Marc Smith:
CLASS OF 1988
Central Bucks East High SchoolClass of 1988
Doylestown, PA
Marc's Story
30 March 2008
Hello All,
It¿s nice to see some names that I have not seen in a while. Where to start? After high-school I went on to college at Boston University and finished a degree in International Relations. Boston is a great city. I made some good friends and it was great to go to school there. I also had loads of fun paying off the school debt! Four college years went by too fast and in the fifth year I was forced into the ¿real-world¿ and went to work for a large company. For the first couple of years I was living hand-to-mouth financially and really had a tough time transitioning from the sheltered world of college. The bright spot was that while working for this company I began dating my (then) future wife Renee. I left that company to work for another and was soon given an assignment to help establish an office on behalf of the company in Paris. Interestingly, during my first 3 weeks in Paris, I stayed in the apartment of CB East 1986 Alumni Jon Moroney and his wife. Jon was there doing essentially the same thing for the company he was working for. My time in Paris was a great experience personally and professionally. I was there for a total of about 1.5 years and Renee came to live with me for the final 6 months of this assignment. Upon return to the USA, Renee and I got married in 1997 at the Black Bass Hotel on the Delaware River in Lumberville, PA. Renee is the love of my life and I am fortunate to have married such a wonderful person.
After coming home from Europe, I went adrift professionally and took a series of positions with high-tech start up companies thinking I would strike it rich and retire before age 30. It didn¿t happen. I got back on track and took a job with a large telecom company where I was responsible for sales of a particular product line in Latin America. While working with this company, I traveled extensively spending lots of time on planes, in hotels and meeting and entertaining customers. While...Expand for more
my career was going well, my health was not. I gained a lot of weight and at one point weighed 238 lbs! I was tired and physically in bad shape. This was quite a change for someone who ran cross-country and weighed 155 lbs during high school. Around the same time, I began a MBA program in my ¿spare time¿. As if there were not enough on the plate (so to speak), Renee gave birth to our first son Hugh (born 2001) and we purchased a fixer-up house. These years were the worst and the best of times. Despite the headaches, Renee and I pulled through it all. I finished my MBA from Duke University, Hugh began to sleep at night and I managed to shed about 50 lbs over 8 months. In 2003, we had finished fixing up the house, sold it profitably and I accepted a new job with a manufacturing company in Western Massachusetts. My job at this company is to manage all of their overseas business. After a couple if years with this company I was given another overseas assignment. I was asked to set up a new office and distribution facility just outside of Paris. This time, our whole family moved to Paris, all four of us (Harry was born in 2003). In Paris we lived in a typically small apartment in the 16th arrondissment (800 sq. feet ouch!). Hugh and Harry went to French schools and Hugh became fluent in French. It is much easier to master a foreign language when you are a 5 year old boy. In July 2007, and after 2 years, the Smith family repatriated to Massachusetts USA. While we had a nice time living overseas, it was really nice to come back to the USA. Since being back in the USA, my company has graciously allowed me to work from home so that I am able to balance family life with the heavy travel schedule of my job.
There it is¿ a post high school life in 2 paragraphs. It will be interesting to see the class of 1988 at the reunion. In the meantime, please email me and say hi.
marcusLsmith *at* hot mail *dot* com
Take care,
Marcus (Marc) Smith
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