Sullivan Field is undergoing a major renovation. A new 7 lane, green and
gold, Mondo track surface is being installed as well as complete state
of the art lighting. In addition, a beautiful brick sidewalk will be
installed from the ticket booth to the home bleachers. You can have a
personalized brick added to this walkway.
Click here for more information.
Stephen Legate
First, HUGE thanks to Rick and the reunion committee for organizing
everything--especially this website! It is such a great blessing to
alums like me who (alas) will very likely be unable to attend. Reading
through folks' bios has brought back a flood of memories, almost
exclusively good ones. And looking at the "then" and "now" photos...
Well, what can one say? I am afflicted by that Proustian disease which
makes me believe that if I haven't seen you in 20 years you should
still LOOK LIKE YOU DID THE LAST TIME I SAW YOU. I mean, c'mon,
people. If *you* look different, that means *I* look different, and
that makes it hard for me to continue living my life in daily denial of
the passage of time. So with the exception of you folks who look
BETTER than you did when we graduated (and you know who you are),
please: get with the program.
Now, as to this bio business.
I left Los Alamos to attend college in an even smaller and more
provincial New Mexico burg: Socorro. Julie Bongianni and Darren
Meadows and Pete Milewski were there as well (as were Bob Warren and
Pat MacRoberts from the class of '86), but we didn't often run in the
same circles. I started majoring in computer science, but switched to
technical communication when it became apparent that programming wasn't
much fun once the algorithm got longer than a page.
At NMT, I floated through classes learning 2.7 4ths of what they tried
to to teach me, while spending most of my time discovering and
exploring what most people discover and explore in High School: booze,
cigs, sex, and Ultimate Frisbee. I look back on it now with great
nostalgia and affection, but also as a time of lost opportunities.
Education is so often wasted on the young, and I'm afraid I was no
exception.
I did learn just enough to get a job right after graduation, as a tech
writer for Tektronix, an electronics firm in Portland, Oregon. I spent
'91-'97 there, being offered opportunities to move up, while always
managing to slide sideways instead. In '96 I invested with some
friends in a dotcom start-up, and in the Fall of '97 I left the comfy
corporate job to join the start-up as their customer relations manager.
During my time in Portland, my personal life became more and more
bipolar. I found joy in athletics, music, and especially acting. I
took a few courses and soon found it relatively easy to land roles in
what I call "semi-pro" theatre: you get paid, but not nearly enough to
quit the day job. It became my primary avocation, and then passion.
One year in the middle ('95 or '96, I think), I did 5 shows
back-to-back, and loved every minute of it.
Other aspects of my life were not nearly so salubrious (thank you, Mrs.
Terry, for inflicting THAT particularly useless word on my lexicon). I
discovered good beer in Portland, and discovered that I liked it more
than was healthy. My drinking was not immediately destructive, because
I rarely got hammered sloppy, but truth be told I was developing into a
fine functional alcoholic. My relationships with women ranged from
juvenile, post-pubescent obsessions to cynical, indirect manipulations
and power games, without passing through any midpoint that would allow
honest, serious involvement.
In '96, the most obsessive and imbalanced relationship I'd ever had
ended poorly and left me stumbling backwards, flailing at the air, and
grasping in vain for some purchase on normalcy. Luckily for me, I
tripped and fell into the foyer of my local church. The people there
were kind and wise, and lived lives that largely demonstrated the power
of their beliefs. I took this as an opportunity to revive my mostly
dormant and unexamined Christian faith... but didn't give up the
booze, which ensured a "3 steps forward, 2 steps back" cha-cha for a
number of years.
The dot-com turned out to be a pressure cooker (whoda thunkit?). I
lasted about 2 years before the stress--and at least two more
SPECTACULARLY stupid relationship choices--pushed me to make a major
change. In November of '99 I sold off half my crap, piled the other
half in the back of my '77 F150, and trundled across the West to give
the acting thing a honest-to-God shot in Chicago.
