Biography

In 1951, the Korean war was beginning. I was forced by my parents to change my application to Cornell from Bachelor of Arts to Engineering, because they feared that I would be drafted. I endured three terms of Mechanical Engineering and left school. I returned in the fall as a student in the Unclassified Division. After about two months of that I realized that I had not the slightest idea of what I was doing at Cornell, so I made a decision for myself, probably the first decision of my life, that I was going to quit school and VOLUNTEER TO BE DRAFTED, which I did and entered the service in March 1954. I served two years and returned to Cornell in Jan 1956, taking advantage of an "early release" program that the Army had for those students who wanted to leave the service to attend college or get into some seasonal employment. I was fortunate that I was sent to Europe, only because a friend of mine, took my spot, which would have sent me to the Far East, because he lived in the state of Washington and would be able to visit home, which he could not have afforded to do, otherwise, even though it meant that he would be sent on to Korea. FATE was playing on my side, because while at Cornell in Jan 1956 I met the girl who was to be the "love of my life" in 1993, when I married her after earlier being married in 1961 and later divorced in 1983. FATE once again played on my side. In 1958, after graduating from Cornell, I entered the family business, which I had always felt I was going to do. However, another member of the family just a little older than me, had already begun working in the business and after a while, I felt that there was no real future there for me, so I quit and went to the financial business, as many other young guys were doing. It was a "growth" business, then, even though the "growth" aspect has become much less apparent, more recently. So for the last 50 years or so, I have been in the financial arena. Wow, it doesn't seem that it has been that long, but it has been. So through good and bad, mostly good, I have managed to get where I am. My business partner and I, (a terriffic female partner), have managed to make compliance, administration and financial affairs in the brokerage industry a very interesting and satisfying endeavor. We now have our own brokerage firm and are pursuing opportunities in the area of companies which are creating new sources of fuel, power and energy and at the same time, conserving resources and helping the environment. It is very exciting to be on the leading edge of this new industry.