Gerard Spanier

Every school I ever attended, from kindergarten to high school, was torn down and disappeared forever. I didn’t know that at the time, but it sort of set me straight on the reality that you can’t go back…you can’t go back. I am trying, but with little success. I know A.B. Davis HS trained me well for the next phase of my education, and I know it worked because I made it through Hopkins and into a long and reasonably successful career in government R&D, and did things that have really had significant impact on everyone reading this. Things I remember about then weren’t really the force behind what shaped my life….but they are still with me as memories. They are virtual trips that life will let me take to go back. The Yellow Rag (Wette Gazette), that April Fool’s edition of the Hi-News that made it past the teacher/censor…only to get a bunch of us thrown out of the National Honor Society. The same thing happened 4 years later as editor-in-chief of the Hopkins News-Letter, with a parallel result. But life moved on, and I became one of the engineer/designers of the adolescent Federal air traffic control system that helped bring America into the jet age, figuratively and literally. My career was speckled with designs that made air travel safer, more effective, and less complex. Every time you look at text on a PC, you see it because of a unique piece of work I was honored for. In parallel with that was a family growth that resulted in 2 sons and a daughter, lots of pride in their accomplishments, and lots of grey hair. My prom date became my wife, and we still talk about the Glenn Island Casino prom party, and Count Basie at the Starlight Room of the Waldorf afterwards. We stayed in the same community outside of Atlantic City, lived in the same house until a fire forced a major redesign and remodeling, and I stayed in the same career. I am sure more memories will be awakened, but none of them will be with regrets.