Linda and I moved to Charlotte in 1989. The golfers in our class will know that the Carolinas are the golfing Mecca of our country. Pinehurst is 2 hours to the east. Hilton Head is several hours down the Interstate. Kiawah Island is 20 miles south of Charleston and Sea Island is just a bit further down the coast over the line off the Georgia Coast. Over in the mountains of western North Carolina lie some of the most brutal, but fun, golf courses in the country built on top of mountains. The golfer must absolutely stay in bounds at all times else he/she will watch the ball roll off a cliff and fall 500 feet, same on the greens. Playing golf 2 times a week is about the max I can do, then I get tired of the game. So, after nearly 40 years in the arena, to fill in the rest of my time I have become a visiting lecturer at the University of North Carolina in international management at UNC’s Graduate School of Business. I am now in negotiations with Wake Forest to do the same thing at their graduate school, and I am volunteering here in Charlotte as a consultant for SCORE, an offshoot of the SBA, to assist entrepreneurs to start and grow new businesses. To top it all off, I am teaching a Spanish course at the Latin American Coalition to immigrants who want to start their own businesses.

Linda, the same age as me and whose accomplishment I am speechless about, at the age of 50, read an article in the Charlotte Observer about taking on new careers. She did what I call an Albert Schweitzer (Schweitzer was a concert organist in Europe until the age of 50, at which point he entered medical school and became a doctor. He became world famous and is remembered for the clinic he established in the jungles of central Congo after becoming a doctor.) Linda entered nursing school at the age of 50, became an RN and spent 15 years as a surgical nurse in operating rooms on the surgical floor of the Carolinas Medical Center, a massive, regional teaching hospital here in Charlotte. Linda retired at 65, and I gave her a giant retirement party. I think the entire staff of the hospital came, including surgeons, at least it felt like it when I got the bill.

Will H. Strong CdeP 1958