Dan Hetrick:  

Life 20 years since graduating from Ellet High School, and still going. After graduation, I began a five-year Electrical Engineering program at Akron U. (Co-op work with the government extended my graduation a year). Following my graduation with my BSEE, I moved to Maryland in 1993 and began working full time for Uncle Sam. I ended up with a job that had me travelling a lot, doing computer system installations and testing at our Embassies abroad. I found I had a real travel bug, and thoroughly enjoyed the countries and cultures I encountered. I set upon another great adventure in October of 1995, when I married Tonja Foster (nee Johnson '86) and moved her out to Maryland with me. In 1997, we became the proud parents of Nathan, our first little one. Still stricken with the love of travel, I transferred to the State Department Foreign Service in 1999, and we moved out to Hong Kong, China for almost 4 years. While there, I managed the IT affairs of the communications office at the Consulate there. While there, we discovered that our trio would become a quartet in August of 2002. Benjamin was born between field tours, almost on his brother's birthday. Following his appearance, we moved on to our next field tour: Damascus, Syria. Damascus. Wow. People thought we were nuts. After the Iraq war started, I began to think they were right. However, we were never in any danger really, despite our proximity to the "action". The hardest part was when Tonja and the kids got sent back to the States on a forced evacutation, while I remained in Damascus supporting the Embassy from behind my keyboard. Tonja and the kids returned a couple of months later. It wasn't long after that that we found out we were going to become a quintet! Megan Eliana was born the day after Thanksgiving in 2004. Because she was so anxious to make her appearance, I didn't "quite" make it back to the States to witness it. However, I think sh...Expand for more