In 1968, Mr. Blume entered active duty as a Navy JAG officer. From December 1969 through December 1970, he served as a Lt. in the Mekong Delta of Viet Nam, for which he was awarded, among others, the Navy Commendation Medal with Combat Distinguishing Device.

Upon his release from active Naval duty in 1971, he returned to Washington, DC, as an antitrust litigator with the FTC’s Bureau of Competition, where he focused chiefly on mergers and acquisitions.

In  1972, Mr. Blume embarked on a 26-year career with General Electric Company, from which he retired as the Executive Vice President and General Counsel of GE Capital Aviation Services (GECAS). GECAS is the world’s premier financier and lessor of commercial aircraft to airline customers and is engaged in Operating Leases, Sale/Leasebacks, Aircraft Trading and Remarketing, Bare Aircraft Purchases, Leveraged Leases, Joint Venture Equity, Securitization and Capital Markets. The GECAS fleet portfolio consists of approximately 1100 owned and 300 managed aircraft placed with over 200 airlines based in 60 countries.

During his GE tenure, Mr. Blume also served in numerous other global leadership posts, including, as the chief legal counsel for GE’s Jet Engines business, as a member of the Board of Directors of CFM, International, GE’s extremely successful joint venture with the French state-owned aircraft engine manufacturer, Snecma Moteurs, and as the chief legal counsel for GE Silicones.

Mr. Blume is married to the former Mary Cornelius and has a daughter, Avery Plonski (and three grandchildren) in Louisville, KY and a son, Rich, serving with the US Army 25^th Infantry Division in Iraq.

After retiring from GE in 1998, the Blumes moved from Greenwich, CT to their home on Lake Norman in Mooresville, NC outside of Charlotte.

Mr. Blume currently serves as the General Counsel of a privately held company.

Events and experiences between 1959 and 2009 created what I call “My Life Quilt”.

The sum of the parts is beautiful.  It is, or has been, at times:  challenging, rewarding, surprising, full of sophistication, and fun.  Sure, there have been a few “snags” here and there along the way, but I have met people, seen places and done things that many others only dream or read about.  

I like to say that “I am not a “gambler”, yet t have taken some chances with choices during my life, hoping  no one gets hurt or is at risk but me.”  Win some, lose some!  (Hey!  I never said I wanted to be 80 years old, sitting in a rocking chair, wishing I had done this or that).

Today, I am in the happiest of marriages to Dennis Gardner, our classmate!  (Check out his “Bio”too; it’s awesome, and I am very proud of his achievements.)

Dennis and I wed in December 2006, live in Houston and are having the “time of our lives”. I am surrounded by love, laughter, am healthy and very content. Lucky, lucky me!

Children:  Two (2) from my 1960 marriage to Nick Polizzi, Joanne’s brother.  Daughter, Andrea (45) a successful fashion designer, lives in Manhattan Beach, California with her husband and their young children (my grandkids), Shelby and Julian.  We visit as often as possible.  Son, Phillip (43), who says he is “still looking for the “perfect woman” moved to Houston earlier this year. He wants to make a career change, follow his passion and become a professional chef.

Dennis’ four children and their kids are also part of our blended and extended family, which makes for great holidays and many birthday celebrations!

Career:  Colorful….I began modeling while at Gables, did print ads for “Coca Cola” etc., morphed into a high fashion model, was long time charitable volunteer and fundraiser, magazine rep and advertising sales executive. I’ve started several businesses, including a marketing/PR firm; imported art and antiques bought on frequent trips to Europe. I am presently the non-paid Executive Director and co-founder of a women’s support group, Healing Estranged Relationships, a non-profit organization.

Interests:   FAMILY is always “Numero UNO”!  

2. PEOPLE...I am blessed to have a worldwide circle of dear friends.  Some are new and some I have known all my life.  I am always pleased when I can add to the List.

3. TRAVEL…a “must” for the gypsy-in-my-soul.  I have spent much time in western  Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean.  I am curious-natured, a big “Foodie”, and generally feel at home with local customs and people wherever I go.

4. ART/ARCHITECTURE/DESIGN…need I elaborate?

CGHS-things I’ll always remember:: Cruising the halls in the morning before classes started; the girls ugly gym suit we HAD to wear; being in Cavalettes and marching in the Orange Bowl parade;  TALLET sisters;  Gables vs. Miami High games….and always wishing I had more curves instead of looking like ”Twiggy”.

