Larry Macklin:
CLASS OF 1973
Big Rapids High SchoolClass of 1973
Big rapids, MI
Northwood Middle SchoolClass of 1970
Ft. wayne, IN
Washington Center Elementary SchoolClass of 1967
Ft. wayne, IN
Larry's Story
Life
I moved from Ft. Wayne, IN, to Big Rapids, MI after 9th grade. I wasn't very happy at first. I missed my friends from Ft. Wayne. Nobody seemed to have the same interests & hobbies that I did. Big Rapids was a much smaller town- about 10,000 people, and that took some getting used to. But I made new friends, and ended up staying in Michigan after graduating from Big Rapids High School. I earned an associates degree in electronics from Ferris State University in Big Rapids, went to work for Dow Chemical Company in Midland, MI., and also went back to school in the evenings to get my Bachelors degree in Electrical Engineering. But I haven't forgotten my old friends from Fort. Wayne.
I married a girl named Pam from Big Rapids in 1976, and we have been married 37 years. We have 2 children- a daughter, married, who works as an X-ray technologist here in Midland, and a son, married, who lives in Adrian, Michigan, and works for Hewlett Packard as an account manager. We have two grandchildren and two dogs.
School
I really missed my friends when I moved from Ft. Wayne to Big Rapids, MI, after 9th grade. I was really bummed when they built the new Northrop High School in Ft. Wayne and I never got to go there. Big Rapids is a much smaller town, and the one high school in town was about the size of Northwood (my junior high school in Ft. Wayne). Even the Sears store there at the time was just a catalog order store with a sm...Expand for more
all showroom.
After graduating from Big Rapids High School, I received an associates degree in Electronics from Ferris State University in Big Rapids. I then went to work for Dow Chemical Company in Midland, MI. In 1980, I started attending Saginaw Valley State University at night, and received my bachelors degree in Electrical Engineering in 1988, while still working at Dow.
I lived at home both times I was attending college, so I never lived in a dorm.
Workplace
My first job during high school was at a gas station in Big Rapids. It paid $1.65/hr, although gas was only 26 cents/gal then. I also worked in the Audio-Visual dept at Ferris State University while I was a student there.
My first "real" job was as an electronics technician at Dow Chemical Company in Midland, MI. Over the course of 26 years at Dow, I became one of the two network architects at Dow in charge of all network design & planning for Dow's global computer network. Then Dow outsourced much of their Information Systems dept to Electronic Data Systems, and I went to work for EDS until they terminated their contract with Dow 3 years later. Dow then signed a contract with IBM, and I went to work for IBM. After several years, IBM chose to outsource their network business to AT&T, so for the last 5 years, I have been a Technical Solution Architect for AT&T.
Military
No military service. My draft lottery number was high enough that I never had to report.
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