John Kneeland:
CLASS OF 1973
Wachusett Regional High SchoolClass of 1973
Holden, MA
John's Story
Hi Wachusett alumni,
I have temporarily joined Classmates to respond to those who visited me at this site, and let you know what I've been up to
I was in the class of 71 but goofed off and had harrowing encounters with 60,000 volts of electricity, the burn unit at Mass General Hospital and torturous rehab. I finally graduated in 73. I began courses at Quinsig College and took many electives to catch up on what slept though at Wachusett. Thank goodness for people like Doug Grisham who helped me get through math. I must have absorbed some things in school and suspect that we were given a good education.
Were you ever bored before dinner and watched Jeopardy on TV.
AND YOU KNEW MORE OF THE CORRECT ANSWERS THAN THE CONTESTANTS !
I've had those day really! but I've done more than my share of less than brilliant things.
I spent a winter hiding in Vermont at .Sugarbush Mountain (thanks to the hospitality of WRHS alums, Rick, Earl, Bobby and Kevin) I also took a few summer sabbaticals. One on Martha's Vineyard thanks to the kindness of Anne Blanchard, Sue Quaglier, and other friends from Wachusett. The other adventure in the US Virgin Islands after pissing off my clinical instructors. I somehow persevered and went up on a stage in Worcester to receive a bonified college degree in Respiratory therapy in 1977.
I packed up my old Volvo, moved to Colorado and began working in the big medical centers in Denver. I found a great gang of people like myself from all over America, most of whom took John Denver up on his invitation to come find a Rocky Mounty Mountain high. We biked, hiked, skied and climbed mountains, camped, fished, river rafted, sang and drank beer around campfires. I found friendships that continue today. I had adventures and brief romances with charming women that I will never forget. Not bad for a crippled doper from Sterling.
I took a break from the beeping alarms and calls for code blue in the hospital ICU to head for the Pacific Northwest. I'm sure its still breathtaking now, but in 1979 it was heaven on earth. People were friendlier. Hitchhikers I picked up shared my counterculture views. They invited me to their homes, shared their food, a glass of whine and a smoke.
They showed me their favorite vistas and wild blackberry patches, Then they wished me well on my journey. Wyoming's Yellowstone, Idaho and Montana's Tetons and Washington and Oregon's Cour de Alaine range had hidden valleys with explosions of colorful flowers and fruit trees to match.my wildest dreams. When I got to the west coast, I headed south along the wild rocky cliffs, miles of uninhabited pristine beaches and the awe inspiring groves of Redwood and Sequoia trees. I ran low on funds and got jobs with a temp agency to do Resp. therapy in The San Francisco bay area. I found a place to live near San Jose through the message board, while I worked at Stanford University Med Center. I soon found a whole new gang of friends who shared my love of the outdoors. We rented a winter condo at Lake Tahoe with skiing to rival the Rockies. I tried to surf and dodge the sea lions at Steamers lane in Santa Cruz. Here's a safety tip, Roller skating in Santa Cruz can be dangerous. If I hadn't grabbed a parking meter while flying down a steep hill, I would have ended up in the Pacific ocean or worse.
My only hometown witness and participant to these ...Expand for more
days of thunder was a man with more wanderlust than me. I heard that he had passed away in the Arizona desert right after I accepted my first engineering job in Florida, I miss you Donnie Zorn
I burned out on working with patients with lung disease, especially a new group who died no matter what we did for them. They called the disease gay men's lung syndrome. Later they renamed the new plague AIDS. Time to find a new job man! I still liked the hospital environment. I soon started taking courses in Biomedical Engineering at the FREE community college in Los Altos. I later got homesick for Colorado and finished my degree in Electronics in Denver. I became a C.B.E.T. (certified biomed engineering technician) After a year, my wanderlust returned, I packed up and moved to Sarasota Fl..
Amazingly, just as Resp. Therapy had become a hot career choice the 70's, the hospitals desperately needed have Biomedical Engineering Depts.in the 1980's. WHAT LUCK!Sometimes I feel like the Forest Gump of healthcare, narrowly avoiding tragedy and unwittingly coming out the other side with a new impressive name badge, grinning like a possum eatin a sweet potato. I got a job doing Resp.Therapy in Sarasota on my second day in Florida .I found yet another gang of great people living near the beach.. As soon as I said I was from Colorado, I was in like flint. Several of them were from Durango. They were a diverse group from eye doctors to nurses to xray techs to carpenters to marine scientists They wanted to teach me to live the Florida lifestyle.. They helped me find a small catamaran called a hobie cat. Man, did we have fun racing those boats and having parties on Siesta Key. And the women there? Fuget about it.
For better or worse I got a call to come do Biomed work in St. Petersburg, surprisingly through an old drinking buddy I had written off as dead or incarcerated. I worked for Humana hospitals all over West Central Florida. One day a couple suits showed up in my office and told me that they were taking over all the Humana Biomed shops. I agreed and they later told us that we were becoming GE Healthcare Biomed Engineering. After 20 years with them, traveling all over the country for training and working on some pretty high tech stuff, I retired April 1, 2016, WITH A PENSION. and that's all Forest Gump has to say about that.
Living on a small pension an social security is ok as long as you don't touch the 401K nest egg. My wife Annette and I have already flown off to several Caribbean scuba vacations, Three European vacations to Greece, Italy, Spain, Germany, France, Austria, Slovakia on planes trains, cruise ships, barges funiculars and ox carts. We've seen Mt. McKinley on a crystal clear morning and bears feeding on salmon on the Inside Passage in Alaska, I took her to see the magic of the Pacific coast Highway from Oregon to Pebble beach in Monterey, the awesome view from the top of the ski lifts at Heavenly valley Ca. and Aspen Co. . We have spent a week in the Carolinas, Georgia or Tennessee every summer for the last 15 years, and ridden the dragons tail on my Vulcan scooter.
I don't attend church but one might say that my life has been blessed.
Thank you for reading my story.
Please feel free to drop me a line and tell me about you, your family and your impressions about life. John F. Kneeland
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