1967
I attended CCNY because it had a good reputation and it wasn't going to cost me very much money. I started at the main campus uptown, and what I liked was the variety of programs that they had available. I went down to Baruch and finished my last two and a half years for a baccalaureate in business administration. I originally thought I was going to be a civil engineer. I found out that I had some challenges with some of the courses that I was taking. CCNY showed me right up front that there were always options available. One of my challenges was in order to stay in the school, I had to maintain a decent grade point average. The other thing was that my family did not have very much money. As a result, I still had to work while I was going to college. That taught me independence more than anything else. Rather than relying on somebody else, I relied on myself, and that's kept me in pretty good stead for the rest of my life. If you keep your mind and eyes open, there's never a dead end; there's always a pathway. My first career was in the military. I went through a variety of positions there and retired as a Lieutenant Colonel. I still keep in contact with a number of the people that I met through the military. I then went into sales, and I found out I was not a salesperson. It moved me on to a third phase: the fire service. I worked for a couple of years as a firefighter and then joined the State Fire Marshal's Office. My highest position was a chief deputy state fire marshal, and I really enjoyed that. Helping people maintain safety standards was very critical, and that satisfied me a great deal.