Richard Angel:
CLASS OF 1967
John Burroughs High SchoolClass of 1967
Burbank, CA
Richard's Story
I've never had much time for social media. Always thought it was a monumental waste of time and I'd rather be reading a good book anyway. As I approach 70, I focus less on the future and dwell more and more on memories from the past, so maybe I'll post a few words.
I miss the 1950's. It was a great time to be a kid--hanging with the neighborhood gang, playing ball in the street, spending your free time outdoors, having adventures, and enjoying the sheer freedom of summer break.
I miss the 1960's as well, but have to be honest and admit I'm not the least bit nostalgic about high school. I know that a great many people look back on high school as some of the happiest years of their lives, but I'm not one of them. I don't look back on those years in a negative light, but just have few memories of anything positive other than having received a great education.
During my middle and high school years I was a tightly closeted gay teen. Having to hide and suppress your true feelings for years becomes second nature to you, and you live in a kind of self-imposed social exile. I'm not saying it's anything that damages you for life, but it does make your existence during those times far less than completely happy. You just keep your head down and muddle through until you graduate. The irony is that I would run into fellow classmates at various gay venues after graduation and couldn't help thinking how much more enjoyable high school might have been had we known one another's deep, dark secret.
Anyway, I've had a very full and happy life post high school. As repressive as I felt high school to be, My following four years as an undergrad at UCLA were exactly the opposite. These were my years of liberation. I had come out fully at age 19 (very late by today's standards), and I credit my college years as a time when I could begin to fully express my true personality. It was also a time when nobody seemed to care where they would be at age 40 and few concentrated on wise career choices. I thought it was cool to get a well-rounded liberal arts education, so graduated with a degree in philosophy (a totally worthless m...Expand for more
ajor today, but hey, it was tuition free). BTW, lucked out with a high number in the first draft lottery and missed the whole Vietnam thing.
Not knowing what to do after undergrad and wanting to avoid the job market for as many more years as possible, I went to law school on a whim. During that time, and together with a number of other law students from all of the major Los Angeles law schools, we formed the country's first gay law students association. This was at a Catholic law school no less, and created quite a brouhaha.
To cut a long story short, I practiced law off and own over the years, suffering from periodic burn-outs and assorted existential crises. I never developed a passion for putting in eighty hour work weeks and never had the fire in the stomach to be much of a political activist, so I've led a minimalistic but comfortable lifestyle, with the emphasis on people and relationships rather than money and material things.
I've been with my current partner for twenty-five years. I retired at age fifty-five and the two of us moved overseas and spent ten years living blissfully in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. We returned just shortly before my sixty-fifth birthday so I could enroll in Medicare, and have spent the last five years in Las Vegas, Nevada.
We've both become unhappy and disillusioned with life in the US. I gave up a lifestyle of no stress and no worries to return to a country that seems to be coming apart at the seams. Returning to the US has only reminded me of all the reasons I had for leaving in the first place, so were planning our escape once again. I'm hoping that by the second quarter of 2019 we'll be able to once again move overseas, perhaps this time to the Philippines.
I've become very much the cynic in my latter years. I'm a firm believer that man is destroying the planet, and that humankind maybe has a couple of decades of a decent existence left. I figure I've got maybe fifteen to twenty good years left (my Dad made it to 95), so I very much adhere to a "live for the day" philosophy and plan on spending the balance of my years in the quiet and peaceful pursuit of happiness.
Register for Free to view all details!
Yearbooks
Reunions
Photos