Steve Gospe:  

Hi all: After I graduated from Montgomery, I headed to UC Davis to study to become a Veterinarian. Sadly, however, my heart was not into studying too much, and after I joined a fraternity (Phi Delta Theta) my grades started to drop very quickly. As I was going through a period of soul searching, a couple of things happened to me that are still an integral part of my life: 1) I changed my major to Physics 2) I met my future wife Lisa Bonetti and 3) I started training in Okinawan Shorin-Ryu karate. Since I completely changed my major, I needed to re-take almost all classes that I had already taken as a zoology major. That, coupled with my fraternity days placed me on a 6 year plan. I ended up making up classes during summer school one year (about the time I started karate) and finally graduated with a degree in Physics in 1985 from UC. Davis. Before graduation, I had a summer internship working at Varian Associates in Palo Alto working on helix traveling wave tubes (basically a fancy name for microwave amplifiers). Upon graduation, I moved to San Carlos and started work full time at Varian in June of 1985, after returning from a three week honeymoon in Tahiti with my new wife Lisa. Lisa was raised in Healdsburg, and went to school with Mr. Blankenship's daughter (remember, the other chemistry teacher at Montgomery?). Lisa and I will celebrate our 23rd year anniversary this May. Within 1 year, I was transferred to the thin film sputtering division at Varian, and after that, the Varian image tube division (we made night vision goggles for helicopter pilots to see at night-really neat stuff). Also around that time, both my wife and I were accepted at graduate school at Stanford. She graduated with an MS in engineering business; I received my MS in Applied Physics in 1990. In 1992 my son Spencer was born, and in 1995 my daughter Tatiana was born. The entire family enjoys hiking, soccer, karate, scuba and spring board diving. W...Expand for more