What’s your secret talent that no one knows about?
When I was a teenager I had the unique opportunity to spend 2 full summers working on a dairy farm in the Berkshires. I grew up quickly those summers learning how to drive and operate all kinds of farm equipment and how to milk and feed the cows. Not many know I even assisted in delivering a breeched calf.

Who, living or dead, would you like to eat dinner with the most? And why?
A tough question. Both of my grandfathers passed away when I was young so I didn’t get to know them well. I would like to know more about their life experiences. One was a foreman in a candy factory in Cambridge. Several times each year he would bring us sacks of cocoa shells after the roasting process extracted the cocoa bean to make chocolate. My folks would spread the shells in our flower & shrub beds for mulch. No other yard smelled as good. My other grandfather owned the largest strawberry farm on the Cape and grew the largest and sweetest berries I’ve ever seen and tasted.

What is your favorite project you worked on and why?
I had many great projects in my career. The Medical Center of Central Mass, now UMass Memorial, was an out of the ground 250,000 SF, cast-in-place hospital. When several old buildings could be demolished to make way for the balance of the building foundation, we were faced with a major change to the foundations. The structural engineer had to change from the use of specified 8’ diameter caissons to a 3’ thick monolithic concrete mat for the remainder of the foundations. The owner’s contingency was severely impacted early in construction. The team pulled together and continued the balance of the foundations using steam from the nearby boiler plant during one of the most severe winters on record. When the hospital contracted with a different ER group, the design of the ER had to also change. With about a year left in the schedule once again, the team responded and removed 2/3rds of the newly installed partitions and mechanical systems to accommodate the new design. The Team made up some slippage in the schedule using selective OT for certain disciplines. The Team was awarded the AGC Mass project of the year award. Another neighborhood hospital’s building committee upon reading the story in the Worcester newspaper selected us to build their new hospital addition.

How did you get into construction?
I started as a draftsman for a mid-size Boston engineering firm. From there I moved to a construction company that was building a major hospital addition in Cambridge I had worked on the drawings before I was drafted during the Vietnam war. After my tour of duty, I was offered a position in that construction company where I worked 10 years before going on to executive positions & larger firms.