I trundled slowly enough that I didn't actually get there until
February of double-ought. I spent the next two years "living the
dream." This consisted largely of doing regular semi-pro shows while
pounding the pavement in search of commercials, industrials,
voice-overs, and "featured extra" gigs. I lived in a "mens residence,"
sharing a bathroom with 3 guys I didn't know... I sold my truck and
rode the rusty rails of the CTA's "Death Trains"... I eventually burned
through my savings and had to start temping to make the ends meet.
But by God, I was an *actor*. And I loved every second of it.
Something else changed when I came to Chicago. My drinking shifted
from frequent and regularized to infrequent and insane. It was no
longer 2-4 beers 3-5 times a week. It was 1 or 2 nights a week, Night
Train all the way, baby. I'll spare you the sometimes amusing but
mostly sad anecdotes, except to say that I was never a black-out drunk.
Which means that I still remember most of the things I did, and worse,
the looks of pity and disgust on other people's faces when I did them.
It occurred to me one Saturday morning, when I woke up (not hungover,
still drunk) and realized I had missed a 10:30 audition, that since I
had tossed away my "normal" life to pursue "the dream," maybe I'd
better sober up before I pissed "the dream" down "the drain." I went
through a month or two of trying to cowboy up and *just* *stop*, which
simply didn't work. Finally I swallowed what little pride I had left
and walked into an AA meeting on 7/31/00. By the grace of God, haven't
had a drink since.
In spite of the removal of libational distractions and inefficiencies,
the acting career never quite took off. In the spring of '02, after
finishing a particularly disappointing (but mercifully short) run of
Camus' _Caligula_, I decided to "take a break."
It's not until you "take a break" from showbiz that you realize how
completely it dominates your life and time. Without endless hours of
rehearsals, performances, self-promotion, groveling for agents, etc.,
my life blossomed. I joined Chicago's multiple Ultimate Frisbee
leagues, started writing again, playing music again, got more involved
at my church, and generally became a whole lot more social.
That blossoming (blossomation? blossitude?) reached its full fruition
in the spring of '03, when mutual friends at church introduced me to a
woman named Beth Keller. Quite frankly, at our first meeting neither
of us was much impressed with the other. But to make a *very* long
(and *VERY* happy) story short: we met in April, were engaged on New
Years' Eve, and married in July of '04. Our first son, Tucker Lamar,
was born in May of '05, and Charles Satchel followed in January of this
year.
What can I say about my family? They are an unmitigated and utterly
undeserved blessing, the likes of which I can barely comprehend. They
are visible, daily incarnations of God's grace, mercy, and redemptive
power... and constant reminders that He has deeper and more meaningful
plans for my life than I ever could have imagined.
As to the professional side of things... (shrug). One of the early
temp jobs I had was accounting for the local CBS affiliate. Though I
had no experience or relevant education, I did well. Accounting (as
those of you who do it know) is one of those jobs where if you have a
modicum intelligence, work ethic, and integrity, you stand out--because
most of the people who do accounting hate it and aren't very good at
it.
Truth be told I didn't like it all *that* much, so shortly after Beth
and I got married I started business school at North Park University
here in Chicago. After Tucker was born, and Beth's maternity leave ran
out, I came home to take care of the boy during the day and continued
working on my MBA nights and weekends. I completed the MBA in
December, and now I'm working in... um... accounting for CNA insurance
downtown.
Well, when you have two year-plus sabbaticals in your last 8 years,
employers would rather you just do whatever you did last for a while,
to prove you're not going to flake out again. I'm glad to be working
at CNA, because once my probationary period is over there will be many
opportunities for me to move into something more interesting... like,
um... *finance*.
So what does that add up to? Trials and blessings, shame and healing,
successes and failures, rapids and eddies... ADVENTURE, my friends,
GRAND adventure. And it all started with a highly sheltered, mostly
whitebread, semi-idyllic life and education at LAHS.
Go figure.
I am genuinely distressed at not being able to attend the reunion. If
you've read this far, you must have known me well enough to
bother--please write! As I won't be able to see you in person, your
bitwise correspondence will have to do.
