Steve Heckel:
CLASS OF 1967
Langley High SchoolClass of 1967
Mclean, VA
Steve's Story
After Langley, I entered and somehow escaped from Yale University with a B.S. in 1971. Out of money, I worked for GEICO from October 1971 until Spetember 1973 and again from June 1974 until September, 1974 as a claims adjuster / theft investigator, trying to save enough money to make it through graduate school in architecture. I entered VPI in September of 1973 in a Master of Architecture program, and fled, nearly broke again, in June 1976 to sell college textbooks, for what was then Harper & Row Publishers, in West Texas and New Mexico. I learned there to speak with a southern accent accompanied by a heavy nasal twang. It made me stand out when I was promoted into New York in 1978 to become a Marketing Manager and then Editor for Biology and Health textbooks. Mergers, consolidations and the short end of the stick pushed me out of publishing and into marketing for design firms in 1981, where I find myself working today. Along the way I acquired a wife (Kathy, 1981), a house (1985), a son (Andy, 1988), a daughter (Carrie, 1991) a dog (Gizmo, 1994), a cat (Piglet, 2000) and another dog (Eddie, 2007). The last three are not my fault. I also lost a mother (1985), a father (1997), a brother (1999) and a twin sister (2008). I do not play saxophone anymore - sold the Selmer Mark VI alt...Expand for more
o to Alfred in 1976 or 1977 - if I had known that $315 horn would be worth about $10,000 today I might have kept it. I do sing (in the church choir - it's free vocal instruction) and still noodle around on keyboards and hack around on a guitar - I cannot call myself a "player" - although I do not have much free time and some of my skills are vanishing because of lack of practice. It was easier lugging a guitar around, on my traveling days in the Southwest, than a piano. I work with the local Boy Scout Troop in spite of some of the idiotic national policies of the organization because it is a good program for giving kids a way to learn how to become effective leaders as well as team players by actually doing things that require planning, preparation, and effort. I also work with the local Democratic organization in my township, which is a great way to meet people and become totally exhausted around election time. In my spare time I try to figure out how we are going to pay for two $50,000 yearly tuition bills, and I keep my right arm in shape daily by throwing lacrosse balls for an English Springer Spaniel named Eddie Van Halen who LIVES to retrieve balls and sticks. Someone asked me recently if HE could play the guitar. I said not really, but he could still get in a few good licks.
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