Today's Featured Biography

 
Richard Nickle

Candy and Rich (who Mr. Sutton in the Math Department at Jeff once called Siamese Twins joined at the hand) went to college after graduation. Candy went to Our Lady of the Lake and got a BA with 2 majors and 2 minors. Rich went to the Coast Guard Academy with Manny Flores, Jim Samuelson, and 3 others from San Antonio. He was the only one of the six who graduated 4 years later. He had a BS in Math with a specialty in Engineering. They got married shortly after graduation by Rich’s Dad at Trinity in San Antonio in 1978 and moved to Rich’s first duty station in Key West, FL. The trip over was our honeymoon. Rich found out about Candy’s claustrophobia in the I-10 tunnel at Mobile, AL. After settling in, Candy got a job teaching at St. Mary’s Star by the Sea Catholic School while Rich was involved in drug interdiction and blue water Search and Rescue in the Straits of Florida and points south. Two year later, Rich was transferred to Captain-of-the-Port New Orleans in the middle of the Mariel Boat lift. Candy left early with our son, Peter Thaddeus, to visit the home front in San Antonio. In New Orleans, Rich was involved in Port Safety and Security, coastal Search and Rescue, and Environmental Protection. After a year of being Mom, Candy went back to work teaching with St. Tammany Parish Schools so we could buy a house. During our 4 years in New Orleans, two other kids – Lyssa Dawn and Megan Kathleen – popped up for some reason or another.

In the late spring of 1984, Rich left the Coast Guard and all of us moved back to San Antonio briefly. Candy was offered a job with San Antonio Independent School District and Rich found a job with Tetra Tech, Inc in Kansas City. Either opportunity would have been great. After some soul searching and maybe flipping a coin or two, we moved to Kansas City in late summer. For the next 6 years, Rich worked 50 hour week doing environmental cleanups under contract with the EPA and others. Candy raised the kids, made the money stretch, and ran a Mothers-Day-Out program at our church. After a year in Kansas City, we bought a house and a car just perfect for a family of five. At the closing, we found out child number 4 – Cassandra (we figured that name was long enough, she didn’t need a middle name) - was on the way (Candy may have known before the closing, but didn’t say anything for some reason). We adjusted, figured out where the kids were coming from, and got things fixed. Without going into messy details, our new dog and Rich shared an ice bag one night. We did the whole shebang in KC – Scout Leaders, Church Volunteers, family reunions.

In the late spring of 1990, Rich took a job with an outfit called the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (Congress picked that gawdawful name) co-located with its big sister, the Centers for Disease Control, in Atlanta. ATSDR is the Superfund part of the Department of Health and Human Services. Candy spent that summer in San Antonio and drove alone with 4 kids, a dog, and a cat to Atlanta. She hasn’t let Rich forget that trip, so he knows it had to be memorable. The day after she arrived, we closed on a house that Candy had never seen before in Gwinnett County near a big rock called Stone Mountain. Talked about a leap of faith, Rich was very uncomfortable until Candy settled in and pronounce the home “OK”. Rich became what the government calls a national expert on hazardous materials and he calls a gopher. After Cassy entered Kindergarten, Candy went back to teaching and became a metro-Atlanta Teacher of the Year. Tad is about to get his PharmD from UGA; Lyssa is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker working with State Prisoners in Valdosta, GA; Megan graduated with a double degree in Chemistry from West Georgia and Biochemical Engineering from Georgia Tech and is teaching high school math; Cassy got a BS in Geology from West Georgia and is teaching chemistry (go figure) in high school. Megan is married and Lyssa is engaged. Cassy and Tad are still looking. Rich and Candy are looking forward to retirement in a few years, probably near Weiss Lake in northeast Alabama.

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