I was not one of those kids who knew exactly what he wanted to be when he grew up. It is unlikely that I would have attended college were it not for my mother’s insistence. With her help, I managed to get into Boston College in the School of Education. Sometime during my four years there, I developed a love for learning; so much so that I graduated with high honors and was invited to study educational psychology at BC. They gave me a full scholarship, room and board and a work study job. When I graduated, I had two degrees, no interest in teaching and no marketable skills. My work as a resident assistant led me to look for work as a dormitory director. The University of Southern Maine hired me to run a dormitory of 300 women on the Gorham campus. God knows what possessed them, but it brought me to Maine.

While at USM, I took advanced counseling courses and began to explore other ways to make a living. I noticed an ad in the Boston Globe for a health counselor with the American Health Foundation. The job was to counsel US Airforce personnel who were assessed to have a high risk of heart disease to lower their risk by quitting smoking, lowering their blood pressure and cholesterol, and losing weight. I applied and got an interview. I was well qualified except for my pack a day Marlboro habit. No one asked me about my smoking, and I did not offer. It occurred to me that smoking might hurt my career as well as my health, so I stopped on December 27, 1979. It was not easy. I learned firsthand about how to grapple with the physical and psychological aspects of addiction. I was offered the job with the United States Airforce Health Evaluation and Risk Tabulation (H.E.A.R.T) Program the following February. And so began a 40-year career in healthcare.

I left the HEART Program at its conclusion to take a job as Wellness Coordinator for the Osteopathic Hospital of Maine. With the support of the hospital administration and board, I founded The Center for Health Promotion which was among the first worksite health improvement and occupational medical programs in the country. We employed twenty health professionals including doctors, occupational health nurses and health educators. Our clients included L.L. Bean, Unum and Hannaford Brothers.

During those years I learned that I had a knack for building, managing and leading a team of people to achieve big goals. When the ophthalmologists at Eye Care Medical Group in Portland offered me the chance to help them build their practice, I jumped at the chance. Over the next thirty years I managed large physician owned medical and surgery practices in Maine, Mesa, Arizona, Portland, Oregon and Ocala, Florida. These were complex organizations that employed between 100 and 200 people with operating budgets between ten and sixty million. Along the way, I got an MBA from the University of Southern Maine that helped me advance my career.

I was fortunate to be able to wind up my career by leading a financial and operational turnaround for a practice in Bangor, Maine. Ninety jobs were salvaged as a result. This seemed like a good note to go out on, so I retired in 2018.

Only six months passed before my brother-in-law Gene Willard told me he knew a young man who needed help buying the auto repair shop he had worked at for the past ten years. That kid was Ted Abbott. Ted graduated from Scarborough High School with my daughter Kari. Today we are partners at Ocean Street Auto Repair where we keep the working folks of South Portland and Scarborough “on the road.”