Bill Darling

Hi there from a slightly older version of myself!

It has been a long time since the last class reunion, perhaps a decade and a half. I do remember a rather nondescript long evening at the Concord Inn and then getting sunburned at the party the next day at the public pool.

Greetings to all of you. I hope that this missive finds you all well and having a good life. Ted asked for a paragraph and of course that set off the synapses in the long-term memory section of my half-century-old brain.

The past thirty years have been gratifyingly spent primarily in Southwest Alaska in the Bristol Bay area. We lived in the small town of Dillingham for twenty-three years where my wife, Mary Ellen, and I raised our children and taught school. I taught high school math and science (algebra, geometry, calculus, chemistry, physics, and computer science) and had a truly rich environment to be a teacher. Small classes, a wonderful facility, and kids that for the most part, actually wanted to learn.

Dillingham is situated on the richest salmon grounds in the world and has two marvelous lake systems flowing past its front door (Wood River and Tikchik systems). We spent most of our summers boating and camping on the wild rivers and lakes of this area. It made for a great place to raise Evan, now 20, and Brook, now 15. Evan is now attending Western State College in Gunnison Colorado and plans on going into sports medicine. Brook is a high school sophomore.

At present we live in Eagle River, a small town close to Anchorage. We moved here in 1994 to give our children some opportunities that they couldn't get in a small bush Alaskan town. Evan became a cross-country skier and went on to the Junior Olympics as a 17 and 18 year old. Brook was able to learn to play the piano and cello and get on a soccer team, things that were not available in Dillingham.

I retired from teaching in 1994 and because of my computer and technology background was able to land a new career as an education technologist for a state agency that works with severely handicapped children. Please check out my agency's web site. It is a wonderful job as I get to work with technology that empowers the disabled, build and run a web site, and teach teachers how to use assistive technology with students. Mary Ellen is teaching middle school math and science in Anchorage. In our spare time, Mary Ellen and I mountain bike, cross country ski and backpack. We are looking forward to seeing more of the world when Brook gets out of high school.

I certainly would enjoy hearing from all of you. Please consider this the throwing down of the rhetorical gauntlet so..... Write to this group!