Today's Featured Biography

 
Jeffrey Lewis

[posted after 2017]

As Groucho Marx once said, "I must confess, I was born at a very early age." I was there, but memory fails. My earliest recollection is of fever-ridden bedrest with one of those childhood diseases and some nasty relative insisting that I wear sunglasses to protect my eyes. Chicken pox? Measles? Whatever. Oh, and to be honest, Groucho probably used that quote more than once.

At age four, my loving parents realized I needed dirt to play in, so we moved from our small San Francisco apartment to an amazing Mill Valley hillside home. It was on Shady Lane, perhaps named after the forgettable song, "The Naughty Lady of Shady Lane." I loved my bus rides to Old Mill School for grades K thru 4th. But school was full of perils. The most frightening was that a really cute girl in maybe 2nd grade had a crush on me. I was scared to death! What was her name? Does she still like me? Anyway, this female behavior stopped before I learned to welcome it. Another peril was when I ran across the street from Old Mill to the small corner store that sold candy for just pennies. I was skillfully apprehended by the school crossing guards (law & order types) and I was forced to properly cross the street 10 times under tight supervision. My criminal tendencies were thereby nipped in the bud, and that undoubtedly saved me from a life as an axe murderer or politician.

We moved to Strawberry Point where I attended 5th and 6th. This was a few years before Miss Abrams showed up with her nauseating (uh, heart warming) song, "Mill Valley." Are you singing it now? Sorry. Anyway, I was, at best, an average student, still deathly afraid of girls and crossing guards. My 7th and 8th were unspectacular at Edna Maguire. I was in Mr. Simmons homeroom for dummies. He graded on a curve, so when his brightest student escaped to a smart-kid homeroom, My C's became B's and my academic success began!

Tam was my time for growth. Shy, I focused on schoolwork. Looking back, we had great teachers, wonderful friendships, and many opportunities I did not take. One major milestone was when I was 15-1/2 and I got a Lambretta scooter to drive to Tam - free at last, free at last. I drove it all over south Marin alone and with the Tam motor-scooter gang. One Tam girl (Anne?) had a real motorcycle - I was so jealous.

After Tam, I got an Electrical Engineering (EE) BS at Oregon State and I met my bride to be, Cindy Arey. Next an EE MS at UC Berkley. After our marriage, we had a year together at the University of Alberta where Cindy pursued her PhD on barnacle sex. Next we lived and worked 5 years near our nation's capital. Cindy and I visited every damn museum, battlefield and historical landmark within 50 miles of DC. In 1977, we both got jobs in San Diego where we raised our two beautiful redheaded daughters, Beth and Gennifer. Both were good students, eventually getting graphic art degrees from Chapman University. I also earned another Engineering Masters at UCLA. Do my two Masters count as much as Cindy's PhD? Probably not.

I retired on April Fools Day, 2008, thinking we had saved enough money to outlast us. We used a highly scientific map-and-push-pin approach to eventually select Templeton, California to build our retirement home. Life here is great, with more hobbies and volunteer causes than time permits

If you have read this far, bless you. I hope to see you all at our 60th reunion. So Skip, what's our reunion plan, a walker parade on Miller Avenue?

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