While at Illinois I met Carol Hamilton from Pontiac, Illinois; she was a Sigma Kappa, down the street on West Ohio; we were married in early 1967. I graduated from the University of Illinois later in 1967 with a PhD in ChE. Went to work for Shell in Houston and joined forces with Phil Reiss (ChE '65) and later Tassos Karabelas (ChE '69) joined in. In 1970, I had a career change; I was accepted at Harvard Business School; received my MBA in 1972 and started work at Air Products and Chemicals, Inc., in Lehigh Valley, PA.
After nearly 34 years of service, I am retiring from Air Products on 16 January 2006. It has been a magnificent ride, an unforgettable life experience for my family and for me. As it turns out, approximately half of my career, I dedicated to building the company’s activities outside of the United States. Our family lived overseas, in London and in Barcelona. We traveled extensively in Europe and especially in Asia in the 80’s and 90’s. We made many, many friends and collected beautiful memories. In the last 5 years, I had the good fortune to work on shaping the company’s future, working on the attempted BOC acquisition, on designing Deliver the Difference, on the Corporate Staged Transformation and on numerous business strategy challenges. I could not have asked for more stimulating assignments.
We've had 3 wonderful children; the oldest one is 30, will marry in a year, lives and works in Bethlehem, PA; the middle one lives at home and commutes to work in New York City every day; the youngest 24 and at graduate school in Los Angeles. Carol is the President of the local Ballet Guild of the Lehigh Valley and very much into the Arts world. I do voluntary work supporting the Ballet Guild as its Treasurer while at the same time I am the Chair of the Finance Committee of the Board of Trustees for Moravian College - small liberal arts college and a treasure in this part of the world. Retirement is a few years away!
I hope I did not overdo this. I will be very happy to receive news from everyone.I was delighted to make contact with the Alpha Chi Sigma Zeta Chapter brothers from the 1960-65 era. The picture on the web site is fabulous. I have, during the years, frequently referred to it in my album with nostalgia. This past March, my wife Carol and I visited U of I. Drove by the ΑΧΣ house and took pictures and stopped by, unexpectedly and spent about 45 minutes with my thesis advisor Tom Hanratty and reminisced for a while. It was wonderful! But, let me not get ahead of myself.
Telephone:
239-331-4470
Cell 484-515-9052
Email:
dimopohg@comcast.net