| Year | Month day | Event |
|---|---|---|
| 1941 | July 11 | Born in Perth Amboy, NJ. I do not know whether we lived at 132 Rector Street when I was born or whether my parents moved there later. |
| 1947-1951 | Went to St. Stephen's School in Perth Amboy for 1st through 4th grade. It was a Polish Catholic school. I doubt Polish was of much significance, though Catholocism was likely of signifgance. | |
| 1951 | September 1 | Family moved to Orange, NJ, 434 Conover Terrace. There was a major explosion at an asphalt plant in Perth Amboy in June 1949 which blew out the main front window at my parent's office and caused concern at our home in Perth Amboy. As a result my parents decided to move a distance from there---though their office was still in Perth Amboy and so there was a significant commute. As we moved in, while my father was painting the walls, I was sent somewhere and I got lost, eventually realizing I was only a block away from the house. I made it a point to remember better where I am going in the future. |
| 1955 | June 17 | Completed eight grade at Saint Venantius School in Orange NJ. |
| 1956-1960 | Attended a private high school, Carteret School, in West Orange, NJ. The head master Mr. Hofe was likely the reason that I got into Dartmouth College. Carteret School ceased to exist some years afterward. | |
| 1960? | Summer | At a stuttering clinic in Indianapolis Indiana with my mother, though she did not attend the classes. These classes seemed to be intended to produce rhythmic speech by some physical motion. I did not gain from this. |
| 1961 | Summer | Trip to Poland and Europe with mother. This would have been between my Sophomore and Junior years of college |
| 1963 | June | BA in mathematics from Dartmouth College. I took a number of classes in Anthropology because my roommate for all four years was an Anthropology major with the intent to become a medical missionary. |
| 1965 | January | MS in mathematics from the University of Iowa. I chose to go to this university not because of its mathematics program—at that time I did not know mathematics well enough to choose one school or another—rather because it had a speech clinic which I hoped would help with my stuttering. I believe that this speech clinic is what really helped me. I was pushed to speak on the phone and to speak in general; rather than avoiding speaking. Even intentionally making phone calls to businesses when I really didn't need anything. |
| 1965 | September | Teaching mathematics (though I also taught physics in my first semester) at Alliance College in far northwestern, early oilwell country, PA. My mother got the job for me. The college had Polish affiliation and my mother did not want me to be drafted. I suspect that she donated some money to the school for me to get the job. (The college no longer exists.) |
| 1965 | September | Beginning work on a Doctorate in Mathematics at the University of Pittsburgh. Why Pittsburgh? I had become interested in the field of General Topology and I heard that the university had an important person, Jun-iti Nagata, in the field. This meant travelling between Alliance College and Pittsburgh—a two hour drive—on a regular basis. One day driving back home from Pittsburgh I was so tired driving that I drove off the road and totalled my car. |
| 1967 | No longer teaching at Alliance College, I moved to a U. of Pittsburgh dorm and became what is typical for a PhD student, a Teaching Assistant. In working on my doctorate I tried to learn, or at least read, the languages in which topology articles were published: Russian, German, and French. I had already studied Russian at Dartmouth so I took a course German. | |
| 1968 | September 12 | First published paper in General Topology jointly with my doctoral advisor Jun-iti Nagata. |
| 1969 | September | Teaching mathematics at St. John's University, in Queens, NY. I was hired because a mathematics professor there had an interest in general topology. Moved to a tall apartment complex in Forest Hills, Queens, nearly overlooking the tennis stadium. There I lived with two other men in a two bedroom apartment, one of which was partitioned to make it for two, so three bedrooms in all. |
| 1971 | October 30 | Marriage to Alina de la Caridad Espada; a great mathematics student who pursued me at St.John's University. She then went on to obtain an MS at NYU. We moved to an apartment in Jamaica Queens. |
| 1972 | August 8 | PhD in mathematics with thesis on General Topology from the University of Pittsburgh. |
| 1972 | September | Teaching at John Jay College of the City University of New York in midtown Manhattan. |
| 1974 | November 16 | Bought land in Hope, NJ for a house. |
| 1975 | Summer | House built on land in Hope by Sterling Homes. Just before this---Spring---I spent two afternoons using a chain saw to cut down some 40 or 50 trees of 60 to 80 foot height. I do not recall how I paid for this property—land and house. Both were low priced, land in a very outlying area. But I could not have afforded to pay much money. As a teaching assistant in Pittsburgh I would not have earned more than basic living expenses. Teaching at John Jay paid more but I was only employed for three years at this point in time. So I must suspect that my parents contributed significantly. |
| 1976 | My twelfth and last publication on General Topology. Some of my publications were jointly with other topologists; Ernest Michael was one person I was proud to have been a co-author with. Though I stayed somewhat active in mathematics after this, having minor items published. Here are all of my publications. | |
| 1977 | September | Teaching at E. Stroudsburg State College, in that city in PA. The contract was for one year with my being told that there was no chance of renewal. But it was good. The drive in the winter snow was GREAT through the Delaware Water Gap. The young girls were nice to see. I seriously started to do computer programming as opposed to doing mathematics, namely, topology. What would I be doing with computer programming? Well, organizing my large amount of information in general topology. |
