Thank you and the other eleven reunion committee members who have worked very long hours to make this 40^th reunion happen!  My bio could fill a book so I will simply give some of the general points since 1972.  I was in no extracurricular activities in high school because I practiced three hours every day to learn to play the pipe organ then did homework (lonely and tedious!).

Cincinnati Bible College - B.S. in church music (organ major)

Duquesne University - graduate work

Worked for three pipe organ builders (apprenticeship)

Church organist from 1975 through 1993 - retired to handle my ever growing business

I started my own business in March, 1980 repairing and building pipe organs (started with a bus pass and a small tool box). It took a lot of years to get established and charge enough to make a decent living.  Since then, I have traveled throughout the United States installing 30 new pipe organs; rebuilding over 60 older pipe organs, repairing dozens of other organs by re-leathering, rewiring, cleaning, converting to solid state control systems, enlarging, relocating, re-voicing, etc.  I now tune and maintain over one hundred pipe organs in Western Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia.  I have met many famous, wealthy and notable people through my business over the years.

Having finally set my career in motion, I joined a singles club where I met my future wife, Karen.  Our second date was in Michigan where I was removing a pipe organ to be rebuilt and she was having her annual family reunion.  I made the twenty minute drive to see Karen where I met over forty of her family and relatives!  We got married in 1992 at Saint Paul Cathedral in Pittsburgh with twenty-two brass and tympani players.   A few years later, we had a daughter who we named Geena. We were not able to have a second child, so we went to the Ukraine to an orphanage and adopted another girl (2-½ years old) who we named Nicole.  A famous, former Pittsburgh Steeler also adopted two girls from this orphanage. Oh - we traveled about 16,000 miles on eight plane trips over three weeks and returned one week before the 9-11 attacks.

Now, I have done well in my organ building and repair business (32 years) and my girls are teenagers.  I probably have the youngest children of anyone in our class. Geena wants to get a PhD in molecular biology and help to find a cure for cancer.  Nicole wants to be a veterinarian.   Life has been good to me and I really like reading the bios of my fellow classmates!  You see, most people are curious about my unusual business so I always ask what they do for a living.  I am the only graduate from Mt. Lebanon to ever go into the field of pipe organ building.  This is not so unusual as only about one out of every one million U.S. citizens does what I do. I am not bragging - it is just a very interesting way to make a living. 

My family and I now live on five acres in Butler County where we built a house with a large first floor shop for my business.  I then built a large storage barn (of which I am now adding to) for my business.   We have a Bichon Frise dog who keeps us entertained! 

Best wishes to all our classmates and their families!