Today's Featured Biography

 
Kenneth Stehr

NOTE:TO VIEW PHOTOS USE PASSWORD PHS69.
It has been a pretty good run this far. When I left PHS I went through the Cal State system and earned an undergraduate degree in Biological Sciences. From there, I completed the Medical Technology program at Hayward State while working in assorted retail jobs. Fortunately, I never ended up working as a medical technologist – I’ll explain later. Instead, I ended up taking an R&D assistant position with a young company in Foster City that manufactured X-ray fluorescence (XRF) instruments. As most of you already know, XRF is a non-destructive, elemental analysis technique. The fit between my education and the objectives of this particular company was that they were trying to develop an instrument to perform electrolyte determinations on blood serum with XRF. This goal wasn’t achieved. I took other positions within the company such as applications development, product management, marketing and sales. I worked around the industry at various other companies mostly in technical sales. I tried to escape from the field by briefly venturing off into other technologies, like scientific-grade CCD camera systems and back-end semiconductor test equipment. Alas, I am back throwing X-rays around as a contractor doing market development for a company that manufactures a handheld spectrometer system used in a wide variety of industries. My main focus is the consumer product safety market whereby we are trying to keep your grandchildren (scheesh!) safe from lead tainted toys and other nasty elements.

The reason I stated above that I was fortunate to have not ended up being a medical laboratory technician is that my current career path has allowed me the opportunity to travel the world fairly extensively plus getting an education on some very interesting industrial processes. I now realize that I would have been bored to death sitting at a bench looking for parasites in stool specimens.

Home life has been wonderful. Linda and I will have been married (to each other) for 29 (consecutive) years by the time the reunion rolls around. We never had any children. Linda works as the Assistant to the City Manager of Pleasant Hill, which is a small city adjacent to where the walnuts creak. We enjoy travel and have just returned from a photo safari in three African countries. We are avid sailors, although the intensity of that activity has reduced lately. We have had wonderful bareboat voyages in the Caribbean, Tahiti, Chesapeake Bay and Maine and, of course, ripping up San Francisco Bay.

We will be looking forward to seeing and chatting with everyone in October.

5/13/2014 Update:

Another five years, eh? Professionally, I had a couple of direct sales jobs that were associated with my background in analytical X-ray instrumentation. The last one ended last July, so Linda and I went to Italy to get my attitude properly adjusted. It worked! Italy was fantastic and is a highly recommended place to visit. So much history, excellent food and wine, plus the Italians actually like Americans - they remember WWII.

Today is a milestone for me as I have officially retired and will be spending my time perfecting my new position. We plan on more travel both domestically and abroad. We just finished a 12 weeks Adult ED photography class that gets us out of the house looking for photo opportunities. I am an active volunteer crew on Pegasus, which is a 51' wooden ketch out of Berkeley. We mostly take out kids (some "at-risk") to show them where they live from a very different perspective. Lately, we have teamed up the BAADS (Bay Area Association of Disabled Sailors) and now take veterans and their families out for a refreshing day on The Bay. Many of the Vets have PTSD and the sailing activity is just the ticket to clear their heads, at least for a little while. If you're interested, you can check out Pegasus at www.pegasusvoyages.org where there will be a mission statement along with photos from our voyages - you might even see me!

This is our third year as season ticket holders for the A's. Tailgating and baseball have become a very relaxing way to spend a day.

That's pretty much all for now. We will be looking forward to seeing everyone on the 28th.

Cheers!

3/26/2019 Update:

Not too much has changed since the last update. Been giving photography more attention and traveled to Germany, Austria and Switzerland last year.

We also made the trek to France and toured the usual places including the Normandy beaches. Envisioning what took place there on D-Day and for the next four years is truly humbling. We had a young French girl as a tour guide who's grand mother had three German troops quartered, not by choice, in her home. Grand father was suspected of being part of the French Resistance and disappeared one day. Our tour guide's father schooled her extremely well about the German occupation and the Allied liberation. She was forbidden to swim at Omaha beach to demonstrate respect for the carnage that took place there. Every American needs to visit this site to learn what it took to have the freedoms we now enjoy.

Ireland is next up for the end of May this year. My wife of 38 years, Linda, wants to spend her next significant birthday out of the country.

I've also worked on my BBQ skills and can cook some real low-and-slow meats. Briskets are the gold standard of BBQ technique, but requires getting the pit going at 02:00 to make a 19:00 dinner - yawn!

Retirement is great! It's enjoyable to do what you want whenever you want. California and especially the Bay Area, has become a real drag. The weather is fantastic and there is a lot to do, but the traffic and insane politics have us considering moving out of state sometime soon.

I'm looking forward to the reunion. The people active in the planning and execution have done a fabulous job and I think everyone will have a great time. See you then!

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