David W. Thomas

I’ll start with the present and work backward.

Here I am in Palo Alto, CA, where I have lived for the last 38 years. Although I am officially retired, I have reverted to a previous love of pipe organs where I help with maintenance, tuning, and even construction, of pipe organs. And in addition, I am the book keeper for a pipe organ company. I have the privilege of being an assistant to all tuning and maintenance of the big renowned pipe organs of Stanford University.

That is all quite a change from my previous career, when I spent 31 years at SRI (formerly Stanford Research Institute) as director of their mass spectrometry lab, a specialty in the field of pharmaceutical chemistry.

Today I am also enjoying another summer of working in my vegetable garden, with tomatoes, green beans, peppers, zucchini, and lots of herbs. The last few years have been very frustrating, with squirrels which ate everything. I have no expectation that this year will be different, but I’ll just try again.

I don’t have any photos of myself at this present time, but I still have most of my (gray) hair, and a full beard.
I was in touch with our former teacher Bob Blackmur a few years ago, and we recalled our graduation theme “to thyne own self be true”. At the time I had some trouble understanding what that meant. But many years later I did indeed confront that message when I came out as “gay”, and had a 22 year relationship with my beloved Joseph, who unfortunately passed away in 1995.

And the past can be summarized briefly:

Most of you knew that I went to Swarthmore College, a small college of excellent reputation. It was there that that I really started my life. After that I went on to MIT for my PhD in chemistry and a year of post-doc, followed by a two year job with the French government near Paris, France. And then on to SRI in California.

And I would like to hear from anyone at my e-mail address: thomasdw at sbcglobal dot net
David Thomas