2012 - 40th Firstly I would like to offer heartfelt thanks to the organizers for putting this reunion together including the excellent web pages. As a result of these efforts, I have reconnected to many old Lebo friends to the point of daily email conversations which I hope do not get me fired. I will try to offer up a “Lebo –centric” self-chronology to keep this more interesting to the group – and actually, this is how I am thinking more anyway. I recognize that anything on the web might just as well be posted in the office of my (or your) CEO, so I will do my best to scrub this of anything really interesting. If my best isn’t good enough, well, sorry. Some of my group of Lebo friends in more restrictive corporate cultures have already gone completely off the grid once we started talking about the more exciting aspects of adolescence (I’m not naming names – Bob). As a memory jogger, I was a shy nerdish person living on Jefferson Drive who attended Washington Elementary and Mellon Junior High along with such notable Reunion Responders as Jayne Shepard, Dick and Bob Ruprecht and Bill Cummings. I did have two outgoing sisters: Carol –class of 1969 and Susan –class of 1973, who kept me more connected to the larger universe. Looking back – I have to credit sports with enlarging my peer circle from my bookish colleagues (Jeff Sell – how did you become a cardio vascular surgeon and pilot? I’m just saying. Human growth hormone?). The cross country and track teams in retrospect led to tight cultural bonding as evidenced by our now frequent email chatter including Paul Josephson (thanks for getting me into the Communist Party as a teenager!), Leon (“Grizzly”) Kolankiewicz, Alan (“Chuckles”) Ward, and the Ruprechts of course. Somewhere along the way I made a wrong turn and was introduced to my “hoodlum” friends including Harry Bradley, Mike Gallaway, Keith Florig, Jack Brown, Eric Schuettee and Geoff Fortney. As far as I can tell from recent correspondence, our collective maturity peaked in 1970. While our parents were away at a cocktail party one day (the only explanation that makes sense to me now), Harry and I took off in his Heavy Chevy (with rusted out areas in the floor boards serving as ejection ports for spent McDonald’s wrappers) on a cross country tour to interview for colleges. I recall our interviews at Rice when Harry walked out and said “we are not coming here, all the girls have 800 on their math SAT” just as my name was being called for my interview. I silently did a 180 and we drove out to Galveston in our suits for a few days on the beach to get over that shock. By the time we got to Duke where Harry’s older sister was a junior, we were so exhausted that we just decided to go for that option (despite the fact that Coach K had not been invented yet). They were Blue Devils so it seemed logical. We decided to make it a team effort and we were joined by Bob Ruprecht, Jack Sutherland and (accidentally) Marla Hagan. Dick Ruprecht screwed us by getting accepted into an ivy league school. Bob has asked me to skip the next 4 years so I will go to the memory of sitting at my desk in the house I was sharing on N Mangum St in Durham, listening to the professionals 8 feet away at the Pink Lady Massage Parlor next door chatter about how our dog Bedford was driving away business. I assessed my options and decided that Med School might be good. I liked working with my hands (thank you US Steel for giving me jobs in the mills – “Beno bricks” – reference for Dick), and telling people what to do so surgeon seemed like a good option. In that regard, I lucked into a lifetime of happiness – no sarcasm there. I thought about Pitt or Penn but my parents had been transferred to London (seems like a common story in the other bios reflecting the corporate headquarter culture of Pittsburgh) and when I interviewed at Tulane – the weather was great – so I went there. We were pretty much unsupervised in those days and we did every job at the Big Free – Charity Hospital – so it was more fun than anyone should ever be allowed to have. I pursued my classmate and back row colleague Jean and we were married on the day after graduation in 1980. Several Lebo friends came down to celebrate. A toasted Ruprecht who was a former sprinter, challenged and beat a guy on a Harley in a one block race on Bourbon St. They should make that an Olympic event. And he was wearing dress shoes. Remarkable, my family coalesced back in our native Texas when parents retired to Fort Worth, my wife and I did residency in Dallas and sister Carol got a teaching job in Dallas. I stayed for 15 years with UT Southwestern at Parkland and Dallas Children’s as an academic surgeon. The one interlude in that stretch was a one year fellowship in Pediatric Otolaryngology at Pittsburgh Children’s. There were very few Lebo classmates around as I recall. It was as if the Steel Industry implosion was a neutron bomb. I do recall meeting up with Jackie Petersen who was a Pitt Med Student. I also have a memory of the 15 reunion a year or so later where I was shocked to see people waterskiing on the Allegheny (Yikes, if they fall, they might dissolve!) and I recall fondly seeing old friends Katie Rick and John Hunter. Precious daughter and hiking and tennis buddy Becca came along in 1991. We moved to Seattle in 1995 after I had a midlife crisis while stuck in a Dallas traffic jam. Jean is a retired retina ophthalmologist; I am still an academic surgeon, now with the U of Washington. Becca opted for maximal out of state tuition and now a senior in college in another beautiful mountain setting, but one with sunshine. Look forward to seeing everyone who attends the reunion.