Stay Tuned to This Space for Reunion Details!
How to Post Your Reunion Announcement
VIEW ALL REUNIONS

Class News

VIEW ALL CLASS NEWS

Today's Featured Biography

Brad Bliss

After high school in 1961 I left Peoria and became a photojournalist. I worked as a photographer for the UN in the early 1960’s, and then freelanced across the country covering a variety of stories. I finally graduated from J-School at Missouri in Columbia, MO, in 1967. I married Mary Lou Carignan during 1965, a Columbia girl, AKA Lou Bliss.

After college we found ourselves in upstate New York. We live today in a primitive forest, which we own on top the first high peak in the Snow Belt in western New York. Rochester is the nearest large city.

Our home is a log house we designed and had built in 1992. The forest keeps me in shape; I look like a small NFL linebacker. We heat with wood so much of my time is devoted to clearing and cutting some pretty large trees. I usually take out about 6 tons of trees a year. I cut and split them, typically by hand because it’s so much faster. Lou and I have built several gardens and she is a great gardener. I am amazed each year. I love to go home each day and have a glass in wine in our shade garden.

Living so high up we get constant breezes, so the temperature rarely gets much above 80 in the heat of the summer which is great for our two American Eskimo female dogs the same age. We got them from a national rescue organization specific to the breed. They are small dogs, 36 & 26 pounds respectively, with two coats of thick fur. They talk a lot
and are very loud especially for their size.

In the summer we keep a kiddy pool filled for them to swim in so they can keep cool. Like small children, Annie and Gracie run in and out of the house all day. The down side of having cold weather puppies is that they run in and out of the house all day in the winter too. It will be 25 below zero and there they are nestled in the snow. The house has only two interior walls so "The Girls" typically play chase running at a full head of steam.

I burned out of photojournalism in 1988 and became a stockbroker working on the 103 floor of the north tower of the World Trade Center. I loved that place. I moved my practice back to Rochester in 1989. My business has been in Fairport New York, 12 miles southeast of Rochester since 1990. I have a portfolio management and position trading practice.

I am politically active for the Republican Party. I am a national committeeman, a member of the Republican Congressional Committee's business council, the President’s Business Committee, and a campaign strategist. I have participated in a number of local, state, and national campaigns as a media expert. I have been designated as businessman of the year by the Republican Congressional Committee, and in October 2002, I am received the Gold Metal from that group for my efforts on their behalf.

Our three children, two girls and one boy, have grown and moved away, and have blessed us with three grandchildren, two boys and one girl. They, of course, are geniuses. I will be happy to e-mail pictures if you like.

Apparently I'm the only one from our class who has paid the $30 to e-mail the others. I have many e-mail addresses. Much of my communications with the others has been done this way although many have called me too. Steve Meehan and his wife, Mary, visited us and we them. We expect to see them again this spring and they will be here during the PGA. Doubet and I e-mail and phone each other. I have only been back to Peoria for weddings and funerals in the last 20 years.

I am not retired and have no plans to ever. What would I do in retirement that I don’t do now? I have not found an answer. I play golf whenever I want to and I've structured my business in such a way that I can and do sit at home and make money trading. Yet, I prefer to go to an office and trade. I like to have my home as a haven. On the other hand, even if I wanted to retire I could not until Lou's civil rights lawsuit in federal court is done, which I predict will take another three years because it will likely go to the Supreme Court. It is enormously expensive and it vacuums our cash flow.

Ralph Garrett lives in Wyoming and we communicate by phone, because he does not have a computer (just like him). Tom Davis lives in Colorado, but exactly where I’m not sure. Chuck Doubet lives in Arizona and we talk frequently. Dick Landwirth lives in Terrytown NY and we e-mail each other all through the day every day. Carolyn Judkins and Marilyn Inman are both widows.

Robbie Cutler was shot to pieces in Nam and last I knew lived in Dallas. Linda Dixon and Mary Kay Thompson are both dead. Jimmy Dischert died in Nam in ’65. Tom Seibel is a journalist in Indiana and had two strokes in 1997. My parents are dead, mom in 1995 and dad in 1999. My oldest sister, Edie, lives in Peoria, and my other sister, Betsy, lives in Elmhurst.

Danny Solomon has a bar and grill, The Red Barn, on Glen in Peoria. Olivia Dan is an attorney / real estate agent but I don’t remember where. Franny Janovetz lives outside Detroit with her husband. Jeanne Hayes lives in FL.

VIEW ALL BIOGRAPHIES

U.S. Armed Forces

Class Poll

Featured Links

Visit Other Classes