
We were delighted to have a Craft Talk by incoming President Elect Dr. Gerry Purdy that was moderated by incoming President Jeff Tromberg.
Tell us a little bit about your growing up through high school days:
• Born in Mt. Vernon, NY Feb. 8, 1943.
• Moved to Santa Monica, CA when he was 7
• Moved back to the East Coast when he was around 10 – Ridgewood, NY
• Move to Atlanta when he was in the 8th grade or around 13
• Won first place in the Atlanta Science Congress in 1957
• Won first place in the Georgia High School Track and Field Championships (Javelin) in 1961
College education –
• Clemson University – 1.5 years
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- Track scholarship via Coach Pee Wee Greenfield
- Left in Dec. 1962 but coach changed his grades to ‘F’
• Universi ty of Tennessee
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- Found out about the grades changed by registrar
- Got good grades but all the F’s resulted in an overall GPA of 2.7
- BS in Engineering Physics in Dec. 1965 which was he closest to Computer Science which didn’t become a major until 1966
• UCLA
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- Couldn’t get in with a 2.7 GPA so had to go to night school for a year and got a perfect 4.0
- Got an MS in Computer Science a June 1968
- Offered a full-ride Ph.D. Fellowship by UCLA and TRW
- Wanted to go to the number one rated Computer Science program which was at Stanford
• Stanford
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- Had the same issue as UCLA but got admitted
- Finished my Ph.D. in CS and Exercise Physiology in 1972
- Thesis was to develop a model of physiological effort and applied that to the Decathlon (helped change the Decathlon Scoring Table in 1984)
Career Work
• First Job – TRW Gruman Aerospace – Worked on the Apollo Moon Mission
• Aerobics Center, Dallas
• Arizona Heart Institute
• Compaq Computer
• Fujitsu Computer
• Dataques t (div of Gartner)
• My own company Mobile Insights (1992-2002)
• My own company MobileTrax (2002-2006)
• Frost & Sullivan 2006-2010
• My own company Mobilocity – 2010 to present
• Research project at FAU 2021- present
• LifePath 2021 – present
Rotary – changing lives and building futures
• Denver Rotary 1975-1985
• Willowbr ook Rotary 1986-1989
• Wellingt on Rotary 2017-2019
• Boca 2019 – present
• Paul Harris Fellow
• Presiden t Elect (2022-2023)
Family –
• Five kids and 11 grandkids
• Three wives (not all at the same time)
• Hobbies – Golf
If you’d like to watch/hear the Craft Talk, it’s available on YouTube at this link.
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