A Christopher Hall:
CLASS OF 1967
Bulkeley High SchoolClass of 1967
Hartford, CT
Trinity CollegeClass of 1971
Hartford, CT
A Christopher's Story
After Bulkeley, I went to Trinity College (along with Joe Angiolillo and Jim Armentano).
I graduated from Trinity with three things: a degree in math, a degree in
physics, and a draft number of 25. So I thought I probably should look into, er,
options regarding military service. I wound up in the Army, went to Officer
Candidate School, and was commissioned a second lieutenant. While
at Trinity I had discovered a love for computers so I selected Military
Intelligence as my branch (other branches -- like Finance -- had perhaps more
to do with computers, but MI appealed to me the most.
The Army gave me my first formal computer training. I finished first in their
class, which is not to brag (well, yes it is), but thanks to that I got
stationed in the Computer Science Research department of the National Security
Agency, in Maryland. That was a real toy shop -- we all had the freedom
to play around with things that interested us. I spent a summer in Princeton
writing routines for the Cray machine, which was the fastest computer of its
time. After a couple of years I left the Army and continued working for NSA as
a civilian.
Somewhere in there I got my Masters in computer science. I studied for a
doctorate, but did not finish. Call me ABD if you wish. I'm still All But.
NSA was fun but the government bureaucracy got me down. I felt I could do
better in private industry, so I went to Digital Equipment Corporation (now
defunct but then the second largest computer company in the world). I worked
in Maryland for a couple of years, then transferred to their operating system
development group in Massachusetts. This was my dream job, the goal of my
career.
Or so I thought. Digital turned out to be no longer a well-run,
people-oriented company. After a couple of years I began to feel that smaller
was better, so I hired on to a 60-person company that wrote a spreadsheet
program that competed with Excel and (then) 1-2-3. It was there I met my
wife.
Linda was working in the documentation department, writing the technical
manuals that described how to use the spreadsheet. She was (and is) a very
nice, very bright person, who had taught high school math in Indiana for nine
years. Feeling that there was more to the world than academia, and wanting to
see what working in industry was like, she moved East and found this job.
After fifteen years in various computer-releated jobs, she would return to
teaching. She's now semi-retired, and tutors students that are having trouble
with math or preparing for the SAT.
But that's getting ahead of the...Expand for more
story. I asked her out, we came to like and
then love each other, got married, and here we are. We have no children, but
Linda comes from a large family, so we have four brothers and sisters
(-in-law, for me), six nieces, and several grand-whatevers.
Now I'll condense the next few years. I worked for a number of companies, and
tried independent consulting for a while (I found that consulting agencies
had no idea what to do with me; they were used to engineers that had one or
two specialties and about three years of work experience. I had more than 10
years and could do [if I do say so] just about anything). I worked for one
particular manager at three different companies as an employee, plus two more
as a contractor. That manager would move on to a new job, and then hire the
people he liked from the old company. This is not as sinister as it sounds.
Anyway, I enjoyed working for him, so I repeatedly answered his call.
Eventually he and I, and a third person, formed our own consulting agency,
with a client in California. We designed and wrote all their software. We
added another client soon after. They kept us going and busy for about ten
years. This was my dream job at last.
I can't resist bragging. On one trip to California I signed up to take the
Jeopardy qualification test. I finished third in the roomful of 200 or so
people. They "passed" the top nine, so I was in. But they never called to
invite me to the show, so that was that. Oh, well.
Our three-man company ran its course. My partners and I went our separate
ways, parting in friendship. We still keep in touch. I now have one client,
an offshoot from the original pair, and put in a few hours each month writing
code for them. Other than that I'm retired.
My one big interest, all my life has been music. I played the trombone all
through my school days, set it aside when I joined the Army, then picked it up
again fifteen years later and haven't stopped since. I'll play with any group
that will have me: town bands, parade bands, jazz and swing bands, theatre pit
orchestras, anything. My summers are very active with a number of groups;
currently I have only two: a bunch of us that get together once a month or so
to play Dixieland, and the Midcoast Symphony Orchestra. The latter is a group
of amateur musicians (that is, we rehearse only once a week, and all have day
jobs), but we all try to play the best we can, and we have a splendid director
who brings out our best. I am greatly honored to have been invited to join
them.
And that's my story, and I'm sticking to it.
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