I am 83 years old. Born in Southern California, I served in the army in Europe during WWII, then attended Antioch College in Ohio, majoring in political science. After graduating I moved to Washington, working first for the CIO Political Action Committee. I married a girl from Antioch, Laura Kaplan, and we eventually had three children: Janina, Joshua and Jonathan. I spent about fifteen years in the Government, first in the Office of Defense Mobilization; later in the Peace Corps. During my four and a half years with the Peace Corps I negotiated the first program in Nepal, set up in-country operations in Sri Lanka, and was Deputy Director for two years in Malaysia.
Then I resigned and went to live in London for four years where I did a PhD at the London School of Economics, with a dissertation on Malay Entrepreneurs. This took me back to Malaysia for a year, driving out across the Middle East and through India with Laura.
In 1969 we returned to Washington, DC, where we owned a house in Georgetown. Having done my research on entrepreneurs I decided not to go back into Government service, but to become an entrepreneur. This was at the beginning of the "New Age" and I created a business called Yes!, initially with a natural food store, then a vegetarian restaurant, then a bookshop, then a collection of small shops that we called The Center for Natural Living. Laura, who is an artist, had little interest in the business, and as our youngest child was 15 and about to go off to boarding school, we drifted more and more apart, not yet quite ready to say that the marriage was over.
Enter Cris Rosenberg, a young graduate student, who came to work at Yes! part-time. Before long, Cris and I were together and Laura had gone off to California to begin a new life. Cris created the Yes! Bookshop, specializing in philosophy, psychology and religion, and in a few years it was probably the best in the world in its field. Together we ran Yes! for twenty years. Then I was ready to retire and Cris was ready for new challenges, so in 1992 we sold it.
In 1996, Cris moved to NYC to pursue new job opportunities and I devoted myself to subdividing the 10.7 acres in Great Falls, VA on which we lived. Then I moved up to NY myself. We looked for a long time for a house to buy and finally bought a five-acre tract on a hill and built our own (see Us for details). The project took three years and we were in it for three more years. While living there I was diagnosed with congestive heart failure and multiple myeloma (cancer of the bone marrow). I am getting excellent care for both and am pretty stable right now so I figure I've got a few more years, though I can't continue with very heavy work or other activities that I loved, like skiing. A few years ago I got onto the idea of studying Spanish in immersion situations in Spanish-speaking countries. My first shot at it was a month (January, naturally) in Antigua, Guatemala, an historic town that specializes in Spanish schools. For about $1,000 total I had four hours a day with my private tutor, and room and board with a family. I followed this up with a month in Santiago, Chile (January is summer there). I still dream about Januarys in Costa Rica and Argentina but those are only dreams now.
My major interest, as you can see from this Web site, is genealogy and American history. My father was an avid genealogist, and my older brother had acquired the family files and done some further research. I started out with the intention of helping him but soon found that I was getting much more deeply into the chase. It is kind of like playing Sherlock Holmes. But Holmes would follow an ever narrowing search until he got his man. In genealogy you follow an ever widening search, looking at a whole neighborhood and the people in it because in the 18th and early 19th centuries (my primary period of interest) people didn't do things on their own. They married the neighbors and when they moved whole groups of relatives and friends would usually go together. So looking for my relatives is a good excuse to get started but once I get into a time and place I am just as happy to research most anybody. I like to go to the places my ancestors lived, do primary research in the courthouse, and visit the land, imagining what it was like a couple of hundred years ago.
The downside of being a genealogist is that I can only talk to other genealogists. Even family members have a very low tolerance for hearing all the details about their ancestors. So this Internet gives me a chance to talk all I want without worrying whether or not anybody is listening. Read it at your own risk.
Ollie and Cris on the Great Wall, October 2004 Cris and Ollie at Hubbard Glacier, Alaska, August 2008