CV.

I was born in 1948 in the Bronx, New York, and spent the first sixteen years of my life near 167th Street and Jerome Avenue, in the shadow of the old Yankee Stadium. I went to public grade school at PS 114, junior high at McCombs JHS, and high school at William Howard Taft. I commuted by bus and train, and New York was different then. Kids had the run of the city. The subway could take us anywhere. Parents were not scared that you would be kidnapped; they were happy to have you out of the house.

The sounds of growing up there were the roar and clackity-clack of the elevated IRT subway, and in winter, the tire chains on the garbage trucks. To me, those chains were sleigh bells.

My family, my mother, father, brother, and I, lived in a two-bedroom, one-bath apartment on the fifth floor of an elevator building. I would guess it was about 500 square feet in total. It amazes me how much affluence my brother and I have achieved given those meager beginnings. But our parents gave us a limited set of choices: you could be a doctor, a lawyer, or an engineer. My brother chose doctor, became head of pediatrics at a major New York City hospital, and taught at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. I took the engineering path.

Just down the street from my apartment was a long stairway rising up from Jerome Avenue. Decades later it became known for a different reason: the West 167th Street stairs were used as the stage for a key scene in the Joaquin Phoenix film Joker.

I went to the NYU School of Engineering and Science at University Heights, also in the Bronx. When I graduated in 1969, I left New York for the Boston area and, in a way, never returned. But when my parents could scrape together a few dollars, we would drive to Florida and stay in Miami Beach. Living now in Vero Beach, on the water, feels connected to those trips: the light, the ocean, the sense of being somewhere open.

I live in a small community called Sea Oaks in Vero Beach, where I play tennis almost every day, walk the beach outside our window, swim, and keep following the many threads that still interest me.