Princeton, receiving the Ph.D. in 1974. (I
served as an alumni-elected member of the Wesleyan Board of Trustees, 1974-77.)
I was fortunate to have a number of tenure-track job offers, accepting the one
from Michigan, where I have spent my career. I have written two books, From
Descartes to Hume, Continental Metaphysics and the Development of Modern
Philosophy (1981, Cornell), and Stability and Justification in Hume's
Treatise (2002, Oxford). And articles, though not in vast quantity. The
book titles pretty much reflect what I do. I served a six year stint as Chair of
the Department, and a total of two additional years as Acting Chair. I hope that
aspect of the job ended once and for all last June. Somehow I had overlooked the
fact that the University of Michigan, for all its virtues, is one of those
large, bureaucratic organizations I had decided to avoid. But the place has been
good to me and I have enjoyed both writing and teaching. This summary would not
be complete without noting that I have taught (Asian) Indian cooking at the
Kitchen Port, Ann Arbor, and La Belle Pomme, Columbus.
I did not marry until
1985, at the age of 40. I am glad I waited, or else I would not be married to
Tully Lyons (a nutritionist), or have Gabriel
Lyons Loeb (age 16) for a son, or Sophie Alice Fels (in publishing)
for a stepdaughter. My wife and I like travel, baseball, opera, growing tomatoes
and eating arugula – though we don’t do as much of most of these things as we'd
like. And I don't know when or whether we will. The entire family did travel to
Alaska a few years back and spent a week in Paris
last Christmas; my son and I went to Japan a year ago August, in conjunction
with a philosophy conference.
My brother died of
leukemia a year ago, at 63. My birth family is gone and it is hard not to ponder
how one wants to live out one's life. I think well of the work of the National
Committee on Responsive Philanthropy, which helps promote local payroll
deduction fundraising umbrellas to compete with the more traditional, and
conservative, United Way organizations. But I have never found the time and
energy to follow through on an effort of this sort in Ann Arbor.
EQV was a good place,
for its time. I was shocked when I dug up our 1965-66 fraternity picture in the
basement and found all forty-six of us (a surprise in itself, that our number
was so large) wearing coats and ties. What kind of "anti-fraternity" were we?
Well, the organization was at the fringe and reinvented itself as times changed.
That is pretty much what we have to do individually – and hope for a coherent,
overall story in which we can take some pride. I like to think we can take some
pride in EQV's role at Wesleyan.
I’m writing this in the cabin aboard Catalyst, a
42’ catamaran that I had built and sailed up from Cape Town,
South Africa, in 2001 with my two daughters, Victoria and Catherine, and my
brother in law. She’s fast and elegant, in an edgy sort of way, and quite a
thrill to sail when it starts to blow. If you have to be 60 years old, might as
well go all out.
I got here, to this age and cabin, by means of quite a
few voyages, both above and under the surface of the ocean and through two
marriages (the second is a continuing voyage) producing two remarkable children,
several law firm partnerships, two start-up ventures, sailing passages across
the North and South Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and many miles of competitive
rowing.
Upon graduating in 1967, I traveled to Lavan Island in
the Persian Gulf, where I worked on a drill rig for an American company and
explored Iran while the Shah still sat on the Peacock Throne. Thence to Christ
Church, Oxford, where I spent two years care of a Keasbey Fellowship reading for
a B.Phil. in Politics and rowed for the House, before Uncle Sam rudely advised I
had to return for free room and board in the Army. The CSS offered me a teaching
post, but the Army was not interested in letting me go, so I accelerated my
exams, signed up for Navy officer candidate school, and missed rowing at Henley
to have my head shaved and march around for a few months in Newport, RI at OCS.
After OCS, Submarine School, Supply School, Nuclear
Weapons School, etc., I flew over to Holy Loch Scotland to join the crew of USS
Francis Scott Key, SSBN 657, on which I spent the next three years
cruising around underwater awaiting the opportunity to obliterate a variety of
classified targets with nukes. My guess is that I am the only EQV alum to have
inspected, nay, touched, a thermonuclear “device.” One of my jobs was to
maintain sole custody of the combination for a safe that was located inside
another safe that in turn contained a key needed to activate the ship’s firing
system. I had to decrypt a certain message received in a certain way, and, if it
contained a particular catchy phrase, open the safe and deliver the key to the
skipper to allow the missiles to be fired. Fortunately for us all, the odd
sanity of mutually assured destruction prevailed, and we never had to go to
battle stations missile and hover the ship to hear the skipper announce, “This
is not a drill.”