| 1978 | July? | I was now unemployed. I sent my resume to many, many colleges in order to find work; but this was a bad time for such work. I drank wine more and more. Alina was working at AT&T in a statistics role but seemed to be fighting with others at work. When she came home she found me drunk. |
| 1979 | Seeing a psychiatrist in NYC. | |
| 1979 | May 14 | Applied for work at AT&T. |
| 1979 | July 30 | Started work at AT&T in Bedminster, NJ. I was hired as a computer programmer in what was then called the Overseas Department of Long Lines. "Long Lines" referred to long distance communication. At the time AT&T, British Telecom and the French telecom were jointly laying what they called the 7th transatlantic cable, which AT&T called TAT-7. I was to create a computer program to keep track of costs from the AT&T point of view. Back then, prior to the internet, this meant producing detailed paper reports of many pages. (Back then there were no personal computers. Nowadays this work would be of the nature of a spreadsheet produced by a secretary, and mailed to relevant people.) I was sent to London twice for I know not the reason. |
| 1980 | December 22 | Divorce from Alina Espada. Our relationship was, what shall I say, simple. We visited her parents in Brooklyn on rare occasion. We went for a vacation on the island of Guadeloupe. |
| 1980s & 1990s | Work at AT&T is satisfying. I have no interest in being promoted. I am given an Indian woman to help me and to supervise, though I did not ask for help nor needed extra help. Possibly my boss was attempting to help me be a manager, rather than just an employee. My main interaction is with my user-rep—the person that I need to interact with—in the department which is paying my department for my work. As a result I see who the needs of AT&T are secondary to the needs for promotion of the employees in that department. This was the time of the start of the internet and so I was the one who introduced that user-rep to the value of real-time interactive reporting using the internet. | |
| 1992 | November 13 | Father died. He had been in a nursing home that I could visit on the way home from work. I'm sorry to say that I did not visit as frequently as I should have; work kept me busy. Immediate cause of death: Peritonitis Due to or as a consequence of: Ruptured abdominal viscus Other significant conditions: Organic Brain Syndrome; Parkinson's Disease. |
| 1995 | March 31 | Colon operation |
| 1995 | July 17 | Mother died. |
| 1996 | December | Moved to Bodnar Street in Bernardsville. (I recall having workers remove asbestos from basement pipes the day before Christmas.) The intent to move to Bernardsville was two-fold: Be nearer work but maybe more importantly to find a mate—a more populous area was needed. |
| 1998 | February 16 | Prostate operation |
| 2002 | September | I met Eva, from near Princeton, probably on the internet. We went for a vacation in the Dominican Republic and then she proposed a trip to her country. It was a very nice trip to Bulgaria, much more interesting than a resort. But after which I ended the relationship. I found her political views hard to deal with. |
| 2002 | December 18 | First date with Nancy Lee McLure, at the Olde Mill Inn. I met her through the internet, match.com; she lived in Bernardsville a short distance away from me. |
| 2003 | March | Trip to Paris with Nancy. Our photos of Paris |
| 2003 | June 30 | Termination of work at AT&T and so retirement. Its surprising that I was really only involved in two major projects at AT&T, TAT-7 which I discussed above, and a "private line" project. The term private line meant a communication line, normally purchased by a large international corporation, to provide phone and data communication among its various world-wide offices. Since the "line" needed to be established between AT&T and one or more foreign phone companies it usually required a considerable amount of time and effort. I was to write software to help keep track of the numerous detailed tasks needed to be done to accomplish the effort. This was around the time that the internet was just beginning and after writing software to handle matters in the old way—paper—I pointed out to management that online would be far better. My salary did not increase as a result; it was my counterpart on the "user" side who benefitted. |
| 2004 | August | Trip to Turkey and Norway with Nancy whose older sister's husband is Norwegian. Our photos of Turkey, Our photos of Norway |
| 2005 | February | Nancy moves in with me on Bodnar Street. |
| 2005 | May 28 | Broke elbow. |
| 2006 | January | Trip to Venezuela with Nancy. I suppose I pushed Nancy into this. One, I wanted to learn Spanish (to help me with the ESL students I was teaching at the local library), and Two, I wanted to visit a country that President Bush hated. Our photos |
| 2006 | November 18 | Married Nancy in a simple ceremony at Nancy's "church," the Morristown Unitarian Fellowship. |
| 2007 | July | In Chicago with Nancy and my brother Steve and his wife, who is also, Nancy. |
| 2009 | mid-April to mid-May | Month-long trip to the SouthWest. Our photos |
| 2010 | October | Italy. Our photos |
| 2011 | July | Alaska to see Nancy's daughter, Kate, who lives in Anchorage. Our photos |
| 2014 | May | Morocco. Our photos |
| 2016 | February-March | SouthEast Asia. Our photos |
| 2018 | February-March | New Zealand. Nancy's former husband, John Duder, was a New Zealander. Our photos |
| 2019- | all year | Every Tuesday Nancy and I visit her son, Jeremy, and wife Megan, in Matawan, NJ, to baby-sit their son Aidan. Its a nice experience to see how Aidan learns from week to week. |
| 2021 | December 11 | Nancy's son, Jeremy, died Neurofibromatosis brain cancer. More |