This too:

“On Miami’s southern border, reared against the sky, proudly stands our alma mater, Coral Gables High. Onward, upward be our watchword, conquer and prevail. Hail to thee our alma mater, Coral Gables, hail!”

The last time most of you heard me was as the Chaplain at the graduation ceremony where I suggested in the so- called prayer that I was called upon to elicit that it was time that we as a society became racially tolerant.  For that I  received threatening phone calls for suggesting that the Constitution was for all people of all races and cultures and  so  left  high school with head held high and my estimation of CGHS as a racist and anti semitic institution well-founded. 

Nonetheless, I have warm feelings for old Mr. Bowlby, the chemistry teacher who inspired and educated, profoundly, and  and rather a different feeling towards the Vice- Principal who represented, in my opinion , all that was wrong with the South and my high school education.  The Principal was a man of honesty and honour and I was lucky that he kept a lock on the extremes of some.  Luckily America must have been listening, if not to me, than to some rather more influential and heroic people other than this callow 18 year old Valedictorian. 

 I went to the University of Chicago and graduated in Biological Psychology. I changed my studies after graduating UC and over the next year whilst teaching public school decided to attend the  University of Miami and then Florida State to study fine arts where I  became a sculptor and photographer after obtaining a BSc, B.A and M.F.A. 
After a year teaching sculpture at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa I had enough of the real South of the 1960s and its undergrowth of threat and night riders  and moved, permanently, to Canada, taught at the University of Alberta  and retired a few years ago as Professor Emeritus. 

 I spent my life making art and teaching what I know and what I  see to my students many of whom I  can now share the word "colleague and friend."

 I live deep in the woods surrounded by sculpture, deer, coyote and the occasional moose and overhead in the long light summer days as the sun makes a long sweep from north east to north west many hawks and, once in a while, an eagle or two rotate in the sky.  I live 40 km from the city of Edmonton, a fine and cultured city with a huge library, perfect classical concert hall and  great research university where I was privileged to work  within a healthy society protected by  Universal Medicare system.  

 I built my eccentric energy efficient home much  by myself and  leaned how to survive sub-Arctic temperatures. For those who do not believe in Global Warming , it does exist and it is here in the North that one sees the rapid climate changes occurring. Winters are far warmer than when I moved here nearly 40 years ago which might be fine for tropical humans but not so good for the wildlife. 

Here I am giving one more nudge to the conscience!

Dennis Gardner – a (not so) brief biographical sketch.
Fifty years in a few paragraphs – quite a challenge!

First, as they say on the “Nightly Business Report,” let’s do the numbers: bachelor’s (1963) and master’s (1964) degrees in aerospace engineering from Georgia Tech; commissioned officer in US Army Ordnance Corps; three years active military duty assigned to NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama (more on this below); seven years a civilian contractor at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas, performing re-entry mission planning and support for the Apollo lunar landing program; received law degree in 1974 and was chief of the City of Houston’s Administrative Law Section for seven years before becoming General Counsel for Houston’s Metropolitan Transit Authority; retired from the MTA at age 55 and have practiced law (on a less than fulltime basis) since with Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart, a 400+ lawyer firm with offices nationwide.

I am thrice-married – two marriages (my first and my last) to CGHS Class of 59 members, Kay Easter in 1961 and Marcia Fennell in 2006 (I don’t know if any other class member has married two women from our class).  Kay and I have three children, Dennis, Jr., a CPA living in Houston, Robert, a finish carpenter living in near-by Galveston, Texas, and Suzanne, an insurance broker also living in Houston.  Upon retiring from the school system, Kay lives in a beach-front home in Galveston where she reads, tends to her many cats and watches the Gulf of Mexico surf roll in.  I have one son from my second marriage, Graham, who works in Tulsa, Oklahoma, having graduated from college in 2007.  [After having three children by age 25, I had my fourth at age 42.  I can testify that one’s outlook on parenting changes a lot with the intervening years.]  I am step-father to Marcia’s two children, a daughter, Andrea Polizzi Sievert, a fashion designer who lives in southern California with her husband and two children and a son, Phillip Polizzi, unmarried, who has recently moved to Houston.  Both of Marcia’s children are Gables graduates as was their late father, Nick Polizzi, and their aunt, our classmate, Joanne Polizzi.  Cumulatively, we have nine grandchildren, seven boys and two girls, ranging in age from 16 to 5.

