John Gerth:
CLASS OF 1966
West Morris Regional High SchoolClass of 1966
Chester, NJ
Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State UniversityClass of 1978
Blacksburg, VA
Blacksburg New SchoolClass of 1973
Blacksburg, VA
Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyClass of 1970
Cambridge, MA
Mendham Township Elementary SchoolClass of 1962
Brookside, NJ
John's Story
You can reach me as gerth <at> alum.mit.edu
Anyway, to get this started here's four decades in four paragraphs.
I went off to college and got caught up in the turmoil at the end of the 60's,
but not until after I'd graduated --- although it made me cynical enough that I never
went back to school again. Spent the 70's in southwest Virginia, first teaching
kindergarten but eventually my inner geek got me and I went into computers after
taking time off to ride around Europe on a bicycle with my college roommate.
In '78, I was enthused with a computer language called APL and went to work
developing it for IBM in San Jose. I met my wife there and, making up for lost time,
we had three kids in four years. I took a transfer to IBM Research in NY and
we lived in Danbury, Connecticut for a decade. I loved the technical work
and the comradeship, but early on I had decided not to go into management which
meant ...Expand for more
that I eventually hit a pay and prestige plateau. That was
fine with me as long as I got to work on interesting problems.
By the early 90's IBM wasn't much fun any more. We had gotten through
all the turmoil and shrinkage, but the new company didn't have those
interesting technical challenges. It was all about being business-minded,
but who wanted to work start-up hours without a shot at significant equity.
My kids were growing fast and I didn't want to miss out on that.
In '96 I took a staff job at Stanford so I could have some fun again.
I manage a graduate research lab for a half-dozen hotshot profs and
work part-time on their research projects. The kids are all out of school now
and working so we're just waiting and hoping to be grandparents here in
Half Moon Bay, a small town on the coast about 25 miles south of
San Francisco.
In 2015, our middle child Emily married Jonathan - one step closer.
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