After that, having no particular idea what to do for a
career, I attended Harvard Law School and then joined a
Boston
law firm, Herrick & Smith, that, just as I made partner some years later, became
the first of what has become a parade of big law firms to crater and dissolve.
I’m naturally argumentative (so says my wife, Chris Vezetinski) and rather bored
by fine print, so I gravitated to litigation after spending a few years as a
labor lawyer. Over the years I’ve represented Big Business in the national
asbestos property damage litigation, breast implant cases, large construction
and insurance cases, and professional malpractice cases, and, latterly, patent
litigation.
En route I took a detour from practicing law to start
LawRisk, an interdisciplinary (CSS grads will understand) consulting firm that
provided management and various governments with Y2K risk assessments. We
developed software that provided quite slick looking reports of the risk in
legal and technical areas, and used it in consulting work for some large
businesses in the US and abroad, as well as the governments of Egypt, India, Sri
Lanka, Yemen, Jamaica, Latvia, Lithuania, Nepal, and, yes, Rhode Island. When
Y2K did not produce the expected disaster, I started Incogno, a software play
aimed at permitting on-line buyers to buy without disclosing their credit card
and personal information to the merchant. This venture stalled with the dot-com
bust, but has since morphed into a spam solution that has venture funding and
considerable promise.
At present I’m heading up the trial team at Lahive &
Cockfield, an intellectual property law firm in Boston,
and I spend my time litigating patent cases in federal courts around the
country.
Chris and I married in 1980. She cut her teeth at IBM,
learned management consulting at Andersen and Touche, ran her own firm for a
while, and is now doing business development for Jefferson Wells in
Boston. Our girls, Victoria (23) and Catherine (20), took divergent
educational paths. Vic went to Wesleyan after Brookline High, and loved the
COL, from which she graduated in 2004. She spent the past year teaching in
French elementary schools near Metz, France, and is now awaiting her initial
assignment from the State Department, having jumped through all of the hoops
necessary to become a Foreign Service Officer. Cat was a rebel in elementary
school, and went the private school route, attending Phillips Andover. At
present she’s what her latest fitness report calls a “rising star” in the Navy,
and is a “Firstie” at the U. S. Naval Academy.
Sailing has occupied a major role in our family life.
Chris and I quit our respective firms in 1994 and sailed with the children from
Massachusetts to New Zealand on our 37-foot sloop, a year-long voyage taking us
through the Panama Canal, and thence to Cocos Island, the Galapagos, the
Marquesas Islands, the Tuamotos, Tahiti and the Isles Sous le Vent, the Cook
Islands, Niue, and Tonga. This trip turned out to have a huge impact on the
girls, who were then aged 10 and 12. We have made many voyages to other places,
including Canada, the Bahamas, Bermuda, and, most recently, from South Africa to
Massachusetts. What remains is a circumnavigation, if only time will permit.
Rowing has also played an important role in my life since
I participated in the formation of the Wesleyan crew team. I’m a member of the
Union Boat Club, and row on the Charles River in Boston.
We have a competitive group, and I work pretty hard, and with some success, to
keep up with fellow oarsmen who are half my age. I’m also involved with a couple
of yacht clubs, the New Bedford Yacht Club and the Cruising Club of America.
Born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland.
Graduated with honors in Social Science from Wesleyan
University, Middletown, Connecticut, in 1967. Received Master of Arts in
Communication from Annenberg School of Communication, University of
Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in
1969. Received Honorary Master of Arts for Distinguished Alumni from Wesleyan
University, Middletown, Connecticut, in 1982.
Began work as summer intern for National Geographic in
1967. Full-time contract photographer for National Geographic from 1969 to 1992.
Named first runner-up in National Press Photographer's
Association Pictures of the Year Contest in 1972. Named N.P.P.A. Magazine
Photographer of the Year in 1978. Won top photographic award from Aviation Space
Writers' Association in 1980. Won 1st Place in Sports Photography in 1985 White
House News Photographer's Association Contest. Won 1st Place in Nature
Photography in 1986 World Press Photo Contest. Won 1st Place in Pictorial and
Honorable Mention in News in 1991 White House News Photographer's Association
Contest. Won 1st Place for 24 Hours in Cyberspace Photo Contest sponsored by NEC
Computer.
Illustrated: Railroads: The Great American Adventure,
America's Sunset Coast, Secret Corners of the World, Alaska's Magnificent
Parklands, CanadaÕs Incredible Coasts, Mysteries of Mankind, and Our Changing
Earth --publications for National Geographic's Special Publications Division,
portions of National Geographic Odyssey and National Geographic: the
Photographs.
