caleb@taconic.net Click here to eMail Cale!
5/22/2000 (Click here for May 31,2000 letter )
Muy estimados ex-estudiantes y compadres del Colegio Americano,
Click here for a recent picture !
Click here for a much less recent picture!
Following Pat's suma vitae, here's my story:
After leaving Caracas in 57', I enjoyed an eight month hiatus sight-seeing and getting to know this country because, though born in Los Angeles in 38, I had not returned since we left there about a year later. Frankly, I felt strangely foreign having spent most my years in Lima, Panama and Caracas.
My parents left Caracas soon after I did and retired south of Barcelona, near my mother's, ancestral home. Many years later, after my father passed on, she returned here receding with us until her passing from Alzheimer's some eight years ago at the age of 93 !
My four years with the Air Force were followed by two with the Marist Brothers after which I left study engineering at New York University.
My first wife, Sandra, using her extraordinary talent for persuasion (it is no surprise she became an attorney) recruited me as a full time husband, and later as the father to my only child, Caleb.
Weakened, I left NYU for a Manhattan based firm where I remained for twelve years where I ended up as Product Manager of their acoustical panel division.
During those twelve years, I did some business traveling in Central and South American...visiting Caracas on two occasions meeting with my old friend Charles Roditi, step brother to Peter and Toby Bottome.
The social and physical changes that had taken place in Caracas were, for me, a profound disappointment. Despite the dictator he was, Perez Himenez (or PJ as we would call him), provided a relatively safe environment for our young gringo asses...even when we ventured into some of the most seedy areas of that city.
The "landscape aesthetics" had deteriorated, too. For example, there were franchises like Kentucky Fried Chicken established in some of the former choice residential residential areas. I suppose these changes were inevitable. How can we expect otherwise !
Back to New York....
During the late 70's, after deciding that I was not being adequately compensated plus having a good dose of grandiose dreams of entreprenueirng on my own, I established a factory in Poughkeepsie, New York in direct competition with my former employer.
"Reganomics" was extremely good to us because we did a lot of high tech teleconferencing centers...all part of the infamous so called Space Defense Initiative at the various participating military bases and national laboratories.
In the late nineties, the so-called "downsizing" of Corporate America drastically reduced our revenues because we were heavily dependent and focused on projects directly specified for corporate facilities.
Unfortunately, not having the sense then to return to the sweet security of employment, my second wife, Erika (a native Yugoslavian), and partner of 20 years, and I decided to tough it out till now, scaling down our fabrication to concentrate on smaller more custom projects.
Although our business continues on a "feast or famine" basis, we probably end our years at it because we have become too addicted to the independence we've enjoyed during all these years.
You can see all our "high profile" work at our web site, www.corporateacoustics.com. Except for a surprise tumor four years ago, my health, thank God, remains okay. Still have most my hair. But my waistline has (almost) expanded directly proportional with the years that have passed since 57. But "Hope springs eternal" so I still keep a wardrobe of clothes worn during my slimmer years.
For distraction, I like to pretending to be a concert guitarist, a gifted painter, poet, electronic wizard, computer geek, and a fine cook as well.
Well, this just about does it... survived the 'tell all' without troubling you with the sorted details.
Let's hope it will be possible to arrange some type of get together down the road.
Meanwhile, with the help of Harry's expertise, let's do our Internet thing and coral up as many other souls we knew from CA.
With my very best personal regards...y con recuerdos muy buenas...
Cale .
