Robert Fragola:
CLASS OF 1974
Washingtonville High SchoolClass of 1974
Washingtonville, NY
New York University - Arts & ScienceClass of 1979
New york, NY
Robert's Story
Life
I sold my MG Midget, cut my long hair and moved to New York City after graduation  I did a short stint packing tile on the 4pm to 12am shift at GAF Tile in Newburgh. Deep down in my heart I knew it was time to leave Orange County and so I set off for the Âbig timeÂ. My cousin Billy (from Long Island) had just graduated from Cornell and he was starting his first and as of 2004 his only job and he needed a roommate. How could I turn that offer down? Next stop ManhattanÂ
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We lived in a $275/month, one bedroom apartment on East 30th Street. I remember getting a visit from Paul Cole (Stewart Air force Base kid from a big family) and a bunch of his rowdy friends, late one fall night. He had tickets to a Who concert, I think and we all partied the night away in the small apartment  great memory!
Anyway, I found a job in the bond department at EF Hutton and I joined the establishment and ever since IÂve had one foot in the real world and the other floating out in cosmic space.
In hind sight, moving away from Washingtonville (my parents still live in the same house outside of town on Route 208 and my brother Ricky owns a tailor shop in Newburgh  Tailorland) it ...Expand for more
was a good move because New York was then and still is a very exciting, creative, bigger than life environment, where anything is possible and I was determined to grab a piece of that lifestyle.
Toiling in the bowels of EF HuttonÂs bond department wasnÂt my idea of Âliving the NY dream and so, it became apparent that something had to be done and that something was to continue my education.
I applied and was accepted at NYU were I studied European History and Political Science and graduated in 1979.
NYU was a great place to for me. The campus was in the Village, I met very interesting people with a variety of life experiences, and I learn a lot and met and married my first wife (I was 20 and much too young to settle down). So that relationship only lasted a few years and thankfully, we had no children.
Upon graduation I was presented with two job offers. The first was a reporterÂs position at the National Inquirer, which I turned down because the travel wasn't conducive to married life - bad move. I did accept the second offer to become a computer salesperson at Honeywell and so the next stage of my life was underway - technology!
To be continuedÂ
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