Via Uncle Dobe, through an old high school friend of Peter's named Chuck, who saw Peter's obituary in the newspaper, I have been given a transcript of Peter's written submission on his life for his 40th high school reunion, written (we think) in 1997.

Chuck hitch-hiked with Peter from Ellensburg, WA to Pasadena, CA the winter of 1957, in order to attend CalTech. Peter had earned a scholarship to CalTech but didn't graduate from that school, for reasons that don't need to be detailed here.

Peter didn't end up attending the 40th high school reunion, and I think he submitted a detailed statement because he hadn't attended any prior reunions.

How can a simple high school reunion autobiographical submission be so heartbreaking? Peter's statement made me laugh and cry at the same time. I hope you enjoy it... here it is in its entirety:

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Time flies like an arrow! (Fruit flies like a banana.) What can I show and tell after 40 years? "Good judgment comes from experience; experience comes from bad judgment."

Short biography of Peter Hartman: Born Washington, DC, on 11/11/39 (triple Scorpio, whatever that means). Lived in Browning, Montana; Pendleton, Oregon; Kennewick (as a "downwinder" recipient of radioactive iodine, I could read under the covers without a flashlight!); Ellensburg; Pasadena; Seattle; Kansas; Vera Cruz, Mexico; NYC; New Hampshire; and in California for 27 years: San Francisco; Mendocino; Harbin Hot Springs; Modesto; Oakland; El Cerrito; Stockton; Woodacre; Santa Rosa; Cotati; Palo Alto; and Menlo Park; back to Washington in 1990: Snohomish, Bellingham and currently Lakewood. I have lived at over 60 different addresses; visited Canada and Mexico, Japan and Jamaica; and hitch-hiked more than 50,000 miles. As the saying goes, I've been around the block...

"Saturday's child is born to work." I have worked as a paperboy, busboy, dishwasher, encyclopedia salesman, math paper grader, janitor, truck driver, house painter, hay bale bucker, lumper, ditch digger, well digger, relief dairyman, assistant mortician, technical typist and editor, freelance tutor and editor, journeyman shipfitter-welder, journeyman carpenter, cottage parent in institutions for delinquent kids, drug-abuse counselor, I owned and ran a foster home for emotionally-disturbed teenagers, bookstore clerk, systems analyst, systems programmer, quality assurance software engineer, lead tutor in WWU Tutorial Center, teaching assistant in WWU Math Dept., Calculus and Pascal programming teacher, and currently substitute teacher.

My greatest accomplishment has been delivering and raising two outstanding sons, now 27 and 29, the older attained perfect scores on his SAT (like Father -- I attained perfect scores on my GRE...), graduated from Swarthmore college in English and "computational linguistics" (does that mean he has a calculated way of speaking?), worked at Apple and Silicon Graphics as programmer and technical writer, wrote a book ("the VRML 2.0 Handbook"
Dedicated to me and his late mother), and wants to be a science-fiction writer when he grows up (he's published one story so far). The younger graduated in business at UC Davis, worked as Vice-President of a bank in L.A., and is now halfway through getting an MBA at UCLA. I'm enormously proud of both of them.

My interests include: listening to music (blues, jazz, classical rock); reading science fiction and mystery / thrillers; World mythology and ethnopharmacology; fractals and chaos theory; puzzles (mathematical and crosswords); cooking and eating Asian food (Indian, Thai, Japanese... what kind of food do technicians and mechanics enjoy? Techs-Mechs of course!; playing Frisbee, pool and 3000-year-old strategic board game, Go; Japanese flower arranging, Aikido, Taoism, Joh-rei (spiritual purification); playing pinochle with my parents (aged 86 and 90, they are retired Tacoma school teachers); walking around Lakewood with my dear wife Nancy; and washing dishes.

My favorite authors are Robert Anton Wilson ("Illuminatus Trilogy", "The Widow's Son", etc.), Terrance McKenna ("Food of the Gods"), and Carl Jung ("Answer to Job" etc.). Well, this was supposed to be brief, and already it's NOT. My thanks to the organizers of this reunion (I'm sure we're going to have a fantastic time, reminiscing and bragging and feasting)! Soon I'll send $60.00 for Nancy and me. See you in September! Best Regards, Peter Hartman

p.s. I forgot: BA -'72 Math-UC Berkeley; MEd - '92 Secondary WWU; MS - '94 Math WWU