Barry Middlebrook:
CLASS OF 1974
Kofa High SchoolClass of 1974
Yuma, AZ
Barry's Story
Life
Since graduating in '74, I pursued a degree in Medical Microbiology at NAU. During the summer breaks, I lived in L.A. and learned to fly hang gliders and ultralights, achieving an Expert Pilot rating and a Basic Instructor certification. In the last semester of my senior year, I was offered a job teaching hang gliding and ultralight for a shop in Colorado and took the road less traveled. That was turning point in my life and major epiphany. Eventually, I received an Advanced Instructor certification and taught Basic and Advanced Instructor's certification clinics in Utah, Arizona, California, and Colorado. I flew competitively and qualified for the US Nationals twice. The recession in the early '80s got me back into school at Colorado School of Mines and I received a BS in Geophysics in '87. I worked at the USGS Branch of Geophysics Remote Sensing Section and co-authored 4 papers on Digital Image Processing as part of the Mars Observer Ramp-In missions, which were published in the Jet Propulsion Lab's Special Publications. One paper was also published in Nature magazine. During that time I got married and had a son, who is now 20 years old, handsome, tall, and just as cocky as I was at that age, unfortunately ;-). After 3 years, I moved into the software industry, divorced, and eventually became a Technical Enterprise Architect, designing hardware and software for large corporations. My wife is also a software engineer and an athlete. She has played women's premier league soccer for 15 years, worked professionally competing in English hunter and jumper classes, and was an expert climber in college. She and I have a little girl who is now 8 years old and 100 lbs of sassafras in a 70 lb package. We are both avid skiers and windsurfers. Our lives are full of dogs, horses, kids, windsurfing, soccer, and skiing. My son and I also practice Brazilian Jui-Jitsu. We live in unincorporated Boulder County, between Longmont and Lafayette. We traveled extensively, pursuing the wind, in the Carribean, South and Central America until my daughter was born. Now we windsurf, snorkel, and surf in South Padre Island (SPI), TX in Apr/May and Nov.
So that's it - all of the highlights and none of the many painful lessons I had to learn along the way. ;-)
I visit Cottonwood and Flagstaff at least once a year, either by dr...Expand for more
iving or by flying into Phx. If you're around that area, let me know and we'll hook up.
Contact me and say hi even if you didn't interact with me much in HS. If you don't, we both lose. :-D
Regarding locating Bryon Middlebrook
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Back in '82 my brother, Bryon, was planning to climb K2 in the Himalayas. In an unfortunate turn of events, he was captured by Sri Lankan separatists and forced to participate in bizarre medical experiments with somewhat dubious metaphysical underpinnings. I lost track of him for a time, but he re-surfaced in L.A. working as a stripper for Chippendales while going to law school. He appeared to be compulsively trying to balance his loss of respectability in one profession with a gain of respectability in another. It was a classic Sysuphusian struggle - heart-wrenchingly tragic and gut-busting funny at the same time. Later, I heard he had moved to El Salvador and become a missionary for a fringe element sun worshiping cult. In a veritable maelstrom of controversy, he married a Catholic nun there, who was having second thoughts about her vow of chastity anyway, and had 11 children. Some of them joined together and formed the pop rock band Menudo, which was kind of unfortunate. He also claims to be the father of the white rapper, Vanilla Ice, which frankly, is one of his more plausible claims of paternity. There are certain similarities in their dance moves that, while distinctly unwholesome, appear unique and are very likely to be a residual side effect of the Sri Lankan medical experiments.
My brother has since settled down into a quiet life in Flagstaff, Arizona. He re-married, has 3 kids, breeds a rare type of black canary with a penchant for sulleness, and claims to remember none of his former life. He sounds pretty convincing and, if it weren't for a rather large vividly-colored tattoo of Shiva the Destroyer on his left butt cheek, I would have doubted my recollection of these events myself. But, don't take my word on this. The next time any of you see him, ask him to show you his butt cheek. His psychiatrist said that it would help "create a gravity field for his soul where his splintered psyche can orbit and eventually be drawn into an amalgamated whole." To me, this sounded like a big load of tommyrot but who am I to question authority.
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