04/10/09

Welcome to my Web site!

My Story

“Honey bees are superb teachers when trying to instill an environmental awareness and conservation ethic in young people. In learning about the importance of honey bee pollination, they realize how living things depend on other living things and that, while a few insects are pests, many are essential to our survival. Honey bees teach young people to be patient and gentle. Hastiness and carelessness have painful consequences, a lesson honey bees can teach you at a young age if you keep them. Honey bees are superb teachers.”   Dr.  Marion Ellis

I went to Santa Fe Trail Elementary School until we moved to Mountain Home, AR during the latter half of 5th grade. My dad's side of the family is from down south. After 8 months, we moved back but not into the same house as it had been rented out.

In the early 1970's, during my time in 6th grade at Overland Park Elementary School, our science class took a field trip to the Agriculture Hall of Fame Museum in Bonner Springs, Kansas. An obscure box with glass sides caught my attention. This box was a glass observation bee hive that contained live honey bees and many frames of comb. It was connected to the wall with a plastic tube. I was fascinated.

Another 6th grade classmate and I got an idea.  We wanted to make a glass beehive of our own.  Mrs. Kern, our science teacher encouraged us and told us that we should find and read all the books we could on honey bees over the summer. This trip was in late spring and the school season was only a few weeks from ending.

The following weeks after school had ended for the summer, I spent my care-free days catching honey bees in glass jars as they were landing on various clover blossoms collecting nectar.  I was only 10 years of age-nearly eleven.  I would try to catch as many individual bees as I could in a 1 gallon cider jug, going from clover patch to clover patch in  large field at the school behind our house.  I got stung a several times and learned to handle the bees by their wings. The stings hurt. Some seemed more painful than others.  But I developed a skill at catching honey bees. I also got used to getting stung.   Though I never could keep the bees alive long enough to make a small hive.  I also had the problem of not having a queen bee. I really enjoyed this new fascination and I had fun playing with the bees that I caught. This is how my history with honey bees begins.  There was more I needed to learn.

Soon after....

In 7^th grade at Milburn Junior High, I learned that I could order packaged honey bees and the necessary hive equipment through the Montgomery Ward Farm Catalog.  I didn't have much money, so I got a job. I delivered papers for The Kansas City Star. I got my first hive in 1973.  In September of 1977, the same 100-year flood that swept through the Plaza, a shopping district in Kansas City, Missouri, had gone through our residential back-yard in Overland Park, KS and flooded the 3 hives that I had at the time.  One washed away against the back-yard fence; the other two were carried out of the rising waters by me and my brother and survived.

The flood of 1977 also led me to my second job.  As a volunteer I helped clean up the supply room for a Plaza hotel coffee shop, The Pam-Pam, where my mother also worked.  When I turned 16, I applied for a position as a bus-boy, weekends only, at the Alameda Plaza in the coffee shop. After high school, I became a full-time college student. Philip Pistilli, the President of the Alameda Plaza & Raphael hotels, pulled me out of the coffee shop to work as a bellman at the Front Desk on my 18th birthday. I worked there until after I graduated from the University of Kansas in Lawrence. 

By 1980, I was up to 3 hives again.  Almost all of the honey I that year, I had sold to Chef Jesse Barbosa at Alameda Plaza Hotel.  Selling the honey to the hotel was a lesson in capitalism.  I was able to make some hobby income.  I'll always be in-debted to Mr. Pistilli and the hotel family of people that I worked with for advancing me and giving me an opportunity. The hotel work was fun. My experience there and the many people I met, helped me work my way through many years of college and allowed me to graduate debt-free.

In 1986, I graduated from KU with a major in Liberal Arts.  My concentration was in German as I had been and exchange student to Ellerau and Hamburg, Germany during high school at Shawnee Mission North. I also gained my German family and have extensive history with them and the many friends in Hamburg that met as result of my visit(s). In '87,I moved to Washington, D.C. and returned eight months later to the hotel.  From the Alameda Plaza I was transferred to work in Front Office Management downtown at the Vista Hotel- now the downtown Marriott in Kansas City, MO.   A couple years later, I left my Assistance Manager position for a  position in the Bank Reconciliation Department for Kemper Mutual Funds, then at DST Sytems, Inc. Kemper Funds has now evolved into DWS Funds.

(On a side note, "DWS" is the acronym for "Die Deutsche Gesellschaft fuer Werts-papier Sparen" or "a German Compay for Securities/Savings"---see!, it does help to know some German-DWS has a very well known fund reputation in Europe).   Although I missed the hotel environment and the people, the working hours were a vast improvement.  

Kemper Financial Services has been through a few transitions. In 1989, Kemper consolidated their Call Center (Chicago) and Operations (Kansas City) into one building at 811 Main Street downtown. In the mid-1990's, Kemper Funds was bought by a Zurich Financial, which then merged with Scudder Funds from Boston, MA that had also been purchased by Zurich Financial. 

In late 2001 Zurich sold the fund groups to Deutsche Bank. Our duties went back to DST Systems, Inc., which is were I'm currently working with my group where I had worked 6 months initially prior to Kemper's consolidation in Kansas City in 1988 and 1989.  From 2003 until 2005, I also had some experience with another division at DST called Equiserve, now Computershare. It's a great way to buy stocks and maintain your accounts on-line. Check it out.

Bees are my other passion. Although a member of the local beekeeping association since 1985, I now serve a couple of non-profit, educational bee organizations. It's been an adventure. I've gotten to know other people here at home and around the country who are passionate about bees, too. Educators, mead-makers, researchers, soap-makers, candle-makers, book writers, market customers-from all walks of life.

I sometimes wonder what turn my life would have taken, had I not been on that fateful field trip in 6th grade. It continues to be a fascinating adventure. Want to get into honey bees? Check out some of the other pages.

 Visitor Number for current year