Bruce Zimmerman:
CLASS OF 1967
Proviso East High SchoolClass of 1967
Maywood, IL
University of IllinoisClass of 1972
Urbana, IL
Osolo Elementary SchoolClass of 1963
Elkhart, IN
St. Eulalia SchoolClass of 1963
Maywood, IL
Garfield Elementary SchoolClass of 1963
Maywood, IL
Bruce's Story
University of Illinois 67-73 (6 yr plan - much time marching in street & not enough in classrooms
Got married to Proviso West (68)Linda Blondell, Father of (1969) daughter who is now a Wisc. school teacher. Got divorced in 73, (I think she objected to having the FBI read our email first). We jointly raised our daughter who turned out great I must say! ;-)
7 years as teacher/vocational counselor for economically & educationally disadvantaged adults.
8 years as self employeed woodworker/remodeler.
Married again in 1985 in Banff Alberta, Canada (love them Canadian Rockies).
Me, new wife and her son with special needs buy a house in Champaign.
Was supervisor of a 13 person team supporting Motorola computers/networks at a software development facility in Champaign IL. This lasted about 25 years.
Became a grandpa (X2), divorced again in 1998 (hate that female mid-life crises).
Update: Married in 2011. We live in this old old house in Champaign. She is a musician and helps run a performing arts center.
Through it all I have been involved in peace and justice groups (probably most would call them leftist leaning but in todays world such groups have a broad mix of types of people).
I've traveled in US/Canada quite a bit & northern Europe/Scandinavia a few times. A bit in Mexico and Caribe.
I am getting back into wood working & remodeling my 1900 house in Champaign.
Being a grandpa is soooo much easier than being a full time dad.
I look forward to hearing from any & all.
We were lucky in a way. I experienced rural schools & city schools & both have their pluses but in those times, the middle to late 60's, a school such as Proviso East prepared us for what was to come better than most. We were living the social upheaval & seeing first hand what was changing in our country. We saw school administration fail to cope with the changes, always a few years behind the curve. But we had some enlightened teaching staff who helped many of us through those years.
Of course most of us did not realize until years later how important those people were in our lives.
My life has been rich and varied - having Angela Davis over for a party and dance at my house, attending peace conferences in Sweden near the artic circle, getting to know Patch Adams (pre movie). Having friends who are professional street musicians, plumbers, farmers, cardiologists and physicists. Friends who live ...Expand for more
in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, China, England, Russia, Sweden, Germany, Turkey, Bulgaria, etc - is a terrific result of living in a University town.
School: High school: active in student council, Key Club, Jazz, concert and marching band, a little gymnastics and generally screwing around.
College: University of Illinois - active in several union organizing activities, worked on several minority rights programs, opposed the war in the street and in the papers. Had a great time as I passed through 3 colleges looking for something that fit. Returned to try grad school in the late 70's but I am not a scholar and it did not work out. Perhaps I am ready to try again now.
Workplace: Worked in construction and in a machine shop after college - saving up money for travel. Then got a job running a small counseling program at an adult vocational school.. Worked with migrant workers and other adults who needed basic skills in oder to enter the work force or improve their place in the work force. Did that for 7 years.
Got burned out being in the social services field and decided to start my own woodworking and home remodeling business - had a partner in the business too. Made things out of wood for 6 years. Was broke but learned a lot, traveled a lot and had some good times.
Took a job with a University of Illinois spin off company. The group had started at the UofI with the 13th connection to the MILNET/ARPANET (earliest form of the internet). When I was hired all users on the Internet were still being listed in a "hard copy phone book". There were fewer than 5000 computers connected then in the early 80's. I became a systems administrator when that word was new. email was just being invented too. ;-) One of my co-workers went on to be part of the group who created Mosaic/Netscape. Nice group of people - many very smart - doing first time ever kinds of things. We grew from 80 workers to 300 and were been bought by Motorola to make their phones smarter and better by working with folks all over the world. I started out as a department of 1. I ended up with 13 workers on my team and I was definitely the dumb one on the team. ;-)
Motorola collapsed and closed our site in 2007. I remained on as a remote worker for awhile but then I was dropped too. So I am now one of the millions of unemployed looking for another gig. Meanwhile more time for friends and such.
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