John Snyder

After EHS, I attended Carnegie Tech briefly, majoring mostly in sports & parties. I took leave to work briefly, then entered the US Navy for about 4 years. I attended Navy schools in San Diego, San Francisco, Pensacola, and then served at a US Navy base outside a small town in northeastern Scotland for nearly 3 years. I conducted electronic espionage – tracking Russian ships/intercepting & translating message/etc. My job was to maintain all the equipment (high tech for then – now long obsolete).)
I then went back to Carnegie-Mellon U. (after school name changed), as a much more serious student. I received a BS in administration/management science and an MBA, both from their business school in 1975.
I married a girl from Scotland while in the Navy, and had two daughters. We divorced after 24 years, now about 20 years ago. My oldest daughter is a registered operating room nurse. She and & her daughter are now living in Scotland. My youngest daughter is married with two boys, and was living in Albany. She recently graduated magna cum laud from law school, only to not find a job for over a year. Her family recently moved back in with me. She is currently working at a local college and also teaches Yoga.
After CMU, I joined an engineering & manufacturing company named Dresser / Dresser-Rand and worked for them in Pittsburgh, Dallas, Houston, Tulsa, Corning (NY) and lastly Olean (NY). As a single parent, my youngest daughter requested we stay in Olean until she graduated. I did, found out I really liked it and made it home, and it stretched out to 20 years.
I worked in various aspects of Human Resources my entire career, finally making it to Worldwide Vice President for Dresser-Rand Company, and retired after 30 years. I traveled on business extensively to almost every USA state, Canada & Mexico, throughout Europe (German, Norway, Denmark, Belgium, France, & Italy) and to the Middle East (Kuwait, Abu Dhabi, & Dubai). We had factories in 8 countries and service centers in about 30. I came out of retirement to help our local hospital also as VP-HR for a few more years. I have been retired again for about 3 years.
I have been enjoying retirement. I took up golf when I moved here, and have been playing a lot of golf at our local club with my girlfriend for the past 10 years, Patty Sweet. I have been doing a very modest amount of consulting mainly for local firms who already know me. After about 12 years serving on our United Way Board, I “retired” a few years ago. I served our local Community College as a Director as a Foundation Board Director for 8 years, and now continue to serve as a member of the Board of Trustees for about 4 years, to date. I have vacationed to Florida for a number of years, to the Sarasota/Bradenton area.
I have had intermittent contact with a few high school classmates, but unfortunately, too few and not frequently enough. I am looking forward to attending the class reunion, and seeing everyone.