From Judy Martin McCandless in Williamsburg, VA.

Hello Classmates!  What amazing lives we have all lead! Hope all will report in.  Here’s my contribution.

After MHS, I attended Colby Jr. College in N.H. worked as medical secretary at Boston Univ Med Ctr for a couple years before driving with a coworker to California to seek my fortune. There at UCSF Med Ctr,  I worked up to Business Manager of Cancer Research Center, earned a B.S. in Business (Univ. of Redlands) and moved to Contract Administrator with SRI International (Stanford) and Westinghouse Marine Division. The latter as Admin team leader for R&D-to-production Navy contracts for the Cruise Missile interface for a submarine launch system. Cold war, exciting times, big time negotiations in D.C!

In 1978 I met John McCandless (a Marbleheader 2 years older) skiing at Sun Valley Idaho in an afterski bar. He asked where I was from; he said, “I’m from M’head too” – I thought, Oh yeah, what a great pickup line, but then he named “Lafayette” as the main street into town! We hit it off from the start, married, skied, sailed and worked long hours in Silicon Valley.

 After a 41-yr old co-worker of John’s died suddenly of a heart attack, we started planning a getaway from stressful careers. In l986 we sailed for Mexico and crossed the Pacific to Polynesia in our 35-foot sailboat, with a few stops arriving in Australia in 1988.  Left the boat there, returned to work in San Fran for a year, then sailed inside the Great Barrier Reef for 9 months, then through Melanesia, up to Micronesia, ending in Guam where we did scuba diving, dodged typhoons, and I managed subcontracts, then HR, for an Australian company for almost 3 years. After 7 years away, we sold our boat and returned to “the mainland.”  In Florida we reconnected with family, and I worked as a Purchasing Agent. We retired to the Intercoastal Waterway in South Carolina with plans to sail the east coast.

That was not to be, since John soon endured several back surgeries and added complications, and I ten years of caregiving.  He passed away in Jan, 2016.  I am still in pretty good shape, continued traveling, and recently moved to a CCRC community near family in Williamsburg VA.  Life is good here with interesting new friends.  I am editing a memoir about our travels in the South Pacific, titled, Go Now: A Midlife Journey.  So my motto is: If you have a dream, do it now!  Don’t drift, learn something new.

I won’t make the reunion, but enjoy each other for me. I appreciate the photos.

Judy