I was born in Greenville, North Carolina and lived there for the first year of my life, before my father took a job at Cornell College in Mt. Vernon, Iowa. It was Lake Wobegon without the lake, although we did have Ink Pond. I think I had a pretty good childhood there, as childhoods go, but sometime in the late 70's, the college instituted its "one course at a time" calendar, which drove my father to look for work elsewhere.

My father was a math professor and dean before retiring in May 2001. As far as I know, no one else in my family has even held a bachelor's degree in mathematics, much less a doctorate, but while I was in graduate school, I discovered that "mathy" degrees tend to run in the family. One woman I knew had a physicist father, and two engineers and a mathematician as uncles (or something like that). Jen double-majored in math and computer science, and has a Master's degree in software development and design. Jen's father is an engineer. Our kids have geek hard-wired into their beings.

Anyway, we moved to San Antonio when I was fifteen, which was difficult for me, but no doubt a good thing. I've always had difficulty getting to know new people, and the move to San Antonio certainly forced me to learn to get better at it. My high school in San Antonio, Winston Churchill, was roughly the same size as Mt. Vernon. And I found the affluent Texas adolescents to have a much different perspective on the world than the students in Mt. Vernon, who mostly came from a farm/working-class background, with a healthy sprinkling of us faculty brats mixed in. Not better or worse (although a bit too politically conservative for my taste), just different. It was a growing experience.

I was fortunate enough to attend Churchill when it was one of the national powerhouses in competitive speech and debate. I labored for two years in cross-examination debate and extemporaneous speaking before finally being given permission to compete in Lincoln-Douglas debate, at which I went to Nationals and finished in the top 30 (my friend and rival Paul Kubicek would be quick to point out that he finished in the top 20). This is another valuable skill --- to this day, I can present a 7 minute speech on any topic at all given just 30 minutes prep time and a big box of news clippings from Newsweek, U.S. News and World Report and The Economist.

Back to Dave's Room