Published articles in National Geographic Magazine
include Iceland, Ireland, Manatees, Starfish, Ukranian Easter Eggs, Wheat
Cutters, Truck Drivers, Iowa Family Farm, Ethiopian Village, Provence, Balearic
Islands, National Gallery of Art East Wing, the Gossamer Albatross Aircraft,
Aviation Advances, San Francisco Bay, Formation
of the Universe, Geologic History of the Earth, Gordon-Bennett Balloon Race,
Halley's Comet, Gravity, San Francisco
Earthquake, the Effects of Sunshine & Sunlight, ColumbusÕ
First Colony in the Americas, Burt RutanÕs X-Plane Flights.
Published articles and eight (9) cover stories in Popular
Mechanics include U.S. Navy Seals, U.S. Air Force missile security, Korean
Demilitarized Zone, Los Angeles Police Department
S.W.A.T. Team, Burt RutanÕs Boomerang aircraft, Popular MechanicsÕ Kit Plane,
U.S. Army Rangers, U.S. Air Force Special Operations Command, U.S. Navy
Helicopter Evacuation Command, U.S. Marine Corps, U.S. Coast Guard, Virgin
Atlantic Global Flyer.
Commercial clients include Apple Computer, DuPont, AT&T,
IT&T, IBM, UNISYS, Xerox, Digital Equipment Corp., Intel, British Petroleum,
Bank of America, Becton Dickinson, Allstate, Ernst & Young, Arthur Anderson.
Produced two books for Harmony House publishers on
University of California @ Berkeley and University of the Pacific in Stockton,
California.
Conceived, produced, and participated in a national
seminar on digital imaging for Macintosh computers. Sponsors include Eastman
Kodak, Apple Computer, Adobe Systems, Leaf Systems, and SuperMac Technology.
This seminar visited 34 U.S. cities, 5 foreign countries, and spoken before more
than 4,000 photographers and designers. In addition, the Digital Imaging Seminar
series produced 5 video tapes and sold more than 1,000 copies of these tapes.
Taught photographic workshops at Center of the Eye in
Aspen, Colorado, University of Missouri Photojournalism Workshop, and National
Press Photographer's Flying Short Course, Brooks Institute of Photography,
Photography at the Summit Seminar 1993 & 1994 (Jackson Hole, Wyo.), PhotoWest Õ93, 1995
Canadian National Press PhotographerÕs Association Convention, 1993 & 1997
Professional PhotographerÕs of America Convention, 1995, 1996, & 1997 National
Press PhotographerÕs Digital Imaging Convention.
Exhibited in one-man show at Nikon Gallery,
New York City, and contributed to Odyssey, National Geographic's
Centennial Photographic Retrospective.
Contributed to the Day in the Life projects including Day
in the Life of California and 24 Hours in Cyberspace, Day in the Life of the
United States Armed Forces.
Video and Digital Video work includes National Geographic
Explorer Television as well as continuing projects with Scaled Composites
Aircraft Corp. (Mojave, CA), Angel Aircraft (St. Louis,
MO), Adam Aircraft (Denver, CO). Video work has
been featured on the Apple Computer Web site at http://www.apple.com/
creative/stories/rutan/index.html, 30-second commercial on ESPN for University
of the Pacific (August 2001),multiple industrial video & multimedia projects for
California Natural Products. In April, 2003, produced, directed, shot & edited
an anti-drunk driving film entitled “Every 15 Minutes” with 6 other
videographers brought in from around the United States.
Holds Commercial Pilot's License with Instrument,
Multi-Engine, and Seaplane Ratings. Certified SCUBA diver. Fluent in French.
Represented by Corbis Corporation (for digital images) in
Bellevue, Washington @ (800) 677-4172, (800) 260-0444 & (206) 641-4505 and Black
Star Publishing Company @ New York (212)
679-3288.
Married to former Janice
Lee Zahler of Portland, Oregon. One child, Sam
Sugar, born 1987. Home in Mill Valley, California.
My Wesleyan economics courses focused on economic and
regulatory policies, and I daydreamed about actually influencing or contributing
to those policies. I've pretty much gotten my wish.
I went to graduate school at Northwestern, where I met my
wife, and taught briefly at the U of NC-Asheville before going to the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank. I freely offered monetary
policy advice there and, subsequently at the Fed's Board in DC.
Since our arrival in the capital more than two decades
ago, my wife and I have happily bounced back and forth between the executive and
legislative branches, and my wife has added a little consulting and lobbying. I
got to spend several years on the staff of the Senate Banking Committee, where
they let me help make laws intended to improve the regulation of financial
institutions. Since then, I've been a regulator trying to implement one of those
laws at the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, which supervises
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. We have one daughter, 19, who is majoring in
chemistry at James Madison University.