Michael Lambeth

20 years since graduation!! Doggone, we are all old farts now knocking on 40, aren't we?

Well, my story begins with joining the Coast Guard the September after graduation and heading to boot camp in Cape May, NJ. I was then stationed on a buoy tender in Galveston, TX until I went to Electronics Technician school in NYC. After ET school I was stationed in Seattle, WA on a Polar Class Icebreaker. I did 2 trips to the Arctic, 2 trips to the Antarctic and visited just about everywhere in between. After that, I moved back to the east coast and spent the last 3 of my 7 CG years at a small boat station on Oak Island, NC (where the grubby pic below was taken.)

I got out of the CG in 95 with my GI bill in hand and headed to "Harvard on the Hill" where I cranked out my associate's degree in Electronics Engineering Technology. I then moved on to Old Dominion in Norfolk where I upped it to a BS.

I then accepted a job in Charlottesville, VA with the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (if you have seen the movie "Contact", you have seen our radio telescope array in Soccoro, NM) where I am on a team that designed and is currently building low-noise receivers to be used in the ALMA radio telescope array currently being built in the Atacama desert in Chile.

In 2001, I lucked out by meeting my lovely Yorkshire lass Debra who was foolish enough to fall in love with me, the poor girl! Ha Ha! We have been together ever since and built a house out in the country just south of town where our "girlies" enjoy running around on our three acres. Debra is from Sheffield, England and her parents still live over there, but will soon retire over on this side of the pond with us.

Some of you probably remember my "not so" twin brother Les from '89. He is a captain with the Guilford county paramedic service down in Greensboro, NC where he lives with his wife Jennifer and their 18-month-old son Jack Fisher.

That's it... My last 20 years in a nutshell!

...Not really a school story, but an incredible coincidence related to Byrd that happened to me a few years after graduation. I had just arrived at my new billet aboard USCGC POLAR SEA waaaay out in Seattle, WA. I was standing in the chow line when suddenly, I recognized the guy standing in front of me... Low and behold, it was John Boyer from '87! He was training to be a Quartermaster while serving out his 2-year hitch for his GI bill. You all MUST remember him and his crazy painted-up VW bus, and his unforgettable performance as Terrance Trent D'arby while MC-ing Air Fest? Small little world we have here, eh?