Guy Randall:
CLASS OF 1971
Fairview High SchoolClass of 1971
Boulder, CO
Guy's Story
Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans. I ran across that quote the other day and realized just how true it is; especially as I put this short bio together. We all had plans in high school, for some of us they may have actually worked out, but I suspect that for most of us what we imagined we would be doing in forty years is quite different from the actual reality now that we have finally arrived. That's not a bad thing; in fact, for me life has been more exciting than I could have ever imagined.
The first of many forks in the road occurred shortly after graduation from Fairview. I was able to attend the University of Colorado for one brief year until I won Uncle Nixon's lottery with a winning number of 31. My trip to Southeast Asia was deferred until my braces came off. I've always found dark humor in the fact that the Army wouldn't pay for my orthodontic work but would spend a small fortune training me to become cannon fodder. The deferment was time enough for an opening in the Coast Guard to become available so I went to sea instead of Vietnam. The week I started Coast Guard boot camp my induction notice came from the selective service; I spent my high school years cursing my braces and yet those braces set a course for the rest of my life - a life I never even remotely imagined while at Fairview. My active Coast Guard years were exciting. I survived sinking boats, hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico, was one of America's last lighthouse keepers, spent a year with Eskimos in the Arctic, and generally did all sorts of salty sailor things.
In 1983 I got out of the active Coast Guard and went directly into the Coast Guard Reserve. I got a job in Page, Arizona working for boat tours at Wahweap Lodge and Marina on Lake Powell. My Coast Guard Reserve career fit right in. I continued to work with a boating safety and enforcement team on Lake Havasu until 1997 when cut backs closed our unit. From there I spent the next five years in San Diego, commuting back and forth from Page and Lake Powell, until my retirement from the Coast Guard Reserve in 2002.
Now I need to back track a few decades. In 1974 I came home on leave and married my high school sweetheart, Gayle Higgins (FHS Class of '73). Gayle is a trooper, she put up with all my deployments in the Coast Guard. In June 1981 we had our first child, Jennifer, and two months later I was off to the Arctic for a year leaving her alone in Galveston, Texas. When I got back home after a year's separation we had our second child, Mark, a short nine-months later. I think that was the major deciding factor for me whether to stay in the active Coast Guard or not. Now that we had started our family I wanted to be around more often. In 1987 we had our third child, Geoffrey, to complete our family.
The kids were growing, and I was getting tired of my civilian career as a marine diesel mechanic - my body was not quite as limber as it once was. The millennium was upon us and I was wondering what I might do for a second career. Then one day Gayle noticed the local community college was offering a course in web design. I was looking into selling on eBay and a web design course looked like it would fit right in with my plans. Little did I know I was fast approaching another fork in the road. To make a short story even shorter I ended up getting my Associate Degree in Computer Software Technology and starting my own web design business. And I've been doing that ever since. Being self-employed has its pros and cons (there are no weekends and holidays - but you have the free...Expand for more
dom to take the jobs you want).
2002 was a year of many changes. In January 2002, Gayle's father, Mick Higgins (many of you had him as a teacher at Fairview) passed away. I graduated from Coconino Community College and retired from the Coast Guard. Gayle was concerned about her mom in Longmont and I was ready for a change. Now that I didn't have to go back and forth to San Diego for the Coast Guard and both Jennifer and Mark were in college, Gayle and I decided to move back to Colorado. After thirty years we were coming back home to Colorado and the Rocky Mountains. So where do we end up? La Junta! Still, the mountains are only an hour away.
The ensuing years have been action packed. Gayle went back to school and earned her Master's Degree from U.N.C. and now teaches at Pueblo Community College. Gayle started teaching at the Community College level back in Page and worked extensively with the Navahos on the Reservation. Unfortunately she stays in Pueblo during the week but at least she's home on the weekend and during school breaks.
Over the years I've been involved on many interesting web development projects, but my favorite has to be as web master for the Route 66 Caravan, sponsored by Hampton Inn and their Save-A-Landmark project. We spent 66 days on Route 66 honoring and highlighting the people, places, and surviving business on the Old Mother Road. I produced a web site that in effect is an online book. I was photo journalist and web master for a site that was updated daily from the road. It was a lot of work and there were days I questioned whether I could do it or not. When everyone else knocked off in the evening I started my second shift to produce the web chronicles of that day's adventures. We started in Santa Monica and finally ended up in Chicago. Yes I was exhausted, but the friends and fascinating people I met along the way will always be a highlight of my life. The Save-A-Landmark project and web site helped Hampton Inn earn the Smithsonian's Travel Award for 2004. It also earned us caravan members a trip to Washington D.C. to lobby for Route 66 in Congress and work with the folks at the National Trust for Historic Preservation. I'm still in touch with many of the movers and shakers on Route 66; in fact some of them are my web design clients. I continue to freelance my web development skills and have clients all over the U.S. including Otero Junior College here in La Junta. I started out with a contract at OJC that was only supposed to last six months, but that was back in 2006!
Could I have envisioned this as the future forty years ago? Certainly not! As we get older, and hopefully wiser, family and friends become more important. I've met so many wonderful people over the years. Some I'm lucky enough to still remain in contact with, some are no longer with us, and others have moved on and somehow we've lost contact with each other. I guess this is one reason I joined Classmates. The FHS class of '71 was a large class that was split right down the middle - morning and afternoon. But still, though many of you weren't personal friends during our high school years, I often think of you all and hope the years have been good to you. I missed our ten-year reunion (I was in the Arctic), but made it to our twenty year reunion, then missed our thirty-year reunion (active duty in San Diego), so I certainly hope to see many of you at our forty-year reunion!
Remember, it's not the destination at the end of the road that counts so much as the journey along the way!
God Bless and I'd love to hear from any of you - Guy
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