My Story

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 amazing discovery was a glass observation honey bee hive that had live honey bees, connected to the outside with a plastic tube. This was a real working hive with workers, queens, and drones.

This observation hive gave me and another classmate an idea.  We wanted to make a glass hive 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. School was only a few weeks from ending.

The following 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 old and I'd try to catch as many bees as I could find, going from clover patch to clover patch.  I got stung a several times learning to handle the bees and catching them by their wings. The stings did hurt (some more than others).  Eventually, I became very good at catching honey bees and got used to getting stung.   But I never could keep the bees long enough to make a hive...  They didn't seem to want to make a colony. And, of course, there was the problem of not having a queen bee.

That's how my story with honey bees begins.

Soon after....

In 7^th grade at Milburn Junior High, I learned that I could order packaged honey bees and bee equipment through the Montgomery Ward Farm Catalog.  I didn't have any money, so I got a job.

I delivered papers for The Kansas City Star. I saved to buy my first hive in 1974.  In September of 1977, the same flood that swept through the Plaza had gone through our back-yard in Overland Park, and flooded the 3 hives that I had at the time.  Two of the hives washed  away; one survived.

The flood of 1977 also led me to how I got my second job.  You see, I helped clean up the supply room for a hotel coffee shop, The Pam-Pam, where my mother worked.  I applied for the position at the hotel as soon as I turned 16.  I worked as a bus-boy at the Alameda Plaza Hotel on weekends in the coffee shop.

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.  And when I turned 18 years-old, I became a full-time college student. Philip Pistilli, the president of the hotel, had pulled me out of the coffee shop to work part-time as bellman at the hotel.  I didn't realize it at the time but selling the honey to the hotel was a lesson in capitalism.  I was able to make some hobby income.  And, I'll always be indebted to Mr. Pistilli for advancing me and giving me an opportunity.

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 my high school days at Shawnee Mission North High School.   In 1987,I moved to Washington, D.C. and returned to Kansas City eight months later.   I was working behind the Front Desk for a week before I was transferred to work in Front Office Management at the downtown hotel, which is now the downtown Marriott in Kansas City, MO.   A few years later, I left my position as Assistance Manager in the hotel business for an accounting position in the Bank Reconciliation Department for Kemper Mutual Funds.   Although I missed the hotel environment and the people, the working hours were a vast improvement. 

To make a long story short, Kemper Funds were bought by a Zurich Financial, and shortly thereafter merged with Scudder Funds, which had also been purchased by Zurich Financial.  In 2001 Zurich sold the fund groups to Deutsche Bank; our duties were out-sourced back to DST Systems, Inc., which is were I'm currently working and 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, which is now Computershare. It's a great way to buy stock and maintain you account on-line.