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Today's Featured Biography

Lyrinda Stork Snyderman

I moved from Bryn Mawr, PA, to Chevy Chase in 1963 and spent my two last years of high school at Bethesda Chevy Chase High School, so I did not graduate with you guys. While at BCC I performed in Richard II and in a summer musical performance of Babes in Arms. I sang in my church choir. I also sang and played guitar in a folk duo, performing in schools and coffee houses throughout the Greater DC area. I was a cartoonist for the school newspaper and Art Editor for the school art and literature publication. I was a National Merit Finalist.

I left BCC prior to graduation to travel throughout Europe by car with my younger sister, Lis (BCC Class of ’66) and some friends. We spent the entire summer camping, staying in hostels (including a 30 cent per night hotel in Istanbul!) and in the back of our new VW van. We traveled from Portugal to Turkey, from Scotland to Greece and all points in between.

Upon return I spent one year at George Washington University trying to find my calling. I’d always loved science (I am an almost-biologist and still follow biology closely) and was always good in Art. I’d always felt the power of place, saw the newly constructed Dulles Airport and determinded that my interest in science and art could happily combine within a career in architecture. I transferred to the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence and secured my architecture degree. I stayed in RI after college to work in architecture. In 1974 I met Neal Snyderman, who was working on his doctorate in physics at Brown University. We married in the fall of 1975 and moved to Long Island where Neal worked as a post-doctoral fellow for two years at SUNY Stony Brook. A second fellowship took us for two years to Princeton, NJ, where we lived on the campus of the Institute for Advanced Study (Einstein’s and Oppenheimer’s institution).

A third postdoc took us to the San Francisco Bay Area. We lived on Telegraph and Russian Hills in San Francisco while Neal commuted to his job at Stanford. Neal has worked as a nuclear physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory since he left Stanford. We moved east across the SF Bay to buy our first house in Berkeley when I became pregnant with my first child in 1988. A year later the Loma Prieta earthquake struck while I was working in SF for EHDD (architects for the Monterey Bay Aquarium, for those of you have visited out here). A six and a half hour drive around the Bay – due to the fact that the Bay Bridge was broken and all of the other half dozen or so bridges across the Bay were closed due to the quake – convinced me to find work on the same side of the Bay as my home. I have been working with VBN Architects now for 16 years, working primarily on public schools. Unlike for many of you, retirement seems a very remote goal for me with two kids targeting college through at least 2014!

I waited 'til quite late to have my children, but I sure am glad that I didn't wait forever! My children are the lights of my life and I adore them. My daughter, Linnea, is now 16 and hopes to attend a conservatory next year to continue her studies in dance and choreography. She is a person who makes everyone that meets her happy. My son, Ethan, now 14, just started high school. He is passionate about fish and fishing and all things aquatic and hopes to become a marine biologist. He is very quick, athletic, an amazing artist, and astounds people with his passion and insight.

I have pursued many passions in my own life outside my profession. I received a prize in an international competition to design a fabric-roofed theater (“tent structure”), as well as awards from the American Institute of Architects. I am an excellent photographer, film-maker and videographer, having photographed since high school, and having made 16-mm movies and now digital videos on my iMac. I made DVD’s for about 20 of my son’s junior high school’s concerts last year. I was a holographer (made three-D laser photographs) for many years and have my holograms in private collections and museums. I have been a certified scuba diver since I was 15, and now both of my children have also received their certifications.

In 1983 my husband and I bought an ultralight ParaPlane (a twin-engine ram-air “parachute that goes up”). It led to the purchase of my own sailplane, a Glasflugel Libelle (a 50-foot wingspan fiberglass airplane without an engine – NOT a hang glider!), and a passion for cross country soaring in the Sierra. I had a respectable place in the seedings for Sports Class competition (racing for time over distance) when I sold my plane to raise my family. I am a downhill and cross country skier, a Bay rower (member of San Francisco’s historical Dolphin Club), and an avid ocean, river and Bay kayaker, as well as a whitewater rafter (my most recent avocation). I am a frequent hiker in Yosemite and nearby.

I lived with my husband one summer in Los Alamos, NM, and another summer in London. I have traveled in Peru, Mexico’s Yucatan, Italy, France and England, the Southwest, the Caribbean, Canada, and Alaska, as well as most of the US. In 2000 I took my family kayaking through the wilderness of Glacier Bay, AK, for a week – just the four of us and two kayaks - where we saw grizzlies, moose, whales, dolphins and eagles - and had some sleepless nights at a campsite with plenty of recent bear "sign" nearby! We pitched our tents right a the toe of a living glacier across the fjord from aptly-named White Thunder Ridge.

My middle sister Diana also lives in Berkeley. My brother lives nearby in Portola Valley, near Stanford University. My sister Lis, lives in Juneau, AK. My youngest sister still lives in MD with her family and takes care of my dad, who is still going strong at the age of 92. I took him for a week of camping (but not much hiking!) up in the Sierra near Yosemite this summer and he had the time of his life!

I'd love to hear from anyone who remembers me!

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