Owen Wrigley:
CLASS OF 1971
Manhattan High SchoolClass of 1971
Manhattan, KS
Owen's Story
I'm not a fan of this website, if only because of the spam they generate. Still, finding a few old friends seems worth it.
So. Da story: My family moved to Manhattan from Salina at the end of 1970. I attended Manhattan High School for only one semester, while also taking a couple classes at Kansas State. While I was only there for our senior year ¿ and only a semester of that ¿ I still have some wonderful memories and great friends from MHS. When I graduated from MHS in 1971, I was already a sophomore at KSU. Taking double class loads, I graduated KSU in 1973 ¬¿ and promptly left the country.
I turned 20 on the border of Afghanistan, then spent the next year tromping around Nepal and India before crossing back.
I returned to ManKan to start grad school as KSU in urban planning in '75. Halfway thru this program, I received a scholarship to the University of Hawaii and the East-West Center. That scholarship included my return to India in 1977-78. Fall '78, I returned to ManKan to finish the MRCP degree, and Spring '79 to Hawaii to finish an M.A. there. Because I did one credit hour for KSU while in Hawaii, both degrees are dated May 1979. (I liked that little detail.)
I moved to Washington, D.C., and had a two-year roller-coaster ride working for USAID, the State Department, and then staff in the Carter White House. I was even seconded to the U.N. in New York for some months. When Reagan was elected, I became a staffer to the Secretary of Commerce. But I was bored.
In the summer of 1981, I was hired to open a development program in the new nation of the Republic of Vanuatu. I packed and shipped out, but was paged at the L.A. airport by my employers and asked to fly directly to Bangkok, Thailand. The program there was in shambles and a ticket was waiting. I kept a residence in Bangkok for the next 28 years. (I did, however, visit Vanuatu several times in later years.)
The 80's were golden for me. Based in Bangkok, I ran a SE Asian regional NGO prog...Expand for more
ram doing development projects of all types. I even produced a two-volume dictionary of the Thai Sign Language that is now a national reference work. I've been twice decorated by the King of Thailand. yadda, yadda.
I returned to the Univ of Hawaii in 1989, traveling back and forth from Bangkok, and finished a Ph.D. in 1992. Obama's mother was a co-fellow at the EWC both times I was there. We even graduated together.
From 1995-2004, I lived in Yangon, Myanmar (AKA: Rangoon, Burma), where I caused a major social scandal by marrying a Burmese princess. Burma is a complex and difficult country, to say the least. While I often think of the years I wasted in that nation, it did give me a beautiful family. Our daughter was born in 1997, and she's current a rising 8th grader in the Fairfax, Virginia school system.
Because of the issue of schools, we relocated as a family to the greater Wash D.C. area in 2009. My wife was here during the same time I was here in the late 70s, (her father was also an ambassador), so it is familiar to her, as well.
Perhaps in response to the patriotic rah-rah, I spent 2006-7 posted in the Northwest Frontier Province on Pakistan to oversee construction of border security roads along the Afghan border. I was also responsible for the annual poppy crop survey, so spent some months in daily flights in open-door, old Huey choppers counting the acreage under poppy cultivation. We called it "Taliban Target Practice" -- we were the target!
But security got even worse, so I returned first to Thailand for several short-term consultancies, and then to join the family here in the USA.
I'm still commuting for work to S.E. Asia, mostly with UNESCO and the Asian Development Bank, but plan to eventually find gainful employment that lets me stay in the USA. It isn't as easy as I hoped, but I have an odd skill set, to say the least.
Well, that's the outline. All the fun stuff is left out. Those details can be shared over drinks.
Cheers!
19May2010
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