Ronald Becker:
CLASS OF 1959
Cleveland Hill High SchoolClass of 1959
Cheektowaga, NY
Maryvale High SchoolClass of 1959
Cheektowaga, NY
Ronald's Story
Went to Cleveland Hill for 7th grade, moved to the Maryvale district where I spent 8th and 9th grades, and then moved back to the Cleveland Hill area where I graduated in 1959.
After high school I went to work for a contact lens company on Cleveland Drive just past Harlem rd. The business grew and moved a couple times, ending up on Wherle near Harlem. Conveniently near the Crossroads Tavern. A few people you might remember worked with me. Frank Cerrone, Jerry Haller, and Jimmy Wegandt, all went to Cleve-Hill.
Over the next few years Frank Cerrone went on to college and became an optometrist, Jerry moved on to a Rochester New York contact lens company in an executive position, and Jimmy moved to Toronto with a contact lens company, also as an executive. Great memories of working with those three guys.
Nine years into my Career in Buffalo we were fortunate to partner up with a NYC firm that contracted with us to experiment making contact lenses with a hydrogel material from the University of Prague. It turned out that when we made a contact lens with the new material and then soaked it in water, the lens became soft, very comfortable, and provided excellent vision. We manufactured a large number of soft contact lenses from the new material and distributed the finished product to practitioners to judge the material and all were enthusiastic about the results. Soon after, Bausch & Lomb acquired the exclusive rights to manufacture and distribute the product in the western hemisphere.
In January, 1970 I accepted a position in Chicago to be General Manager for a contact lens company that also supplied special material for manufacturing bifocal contact lenses to other manufacturers.
Two years later I became a partner in a soft contact lens business in Collinsville, Illinois (up the river from St.Louis). That put me back in business with Dr. Pat Creighton with whom I worked in Buffalo.
Dr. Creighton lived and practiced optometry in Alden, in case you might recognize the name. He was our third partner and a great, great friend.
Just two years into our new business we were acquired by Coburn Optical of Muskogee, Oklahoma. At that time Coburn was the largest manufacturer of plastic and glass spectacle lenses and the largest manufacturer of spectacle lens manufacturing machinery, at least in the USA, if not the world. At the same time Coburn was buying us,they were they were being bought by Revlon.
After the sale was complete, I accepted an offer to become a limited partner and operations manager for a new soft contact lens firm in Boston. I Lived in Arli...Expand for more
ngton, Mass which is a few miles up the street from Cambridge. My home was in a small community right between the upper and lower Mystic Lakes. Remember the movie, "Mystic River?"
In the beginning, our business offices were downtown (Boylston and Tremont streets)adjacent to the Boston Common, Chinatown, and the theater district. Later, unfortunately, we built a facility in the suburb of Burlington. It took seven years developing the product and gathering data for our NDA (new drug application)for the FDA and shortly after submitting our application to FDA we were acquired by Syntex Pharmaceuticals in Palo Alto, CA.
Of the ten limited partners, I was the only full time employee and when the operations were moved to Phoenix I was part of the purchase agreement. We had two products: the first FDA approved Gas Permeable contact lens and the CSI soft lens. I believe both products are still being used.
When my employment contract expired, I moved to Manhattan Beach, CA and was a consultant for a military electronics firm regulated by the Defense Electronic Supply Center (DESC). I spent a lot of time in Mexico where the firm had five manufacturing facilities. For the most part, my job was to install process discipline, standards, and procedures that matched quality system requirements imposed by the government. My Spanish was actually serviceable and I did enjoy that job for a year.
I returned to Phoenix in 1984 and a month later, the same firm offered me a position as Director of Quality Assurance and I would be based in Gardena, CA. I accepted, packed up again and gladly returned to Manhattan Beach. I stayed in Manhattan seven more years.
That business too was acquired and I headed back to Phoenix. I still miss Manhattan Beach.
In Phoenix I became a home inspector. I worked for two large home builders and really liked being independent (most of the time anyway) and outdoors almost all the time.
My son Ryan is a freshman at Arizona State and his older brother Nicholas is a computer engineer and he is the technology guy for a local university.
I play golf, sail a small boat on lake Pleasant, travel, snow ski,and go to school events. I used to officiate high school basketball and football in Arizona, I ran the Buffalo Skyline marathon, Boston marathon, the San Diego Rock and Roll marathon, and a hundred 10K's.
My team is still The Bills and I root for anything Buffalo. I've been impressed by the University of Buffalo's progress in football and their willingness to play anybody home or away. Sorry they lost Turner Gill as a coach. Hoping for the best.
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