Biography
In the early 1960s when I was completing an electrical engineering degree at the University of Cincinnati there were a mere handful of graduate programs in the US in biomedical engineering. One was at Drexel University where I competed a master’s degree and another was in NU’s EE department. At NU I endeavored to apply the control system theory of mechanical systems to understanding control of physiological systems. After a year at “Tech” (now McCormick) I transferred to Physiology in the Medical School. Upon completing the Physiology PhD, I was hired to teach cardiopulmonary physiology to medical and dental students, totally oblivious to a developing need in a few years of the Medical School for a new Associate Dean for Student Programs, a “mother hen” of sorts for its 700+ students. Little could I have envisioned that this would become a 29-year adventure in problem solving of an entirely different nature than what I had been formally trained to address. Yet to my delight this opened opportunities to work with still other students, faculty and staff on both campuses. While certainly not a life’s work for which I had extensive training, I was delighted by the stimulation which this new problem solving challenge provided. Of course, not all of these problems had happy endings for the 5000 medical students involved, but we shared many good times together and earned each other’s respect and admiration. Upon retiring in 2004 I apparently forgot to sign out on certain provisions and am called back from time to time to facilitate discussion groups of second year students and assist with the conduct of the Chicago Schweitzer Fellowship. I also became involved in the then newly created Northwestern Emeritus Organization and led an effort to work with the Human Relations Department and Faculty Senate to secure an improved health insurance program for NU emeriti. While yet an undergraduate I was married to Lynn Reesey whose own career interests took her through grade school teaching, opening a retail kit business in Evanston, management of a blacksmith/canoe store in Chicago and a jewelry business in downtown Evanston. Indeed, throughout our lives together canoe/kayak paddling has been a continuing family interest taking us to many waterways throughout the U.S. and into the Canadian wilderness. This also led to my occasional use of a kayak as a vehicle for commuting along the lakefront from Evanston to the Medical School downtown in the early years.. It also led indirectly to my role as an actor in a television commercial filmed for a business insurance company in northern Wisconsin, something I never imagined when I first set foot at NU in 1962! And what would I say has been most rewarding from those 57 years at NU? Clearly, this would be the occasional opportunities for Lynn or me to receive medical treatment from a former student, and more recently the welcoming of former students to NEO membership!