Chris

Gail and I met at work in 1987 or 1988.  Shortly after she divorced Jack and finished her PHD.  She came to work for “Microanalysis and Design” in Boulder, where I worked at the time.  Her professor was the father of the person who owned the company.  I was the 5th person in the company and she was probably about the 12th.  Gail worked in human factors and the firm specialized in that and we mostly did government and Department of Defense type work.  We did a lot of work with the nuclear regulatory commission and government agencies.  Gail was one of our first psychologists that we hired.  One of the agencies we worked with was NASA.  Gail probably shared that with people because that might have been the easiest thing to explain – a lot of the work we did was not as accessible to the layperson to understand.  

She and I became friends.  She had moved here with the girls and we hung out quite a bit.  She was here until they left for Alaska.  That was about 2 or 3 years. 

Gail was a blast.  She was a very cool person and we hit it off right away.  She was 4-5 years older than me but I found her attractive but let’s just say I was more interested in dating her than she was in dating me. We kept it friendly, but she would have me over for dinner a few times a month and she was a great cook.  She was very bright and very capable and a great person to work with. 

Boulder was pretty small back then and we would hang out socially, go out to shows, and stuff like that.  For example, in the early 80s, Lyle Lovvit was an upcoming singer and put out an album called “Lyle Lovvit and his Large Band.”  And he did an album release at a small club in Boulder that we went out to, and we went out to see this country act, expecting to see this cowboy.  And he comes out in a tuxedo with a full band and just blows us away.  It was just one of the experiences together that we were not expecting at all.  We also ended up seeing Robert Cray, the great blues guitar player.  And midway through she turns to me to declare that he was one of the sexiest men she had ever seen.  She was just a lot of fun that way.  Always good humor and fun to hang around with. 

Her brother Wayne lived here for a couple of years and actually passed the bar exam in Colorado.  He was a GREAT guy, not to mention a very committed bachelor then and a very great guy to go to bars with.  He was a very free spirit at that time. Really enjoyed life.  Let’s just say that you would never know that he was an attorney, though clearly a very bright and capable man.  He probably took 6 months off and didn’t really work.  I heard he died young and that is so sad.  

We would do fun things at our office like “Hawaiian-shirt day” and do themed days and stuff like that and it was a very mom and pop environment. Gail fit in beautifully.  She was a great colleague.  This was her first professional job in our field after getting her PHD, and she was very good at what she did.  Everyone came in, worked hard and got their stuff done, but she fit in our environment particularly well.  

Chris was a geologist who was very well off and he knew Jack from Houston.  Chris and his wife got divorced and Gail and Chris started seeing each other.  I met Chris a few times.  He was good looking and wealthy, and … he was kind of a dick.  Chris was going to Boulder fairly regularly to come and visit Gail.  And I would baby-sat the girls when they went out.  Then Gail left for Alaska to join Chris up there in late ‘89.  

She had a good paying job in Boulder and Jack was supporting the girls and she was supporting herself.  But I think she was excited about the life Chris could provide her as well.  She only did contract or part-time work in Alaska.  Getting stuff shipped to Alaska by freight was incredibly expensive so she very cleverly packed all their household goods and clothes into the proper sized boxes and mailed them by the U.S. Book Rate to Alaska so she got everyone moved by a quarter of the cost.  

When she came back from Alaska we picked up right where we left off.  She had Danielle and Lauren there at least part of the time. I helped her get a job at US West and she actually worked for me for several years.  We were initially peers there but they did this thing called re-engineering and we were in a user interface design group and I ended up taking it over and we went to over 40 people from a dozen and she became one of my leads, leading a group of 5-6 designers.

She worked at US West for about 4-5 years from about ‘92 to ‘96.  I believe she met her second husband at US West too.  I met him and got to know him a little bit early in their relationship.  

One last thing that I was remember, we ended up having a professional conference in New York City.  It was the first time either one of us had been to New York and I had grown up in D.C.  She hadn’t been to D.C. before so went there first for a few days and stayed with my folks and I showed her around D.C..  We were sitting around after dinner that my mother made. My mother and her hit it off and I was lamenting that my parents had the perfectly planned family and my mom gets this look in her eyes and starts sharing these things I’d never heard about our family before.  But that was just the kind of way Gail put her at ease.  And that’s exactly how Gail was with so many people.  Like, years later, she and my wife got along so well - which is no surprise. Gail just had that ability.