David Katzman

I would like to extend my thanks to Jeff for doing this website and for all his emailing ability. It is great to see a site that was done on FrontPage since my son helped develop the product. I certainly have known about the emails and website for a long time but something kept me from adding my two cents. Perhaps it was my memories of Sharon, perhaps it was my childhood insecurities.

Leaving the confines of Sharon, I went to University of Pennsylvania along with Steve Weiner, Dan Lief and Mike Cohn. I met my wife-to-be, Milly, in my freshman year and we were married in our senior year. We figured we wanted some time together before the uncertainties of Vietnam. That was the first year of the lottery draft – it was the best lottery I ever lost. My number was 356 so I was able to avoid serving in a war I truly did not believe in.

We moved to Framingham after graduating and I went to work in my father’s business helping people import and export. I also got an MBA from Babson, going fulltime while also working about 35 hours a week. It was quite a hectic two years but we survived. Milly taught French and Spanish in Brookline until we had our first child in 1973. She then stayed home and raised our two boys until she went back to teaching about 12 years ago. She is now a principal at the Heath School in Brookline (she now knows Judy Bernstein’s husband pretty well - what a small world).

We are blessed with two wonderful sons. Jonathan, 27, graduated from Harvard with a BA in computer science. He went to Vermeer Technology in Cambridge, the company that developed FrontPage. Microsoft bought the company about four years ago and they moved everyone to Seattle. This was good news and bad news. Jonathan made out very well and loved living in Seattle. He hiked all summer and skied all winter – I am not sure where he got those genes. The bad news was that he was too far away. He recently left Microsoft, moved to San Francisco and is working at a startup in Silicon Valley called Tellme Networks. This company is a voice portal to the web – the service is incredible and you can use it by calling 1-800-555-tell or trying their website at www.tellme.com. Andy, 25, graduated from Yale with a BA in economics. He deferred starting his consulting job at McKinsey & Co. in New York for a year. He received a Dorot fellowship to study in Israel. He spent a year in Jerusalem at the Conservative Yeshiva and also interned for an Israeli photographer who had a studio in Jerusalem. This was also good news and bad news. The good news was that we spent two weeks in Israel while he was there. The bad news was that we worried about the situation in Israel and his safety. He called us the Friday before Thanksgiving at 6AM to tell us that there was a bombing at the market in Jerusalem where he usually shopped but he was not there during the bombing. He did get to travel to Egypt, Turkey and Jordan while there. He is now safely ensconced in New York for the last two years although he gets to travel quite a bit for his consulting firm. We are waiting for both of the boys to meet the right women – we are definitely in the mood to have grandchildren, although we would prefer them to be closer to home.

My life has been somewhat staid. I took over my father’s company when he decided to cut back on working. I became the owner when my father passed away about 14 years ago. In 1997, I decided that running a small business was getting tiresome so I merged with a larger firm in Boston. This merger, as in many marriages, did not work out the way I thought it would and I was forced out of the company in 1999. Since then I have been working as Director of Compliance for a national firm that is headquartered in Westwood – C.H. Powell Co. One of the Powells, Al Powell, lived in Sharon and was actually a selectman. The president of the company now is Charles Powell who graduated three years ahead of us in Sharon. The treasurer is Andrew Powell who graduated a year ahead of us. My job entails a lot of travel to various clients and our 14 offices throughout the U.S. Other than work, I am very involved with the local and national associations in our field. Milly and I love to travel together when we can. We are enthralled with Kauai and will spend a second summer vacation there this year. Some day we will even figure out where we want to retire.