More subjectively, I consider the fifty years since our Gables graduation to have been very kind to me.  I have had challenging and rewarding work experiences.  As a young military officer, I worked in close proximity to the pioneers of rocketry and spaceflight, including Werner von Braun and the cadre of former German scientists and engineers who immigrated to the US after World War II.  Later, in Houston, I had regular exposure briefing and training the first and second generation astronauts, a fascinating group composed principally of former test pilots who really did have “the right stuff” as described in Tom Wolfe’s book of that title.  At the close of the Apollo/Skylab era, in 1974, I transitioned from engineering to a new career as a lawyer.  While lacking the glamour of the space program, my work for local government was perhaps more challenging, particularly my years in public transit where I was part of a team that embarked on building a respectable regional mass transit system from the shambles of a formerly private local bus system that was under funded, under equipped and under staffed almost beyond description.  After six years of very hard work, we were recognized by the American Public Transit Association as the best large system in the nation.  My current law practice is concentrated in transportation and construction related matters. 

Hopefully, without sounding too Pollyannaish, here are a few of my favorite things:

• A wonderful marriage after a decade as a bachelor who was reasonably certain he did not want to marry a third time at the age of 65.  Incidentally, Marcia and I became reacquainted as a result of the 45^th. Class of ‘59 reunion – a wonderful happenstance or a cautionary tale depending on your perspective.
• The opportunity to travel for business and pleasure around the world.  I regret not having studied or worked abroad earlier in life but I thoroughly enjoy the international work I do now which has involved travel to Europe, India and Japan.  Marcia is an avid and experienced traveler who shares my interests and who seems to have friends anywhere we go, be it New York, Los Angeles, Paris, or Timbuktu (just kidding about Timbuktu but I wouldn’t be surprised if she did).
• A chance to indulge my passion for cars and motor racing.  I have been involved in sports car and motorcycle racing with my youngest son (he as a driver and mechanic, I as crew member, wrench turner and, most importantly to him, chief financier).  I also do race officiating for amateur and professional events through the Sports Car Club of America, including Formula 1, the premier international auto racing series.  Some of you may remember I drove a ’58 MGA in high school.  After owning Alfa Romeos, Jaguars and Mercedes over the years, I now play with a highly modified Mustang Cobra fitted with a roll cage, five-point harness, and competition brakes and suspension.  [I do have an adult car, an Infiniti sedan, and, of course, because I live in Texas, a pick up truck]. 
• Government and politics.  I am not strongly partisan but enjoy the process and the people.  During my years in transit, I supervised the MTA’s lobbying activities and continue to maintain a strong interest in government at all levels.  A number of years ago, I had the opportunity to attend Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government program for senior state and local government officials at Harvard, an experience that sharpened my skills and whetted my interest in how government works and how to make it better.

 I understand this biography is to include a favorite Gables memory.  I am hard pressed to single out one memory from those years.  Rather, I am inclined to refer to a series of emails that circulated several years ago to which a number of people added their favorite Miami reflections from the late fifties along with some vintage photos.  If you contributed to these emails when they circulated originally, thank you for recalling some memorable places and events from our youth.  If you haven’t seen the list, I would be happy to email it to you.

The real news is that I am probably the oldest first-time father among you having done that at age 55. Our twin daughters will be 12 when we gather for our 50th, so you can count on meeting them then! I'll attach a photo from last year so you'll have some idea what we look like now.

Best wishes for a great gathering! It was inspiring to return for the CGHS 50th anniversary three years ago, and I hope you all find the same experience in greater numbers now. http://www.landwater.com/

I worked for Upjohn for a year as a sales rep in 1967/68 selling various prescription medications, got bored, and decided to try my hand at law after every airline in the world turned me down because I wore glasses. I attended the University of San Diego School of Law, obtained my Juris Doctor, and passed the California Bar in 1971. I was in private practice for 12 years (mostly domestic and criminal defense) and have now been a judicial officer on the San Diego Superior Court going on 22 years.

We're just taking a day at a time and pray for the privilege of seeing another beautiful Pacific sunset.