James McCarthy:
CLASS OF 1966
A.D. Johnston Junior/Senior High SchoolClass of 1966
Bessemer, MI
Northern Michigan UniversityClass of 1969
Marquette, MI
James's Story
Like the rest of you, I graduated from A.D.J. in 1966. At that time, I was a 117-pound nerd and terrified. So I immersed myself in higher education. I graduated with a B.A. from NMU in 1969 and with an M.A. in Library Science in 1970 from the University of MN. I as look back, I may have worked very hard but I made some terrible choices. As a result, I ended up working for NMU as a librarian. That, of course, meant living in Marquette. I hated the job and I hated the city and I HATED the climate and the salary was minimal. But I did one thing right. I took advantage of the employee discount and enrolled in a lot of computer science courses. I escaped from Marquette in 1974 and moved in with some friends on the beach in California. My first job in California was working for a small company with a contract with the Air Force Space and Missile Systems Organization to analyze missile te...Expand for more
st flight data. Interesting job. The company had about 50 employees and about 75% of them had PhD's from M.I.T. I learned so much. At the time, it was very cutting edge computing. My next job was with an on-line computer services company--again cutting edge the time. My boss had an M.B.A. from Harvard. He was a great mentor and I learned a lot. I was able to leverage my work experience and worked my way up into an executive level position with a multi-national manufacturing company. A long the way, I got over the terrified. In 1980, I met my other half, Errol, and we have been together ever since. He is originally from St. George Utah. Before we both retired in January 2006, we bought a lot outside of St George and built a custom home. If you ever plan on visiting Zion National Park, Bryce Canyon National Park or the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, then you are in our neighborhood.
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