In 1990 I had a young man from France living with us for a year while he studied at the University of Vermont in Burlington.

Over the last 12 years we have had a number of French guests and have gone to France on many occassions to be included in the lives of the families who had stayed with us in Burlington.

In essence I've worked out my own exchange program so as to learn and appreciate a culture that I admire and
feel comfortable in. It's been wonderful!

After graduating in 56 I seemed to have been placed on a set of tracks and moved on to college, service in the Army and then back to onto law school. Life as an undergrad and grad student at Cornell left a lasting impression on me with the clear sense that I did not want to live in an urban setting.

While an undergraduate and law student I played bassand was a back up singer in a rock band for 6 years and coupled with waiting on tables for my meals paved the way for me to pay for most of the freight, much to the delight of my parents in that my brother Steve(class of 57) was also at college and graduate school at the same time.

I came to Burlington Vermont to settle into the life of a lawyer and did so in 1964 and I stopped working in June of 2000, which marked the date of my son's high school graduation. I only have one child but I have been married three times.

My professional career was remarkably stable in that I started and ended my career with the same firm.My personal life had a large dose of turmoil and loss.My first and second marriages each lasted for 15 years.The end of my first marriage was in large part initiated by my voice; the end of my second marriage (the marriage with our child) was ended by the initiation of the voice of my second wife.

At about the time of the ending of my second marriage my father Sid died. The ending of his life coupled with the ending of my marriage was such that I found myself seeing life as thru a gray curtain. The curtain lifted with the passage of time and with the help of a wonderful skilled therapist.

Our son David went thru a period of strong turmoil and found himself deeply involved with the drug culture in the community. He failed every course in his first year of public high school and I then had him enrolled at a boarding school which I believed saved his life and gave me a respite from the anxiety I faced watching him drift downward, without being able to help him enough.

I have had the good fortune to remarry and my wife plans to retire from her post at the University of Vermont in July of 2004. We very much enjoy each others company and have built and continue to build a huge degree of trust and caring for each other. David thinks his step-mother is wonderful. I do too.

I've keep in touch on a regular basis with Walter Fried and I'm looking forward to this mini-reunion to get a sense about the lives of people whose paths I crossed at a very important time of our development.

Lloyd
6.5.02

Lloyd A. Portnow
133 Spruce Street
Burlington,Vermont 05401
802-658-5295

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