Robert Sperber:
CLASS OF 1971
Roosevelt High SchoolClass of 1971
Yonkers, NY
SUNY College at PotsdamClass of 1975
Potsdam, NY
Walt Whitman Junior High SchoolClass of 1968
Yonkers, NY
Robert's Story
After graduating RHS in 1971, I attended SUNY at Potsdam, got a degree in English, then got a M.A. in journalism at the University of Minnesota. I moved back to New York, became a newspaper reporter for two upstate newspapers (Plattsburgh and Syracuse). I met my wife, JoAnn, in Syracuse. We have been married 32 years and have two grown daughters, one of who is starting graduate school this fall.
After upstate New York, we moved West, first to Portland, Oregon, and then to California, where we lived 16 years, first eight in Northern California (Marin and Sonoma counties), which I loved, and then eight in Southern California (El Segundo, Thousand Oaks, Mission Viejo), which I could have done without. During this period, I became a trade publisher in the newsletter industry, covering law, real estate and other exciting subjects.
More interestingly, I made a serious attempt to crack into screenwriting and almost succeeded -- I met with the producers of Star...Expand for more
Trek: The Next Generation eight times, and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine four times, but did not ultimately sell them anything (I did meet Henry Winkler on the Paramount lot, though.) I had a caricature of a Hollywood agent, through whom I wrote and submitted scripts for a lot of 1980s and 1990s sitcoms, some of which got nice replies, even from the stars, but still no go. Hollywood is a tough town. Of course, "almost" succeeding doesn't count -- as they say, "almost" counts only in horseshoes, hand grenades and nuclear war.
In 1997, we moved back East (Maryland) and I have been employed as a publisher and editor doing both web-based and print journalism in both the business of health care, and in SEC regulatory compliance.
I recently published my first novel, Lines of Control (which can be found on Amazon if you enter 'Robert Sperber' in the search field), a tale of health care and murder.
As for the future, who knows? But it's been quite a ride so far.
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