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The Village People were all the rage. Ronald Reagan was a retired actor. The Shah was still in power in Iran. Michael Jordan was leading his junior high team to the Metro finals in Charlotte. The Soviets had yet to invade Afghanistan. The price of oil was three times what it is today. The IBM PC hadn't even been thought of. KISS was still cool. The value of the stock market was one-sixth of what it is now. Several NBA players had yet to be born. Op shorts were at the height of fashion. Inflation was 12 percent. The Cold War raged. On June 22nd, 1979, 134 fifteen year-olds walked across the Dhahran theater stage and into the world. Over the past twenty years weâve traveled through life and visited the far corners of the planet. Sadly, two of us are no longer on the journey. We've settled all over the world and have pursued numerous careers. We're now doctors, lawyers, teachers, managers, engineers and accountants. Most of us are married and many are raising families. Weâve had our share of triumphs and tragedies, mountains climbed and fallen off of, marriages and divorces, births and deaths. Yet through it all we remain the best class Dhahran's ever seen. A Fall Gathering
In what has become an annual event, Amy Thompson-Steindorff hosted a get together for Houston area Brats. In attendance were Saib Isa, Nicky Thompson (Amy's younger sister), Donna Hendricks-Fontenot and her husband, Kenny, and yours truly. We met at Papadeaux's, a terrific Mexican restaurant, and enjoyed some great food and several pitchers of extraordinary Margaritas and had a ball reminiscing about the good old days in Dhahran. Class Notes |
| Sarah Templer
Howard writes:
Brown and I moved up to Calgary, Canada this past August after getting
a job offer from
two former co-workers who had started MGV Energy. So far we love
it
here but are reserving our final judgment until we see how we fair
during
the winter! (We never had 35 degree below zero temperatures in Texas!)
Our
kids; Emma and Tyler, age 5; are in Kindergarten and are loving it. We
found
out that one of their classmates is the daughter of Sara Gora, whose
brother
Yousef was in the Class of '79 - small world!
Also calling in from the Great White North is Hany Chakkal, a resident of Montreal. After Deerfield (which he attended with the future King of Jordan), Hany studied engineering at George Washington University in D.C. for a year before deciding that he and vector mechanics just didnât get along. He transferred to the College of Boca Raton, which he found much more to his liking, and completed a double major in Business and Marketing. In 1990, Hany moved to Toronto, where his parents moved when they retired from Aramco. He spent three years in customer relations with Canon and then jumped to |
Lexmark, where he landed a position in sales and
marketing. He really enjoys it, but has some entrepreneurial
ambitions as well.
He's gotten heavily into working out and hits the gym about four times a week, working with free weights and racking up the miles on the treadmill. Hany also makes the most of Torontoâs nightlife, going out to raves (all night parties) at least once a week. In April he traveled to Puerto Vallarta for a week of sunning and swimming. After that six-month Canadian winter he really needed it. Pippa Roulette writes: Life in AZ is definitely quite different. Yes, it is similar to Saudi Arabia!A friend keeps explaining things about how to live in the desert, and I keep reminding him that I grew up in Saudi Arabia! Anyway, I'm out here, living in the house that my great aunt left to my sister, brother and me about nine years ago. It's in a tiny town called Portal, located in the southeastern corner. It's a great place to be. I'm taking a year off from teaching, just to unwind and escape from the stress of the rat race for awhile. Just fixing the house and doing a lot of hiking and biking. |
