50th Reunion 

C. Merill Matzinger
After graduation my uncle got me a job with Braun & Company, a public relations firm retained by a large group of chain store companies to fight a campaign organized by independent merchants to tax them out of existence. While working for five years in Colorado, southern California, and Utah I had met and married my first wife, a Cuban, whom I had met during vacations in Florida and Cuba. I decided to learn something about finance and went into Merrill Lynch Pierce etc. They sent me to Havana. However, my eye problem made it impossible to do the necessary report reading and I left the brokerage business after only three years. In those days Cuba was a delightful place to live, and we stayed, with our two children. I really enjoyed the music, dancing, and fiestas. Here I sailed, worked up to second degree blackbelt in judo, learned some Flamenco guitar...and I became a catholic.

When Castro came it seemed like a good idea to leave Cuba, and we moved to San Francisco where I spent the next 15 years with such activities as encounter groups ac Esalen and retreat movements in the Catholic Church. We had a cabin in Alta, Utah, and in 1974 I decided to spend a winter there by myself to do some meditation and reorganize my life. This resulted in divorce and marriage and a totally new orientation, to my living.

C. Merill Matzinger 2
Some of the changes in this new stage of my life include: adopting my wife's one-year-old son, and five years later assisting in the natural childbirth of our daughter, helping my wife Mary Lou produce a learning system for elementary school guidance and self-esteem, both of us joining the Mormon Church, certifying for scuba diving, becoming a Club Scout leader -Brownie leader (even a camp counselor), and just this last November being elected to our community council. My present activities are river rafting, skiing, scuba and snorkeling, photography, guitar, backpacking, church and community work. Perhaps my favorite hobby of all is playing Flamenco guitar, and my wife has talked me into having some of my favorites professionally recorded.

My oldest son Stan (43) works in Commercial real estate in Miami. He has given me two grandchildren: Alex (6) and Betty (16). My daughter Cari (42), writer and artist, lives in Spokane with her husband and my two grandchildren: Monica (18), Nathan (16). My youngest son Carter (12) is in his first year of junior high, and my youngest daughter Tavi (7) is in second grade.

Now is certainly an appropriate time to consider whether the "Matz" of 1937 has done any evolving. At the top of my list of priorities are family and friends. A most surprising discovery has hit me in this relatively late stage of life and that is the beauty of children. This is such a contrast with my original idea that babies and children were creatures to be taken care of by women. With each passing year I'm more impressed than ever that the most ordinary things in life have extraordinary possibilities, and the most difficult thing for a human to do is change (especially if it is for the better).
After a half century it is easy to make Amherst into a sort of Camelot, not in the sense that it was an illusion but rather a time and place of magic and a gateway for the vast possibilities of life.