Michael Hammer:  

After being a member of classmates for over a decade, I have decided to post on my profile for anyone that is curious to know how I am and where I have been these past 50+ years. I figure that as I am approaching 72 years of age, the opportunity to hear from past friends at LMHS is starting to decrease more rapidly and I also wanted to let everyone know that I am alive and doing well, all things considered. So after graduating from LMHS, I continued my education at Colorado State University where I received a BS in Microbiology from the College of Veterinary Medicine in 1975 at the age of 21. During my time at CSU I worked as a student cook one year and as a research assistant my last year. From there I returned back to Levittown (I really wanted to stay in Colorado, but the job opportunities weren't there at the time) and obtained employment at the Pall Corporation in Glen Cove as a laboratory scientist. One of my favorite memories of that time was going to the nearby beach for lunch with my colleagues and seeing the Long Ships sailing in the LI Sound as it was the US Bicentennial. I was promoted to 2nd shift manager of the lab and manufacturing after about 9 months. I was drawn away from LI about 4 months later by a job offer at John's Hopkins Hospital in Microbiology. They promised I would be doing research on new biochemical techniques for identifying microorganisms but found myself working exclusively on the bench testing a myriad of patient cultures for pathogens. It was mind numbing work and did not work out for me. So back to LI where I decided to go for an MS in the life sciences (Medical Biology with a focus on Immunology) at LIU. I was fortunate to receive both a scholarship and assistantship (I supported lab operations) from the university, so I had no debt incurred from the degree. With just a couple of courses remaining, I was offered and accepted a position as a chemist (I also was given a microbio option) testing finished drug products at E.R. Squibb and Sons (now known as Bristol Myers Squibb). I started there on 9/11/1978 and held that position for about 6 years during which I completed my MS degree (1982) and started dating the young lady that would ultimately become my wife (9/1/1984 - more on that later). Around 1985 I was promoted to a MS level position in Global Tech Ops where I was responsible for troubleshooting numerous technical problems involving our global manufacturing and testing, Everything from developing/improving test methods to identifying contaminants in drug products. About a year into this I was assigned a project involving a contaminant in a novel non-ionic contrast agent that was expected to be worth tens of millions of dollars. Four groups within the company were assigned the same responsibility: isolate and identify the contaminant (what I isolated was only 6 parts per million or to give another perspective that would be 6 pounds of the contaminant mixed in 1 million pounds of the drug substance). I was the first one to accomplish it and it changed my entire life. The effort saw me, my boss and my bosses boss all promoted, with me taking over my bosses management position (BTW, this was the first time a person without a PhD was at this level in the company. I held this position from early 1987 to April 1993 during which (1989) Squibb merged with Bristol-Myers to form what was briefly the largest Pharma business in the world. I survived 3 "downsizings" over the following 3 years only to leave in 93' for a lab mgmt. position at Sterling Drug in Plainsboro. It was a substantial increase in responsibility (my staff grew from 4 to 8) and pay (my now wife had just given birth to our 3rd son on 12/28/1992 and the pay increase helped tremendously). All was not perfect with the job change, in fact it turned rough very quickly as I found out that the VP (highest level manager in that office) was a raging lunatic and a micromanager who played favorites with the departments under him. And then Kodak (the company that owned Sterling) decided to sell us to the highest bidder less than 18 months later putting all of us in jeopardy of losing our jobs. In fact, when we were ultimately bought by Bayer and SKB, I almost lost my job because I was slated to go to SKB with 10 others and SKB reneged, leaving us in limbo for about a month. Only one person went to SKB, but thankfully the rest of us went to Bayer. But my position was downgraded to Senior Scientist from Group Leader. Thankfully my pay and future raises were not impacted. And about six years later (~2000), having proven myself to upper management, I was promoted to Associate Director where I spent the rest of my career (I was not interested in moving up further as it would have taken me from my family due to frequent international travel requirements) until my ...Expand for more