Dick Schmitt Miscellaneous

Sunday, February 08, 2009

Last Updated 4 May 2009

Travel with Dick and Jane

We've got a lot more pictures to link here, so check back frequently if you're into that stuff (or email us and we'll tell you when we add something)

Recent additions

    The United(?) Kingdom 

    South American Trip (November 2005) 

    Points East

    Mexico

    • Guanajuato (in progress) 2002 and 2007
    • San Miguel de Allende 2007
    • Dolores Hidalgo, Guanajuato 2007  
    • Atotonilco Sanctuary, Guanajuato, Mexico 2007
    • Valenciana, Guanajuato, Mexico 2007

    Canada

    • Alberta: Bow and Morraine Lake 2003 
    • Alberta: Columbia Ice Fields (Banff) 2003

    Italy

    France

    Spain

    Greece 

    • 2000 trip in progress

    The American East 

    • Washington, D.C. 2002 trip in progress
    • New York City 2005 and 2006 trips
    • Detroit: the Fisher Building 2007

    The American West

    • The Brothers Annual Hiking Trip to Lake Tahoe Area (September 2008) -- parts one, two, and three 
    • The Brothers Annual Hiking Trip in the Volcanic Cascades (September 2007)
    • The Brothers Annual Hiking Trip at Olympic National Park in Washington State (September 2006)
    • The Annual Utah Male-bonding Hiking Trip with Dick's Family from 2004 and 2005
    • Hawaii (Oodles of pictures from August 2005 and January 2007) really far west 
    • Yosemite National Park, California 2008
     

    Labels:

    posted by Dick Schmitt @ 9:51 PM  

    Friday, February 03, 2006

    More than you care to know about Dick


    Dick Schmitt is a retiree living with his wife, Jane, in Houston, Texas.

    Family

    Dick and Jane were married in 2003. The story of their airport meeting is now among the Continental legends. Dick’s first wife, Pietrina, died in 2001, after 34 years of marriage which produced four children in quick succession starting in 1968. They are now scattered around the United States and have produced three exceptionally cute and brilliant grandsons to date.

    Early History

    Dick grew up in Garden City, Michigan as the second of twelve children. Along with 50 others (including his twin sister Mary), he graduated from St. Raphael's Grade School in the late 50s. Next he attended the University of Detroit High School graduating four years later.

    Higher Education

    Dick graduated in 1967 (B. A. English) and 1970 (M. A. Education) from the University of Detroit where he met his first wife Pietrina while playing bass with the school's choral groups.

    Later he received a Masters in Management from the University of Michigan (1978) and did post degree work in computer science at Wayne State University.

    Work History

    To get through college, Dick played with various music groups (mostly "acoustic" bass which was called "string" bass in those days) and loaded trucks on the midnight shift. During his senior year he first worked as a clerk with General Motors in Detroit and then spent his final semester as a third grade teacher at St. Dunstan's Grade School in Garden City, Michigan. He returned there to teach fourth grade the following year. One of his students, Ann Marie Hughes, went on to be among the first women to graduate from West Point.

    In the late 1960s, Dick returned to the University of Detroit High School to teach English and Journalism (a lot), Latin (some), and a lot of other stuff like 8th grade science, mythology (there's a combination—intelligent design, anyone?), social studies. He also moderated the yearbook and weekly newspaper (which given that this was the 1960s and early 1970s, were anything but moderate). While there he finished his Masters in Education and started on a Masters in Management at the University of Michigan.

    In the middle 1970s, Dick entered the business world at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Michigan as a technical writer in the research department. Somehow he stumbled into programming classes and moved to the Quality Control Department as a supervisor and eventually into the systems department as an application programmer/analyst working on claims processing systems. Blue Cross was the leading health care insurer in Michigan at the time but steadily lost market share while Dick was employed there.

    In the early 1980s, Dick moved to the Chevrolet Engineering Center at the General Motors Tech Center in Warren, Michigan, as a database administrator. For the first time in its history, GM lost money! By this time, Dick had a reputation as a destroyer of corporate value.

    Soon after, Dick moved to Houston (1982) for a job as a database administrator with Exxon. Shortly after hiring Dick, Exxon moved from the Fortune #1 to Fortune #2. (It regained its premier position about the time Dick announced his retirement). He stayed with Exxon (now ExxonMobil) for the rest of his working days, mostly in management positions within the systems department of the former Exxon Company USA including several stints in applications and technology planning. For several years, he taught various MIS and computer science courses as an adjunct professor at the University of Houston and Houston Baptist University.

    After two stints in HR systems, Dick was moved to Paris, France, to manage an SAP R3 HR project for ExxonMobil. This was probably the largest HR project ever (system or otherwise). Given French labor laws, Dick had a lot of time on his hand and got a digital camera so he could waste a lot of it by documenting the Paris days on the web, so please visit our Paris pages to learn all of the details.

    Hobbies and Activities

    Dick spends a lot of time on physical fitness, something he’s been pretty much into most of his adult years. After moving to Houston, he finished the Houston Marathon most years between 1986 and 2002 with a few Dallas marathons and a Paris Marathon thrown in – 17 in all with, perhaps, more to come.

    Upon retirement, Dick upgraded his piano to a Steinway Grand so that he would feel guilty about not practicing. When he’s home, he tries to get in an hour a day at that keyboard. Currently he spends a lot of time traveling with his new bride and writing up the experience for his web page which is typically read by 2 or 3 people. (If you got this far, you've probably got that kind of time).







    posted by Dick Schmitt @ 8:21 AM   1 comments