David Leary

• 08/09/2010- David Leary - Dave reports the following: "Sorry, I will not be at the reunion, but please pass on my regards to all of our classmates. Through yours and Harold's efforts I feel like I know them better after all these years. Have a great time at the reunion and I'm looking forward to hearing all about it. Best regards, Dave."
  
  Dave earlier sent info to Joan Kelly about events in his life, and he has agreed to share his story with his classmates-- "I went to Stonehill after high school and it was a good move for me. I did well with the small classes and probably wouldn't have made it at a larger college (the tuition was also a big factor). There were only 38 in my graduating class and only two of us were the science majors. After two summers of PLC's (boot camp) I was commissioned a 2nd Lieutenant in the Marine Corps at graduation with a BS in Chemistry, Biology and Physics. I quite literally grew up in the Marines and it gave me a good foundation for business and life in general.
  
  In 62 I married Jean O'Leary (maiden name) from Brockton who was working as a nurse in Boston. We lived in Northern Virginia for several years while I worked in pharmaceutical sales and then opened a commercial medical laboratory with two partners (a PHD Biochemist and a retired army master sergeant who had run regional labs in the army). We did quite well with a central lab in Northern Virginia and a fleet of cars to pick up samples from doctors during the day, ran the tests at night and delivered results to the doctor the next day. We opened a second lab in New Jersey and serviced all of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, D.C., and Virginia. We moved to New Jersey and in then sold the lab to Revlon.
  
  I retired for a while and spent the winters in St. Thomas. That lasted about five years until I quit retirement and in 1975 we moved to Palo Alto, CA with our family of now 6 kids (5 girls and one boy plus 9 grandchildren) all living in California. Jean got her masters in Marriage, Family and Child Counseling and I did real estate investments for a while and I also owned several retail stores which I managed until 2000 when we sold the businesses and moved to Rocklin, about 25 miles from Sacramento. Jean really enjoyed her counseling practice and worked four days a week for five more years commuting from the Bay Area while started a handyman business to stay active. I don't intend to try that retirement thing again.
  
  I have survived bypass surgery, hip replacement and a shoulder replacement and feel fortunate that worn out body parts can be replaced with titanium parts. Life is good and we stay busy with travel and family. I often think about life in Easton and how different it was back then. Jean still referees to me as "that skinny kid from South Easton". Boredom is not a problem and I sometimes wonder how I ever had time to work. I love the description of retirement as waking up in the morning with nothing to do and when I go to bed at night it's only half done. I recently exchanged Facebook messages with Bob Oman, now living in Singapore.
  
  About his family Dave writes- "Jean went to Brockton High, then into nurses training at Mass General and on to B.C. for her degree. She then worked as a visiting nurse for a few years and then worked for Liberty Mutual as a rehab nurse. Jean and I didn't balance the sexes very well; the first was a girl , then a boy and then four more girls. The girls claim it to be five liberated women and one male chauvinist pig.
  
  Career wise they went in many directions. Margaret, the oldest, graduated from U. Penn then traveled a lot before getting married and raising two boys and a girl (the oldest is a freshman at U.C. Davis). She went back to school and now works part time as a Landscape Designer. Our son Arthur went to Chico State, he ran one of our stores and then purchased it from me. Alice (#3), went to Whittier, got married and has four kids. Catherine (#4) went to USC, lived in Hong Kong for five years working with E-Trade, got married and has two boys. Rita (#5) bounced around a bit, engaged and lives in San Francisco. Eileen (#6) is at Stanford as a project manager in sleep studies - presently managing a research project on narcolepsy. She is married and living in San Francisco with no plans for children at this time. I sold the St. Thomas properties when we moved to California in 1975. It's not as easy to get there from CA as it was from Virginia and New Jersey."