George Shoning:
CLASS OF 1958
Arlington High SchoolClass of 1958
Arlington, MA
George's Story
- Attended and graduated from Wheaton College in Illinois with a degree in mathematics; played intercollegiate soccer for three years
- Served three years in the U.S. Army with a German Air Defense Battalion responsible for the Frankfurt/Main air defense
- Obtained an MBA degree from Colorado State University
- Coached youth soccer in spare time, both girls and boys, for 20 years with F.C. Boulder; hold a U.S. Soccer National "C" license
- Retired from a career of 32 years in systems software development in IBM.
I am married, and my wife and I have lived in Colorado since 1971. We enjoy skiing, hiking and biking, and photographing the scenery that the mountains provide. We have two children: a son who graduated from the Naval Academy, Stanford University, and the University of Colorado School of Law, and now is an attorney for an information technology company, and a daughter who graduated from Rice and Stanford Universities and is now an electrical engineer for the Intel Corporation. Both children are married and have two boys each.
I remember with fondness my teachers at Arlington High School. The most influential were Mr. Eaton and Mr. Barber in math, Mr. Johnson in history and Miss O'Connell in English. Of course I will remember until Alzheimer's hits me the Baron von Kapff. He could not pronounce my long last name (this had some influence on my changing my name in 1962) and would cover his mouth with his hand whenever he called on me.
We have traveled extensively throughout Europe and as far as Irkutsk, Siberia, near Lake Baikal. We have met many people. My education in Arlington was superb, and I have never lost my pride in Arlington High School.
What am I doing now besides being involved with grandchildren? I am working on answering the question, âWhere do I come from?â After I retired from IBM, I became interested in my genealogy and have been devoting my spare time to it since then.
My paternal great grandfa...Expand for more
ther had emigrated from East Prussia to Russia, the part that is now Ukraine, in the 1860s to take advantage of the abundance of land, which became available by the Russian Czarâs freeing the serfs on large estates. My father and mother were born in todayâs Ukraine, as was I. As I study this story, it has resulted in many unusual and surprising experiences like the unplanned and unexpected meeting of a first cousin on a dirt road near the village of my fatherâs family in Ukraine, learning of the existence and meeting my Russian stepmother, meeting descendants from my maternal grandmotherâs siblings who immigrated to the U.S. in the early 1900s, and standing at the grave of my father in Irkutsk, Siberia; I had not heard anything from my father since 1945 when the Russian Army overran my family in Poland as we were moving to Germany and took my father away. Upon release from a Russian Gulag camp in northern Siberia, he was confined to Irkutsk and not permitted to communicate with the world beyond. He remarried, and I learned about his life when I visited my stepmother in Irkutsk. My wife and I have visited Germany multiple times, Poland, Ukraine twice, and Russia.
I continue with my hobby of photography and classical and folk music. My photographyl interest developed while I worked at New England Photo in Arlington after school and in summers. It has continued ever since then. My interest in music also has its roots in Arlington. A friend, who was one year ahead of me in Arlington High School, introduced me to records and to audio equipment. My roommate and other friends in college furthered this interest. I still play a vinyl record or a recording tape now and then, but my largest musical investment now is in CDs.
I look forward to meeting some of my former classmates again in the future. I visited some of my old haunts in Arlington in July of this year, 2016. Much has changed; some is still the same, like all of us.
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