I work for Valspar in Hagerstown, Maryland and Kathy is a stay-at-home mom with two boys. Jadon, the little one, is the sweetest kid in the world. Josh, the older one, not only caught his first fish, but helped me clean it without blinking, and then he ate it.

Hello past, present and future USM Polymer Science graduates. I have been working in the area of powder coatings for Rohm and Haas Company for the past 8 years. In our small business unit I have had many opportunities to support our customers in a variety of roles. Most recently I spent 13 months in Shanghai establishing a new research lab which involved staffing and training a new team. It was an amazing journey filled with many challenges. The most fulfilling part was educating my new team to become a self sufficient product development team and I can't help but wonder if this is the type of satisfaction that is experienced with teaching. If so teaching is a avenue I eventually want to test drive. Lon - thanks for all you have taught me during my time at USM and beyond.

Gordon Tullos (earned his PhD under the direction of Dr. Lon Mathias in 1998 ) is doing great at Rohm and Haas and is back at the bench creating the next generation resins a curing agents for powder coatings ... someone finally realized that Gordon has tremendous synthetic skills. I am so grateful that Gordon was supportive - allowing me to take the opportunity in Shanghai. Amazingly he has maintained his sanity, despite the presence of our children, Heather (17) and Corey (16), as he took on the roles of mother/father/banker/accountant/maid/repairman/nurse/chauffeur/and teacher. I love you Gordon! I am so looking forward to being home in April!

I am an alumini of USM. Ph.D. with Dr. McCormick in 1999. I highly value my education with Dr. McCormick and the PSRC. I think that it is the best graduate polymer program in the world. That's not just because I am a biased alumni but it is also because I have worked with other polymer graduates from other polymer programs over the past 7 years and I think that I can speak with certainty that USM is the best. This brings up the issue that I thought that I would write to you about. Perhaps you could do something about it or perhaps you could pass the idea on to someone else there at USM.

As I said, I think that USM Polymer Science is the best in the world. I want the rest of the world to know more about it and to regard it with a higher level of respect. In certain small circles, there is already a high level of respect - even reverence in certain surprising cases. I think that it benefits all of us for the word about USM to further expand. The school gets to be better known with more opportunities for funding, it will attract even better students etc. As the reputation grows, graduates like us will get a little boost but to me that is not what matters. I am doing fine thanks to the university and the program. It's just the program that I want to see continue to prosper.

Greetings, old friends, colleagues, professors, spouses, and present members of the USM Polymer Science program, Yet again, I regret missing another golden opportunity to gather and see you and share good times. I look forward to the time when one of these opportunities does not conflict with other responsibilities. It has now been 22 1/2 years since leaving USM. It has been a joy to see some of you at times since then and would love to hear from you again (see email address below).

Litha and I are doing well as we fly by the big "five-oh" this year. Matthew is 18 and Patrick is 14 by the time you read this. Matthew is graduating in May and looking to go one year at our community college before going off somewhere for an undergraduate degree. His college interests are in history, architecture, communications, and theater. I guess he will research and re-create the great theatrical venues of mankind. That may be more reliable than relying on the further growth of the North American chemical industry! Patrick is our musician and is making all-everything in band on French horn, piano, and guitar. He has already set his sights on a music career and going to Baylor University. We'll see if that interest holds. Litha is very busy volunteering everywhere and with our church and with making life wonderful for me. We have a Yorkie lapdog named Molly and a backyard rat terrier aptly named Killer and continue to live in good ole Lake Jackson, Texas, where I repatriated when we left USM. We live the first eleven years in the first little house and now 11+ at our present address. I know I am a rarity to have stayed with the same company throughout, but Dow has been very good to me. After 13 years in Epoxy Products Research, I have been now over 9 years in Polyolefins Product Research and am now the Product Research Leader for Solution Polyethylene, the largest of our PE product families. It is a technical leadership role, not a people manager. I get to mentor younger folks in product development and focus on the technical aspects of their projects and my own, without any of the supervisory or administrative content. In my spare time, I have started playing golf again regularly and have played more in the last year than previous 5 or 6 combined, with a USGA handicap index of about 12.

While we could not come for this event, I am hoping to get back over to the coast early this year before it gets too hot to help a mission team in the rebuilding efforts and see some of our friends still living there. If something changes and I can make it after all, I will hopefully intercept this message.