Random Ramblings and the occasional insightful thought

Who is that fine looking group of people you might ask?? Well that is the group of people that I started my first job out of college with at Dow Chemical. We were part of the Commerical Development Program and we were called CDPs for short.  I have to say you couldn’t have asked for a better group of people to start working with. We were from all over the country and were all transplanted smack dab in the middle of no where at Dow Chemical’s headquarters in Midland, MI.  We had a blast even though we were there for work. They put us all in one apartment complex and had us in training there for 9 months. There were some great parties and a lot of awesome memories. It was kind of like college, but we got paid for it.. :-) 

 Well, that was almost 18 years ago and many of those people have gone off to be very successful. We have several vice presidents of companies and at least one venture capitalist in the group…most of them have long since left Dow, but there are at least a few of them still there..I am not very good at keeping in touch and while I may have talked to a few of them for a couple of years after leaving Dow, I had lost touch with everyone in the group….that is until last week..

 Last week when I had a few minutes, I was browsing this business networking site and started looking for some of my old friends…I didn’t find a lot, but then Googled a few names and got a hit on one of the people I was closest too in Midland. I searched her married name on the networking site and got a hit.  I sent the generic “remember me” email through the site and got a reply back from my friend Leslyn. In the picture below she is the one with the blonde kid of big hair (at least by today’s standards it’s big, within the Virginia (where she is from) debutant community of the 80’s,  that would be a buzz cut) sitting behind the very handsome guy with a very full head of curly hair (where did all of that hair go and how did the remaining turn grey??)

 Well, Monday of this week Leslyn and I got a chance to catch up on the phone.  It was so awesome to get a chance to talk with her after about 13 or 14 years.  She is married, has two great kids and is very successful at her job (she is one of the VPs) and is back in Virginia.  Unfortunately, she still pulls for University of Virginia, but at least they have the right colors. 

 It was interesting as we talked that, even though we were catching up on the past 13 years and it was a short call, it was like we had not really lost touch..it was very cool…it’s funny how things like that work..

 Well, in any case, I hope we do a better job keeping in touch from this point foward and maybe we can get down their way to watch one of the Clemson beat downs of Virginia (still the only ACC stadium I haven’t seen a game in) in football and hang out..just like we did in 1990 as we watched them play…