My ESU Experience

I have had two careers.  The first one was aligned with my BS in Finance from the University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School, and my MA in Economics from the University of Cambridge.  During the subsequent 26 years, I held positions in the treasury departments of five multinational corporations, culminating in VP & Treasurer of Duracell, then VP & Treasurer of Harnischfeger Industries.  The second career was aligned with my gap year at Gordonstoun School in Scotland on an ESU Schoolboy Scholarship.  This second career was much more meaningful, at least to me.  After leaving Harnischfeger and picking up some credits in physics and astronomy at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, I taught astronomy and physics at a prep school in the Hudson Valley of New York for 15 years.  The school was a co-ed boarding school, Millbrook School.

The ESU sent me to Gordonstoun, and it was a brilliant choice.  I had previously spent two summers successfully at the Colorado Outward Bound School.  Both Gordonstoun and the Outward Bound Schools were founded by Kurt Hahn.  (I wonder if Lillian Moore, who presided over the schoolboys in the UK, was involved in the decision.  I was a huge fan of Miss Moore, and maintained a correspondence with her for years afterwards, met with her occasionally in London, and invited her to ride in the Cambridge launch for a practice prior to the 1971 Boat Race.)  

At Gordonstoun, one of my teachers was Ian Lawson, who taught economics.  He was an attractive, no-nonsense, middle-aged teacher of high integrity, a model of who I wanted to be.  In fact, I promised myself then that, before I retired, I would replicate him in that kind of environment.  So, it was no accident that years later I would become a teacher at a boarding school.  Whether or not I managed to become a model to some of my students is not for me to judge.