Yearbook Saying

Bristol  . . .  
U.R.I. - Conservation Program  . . .  
likes skiing on a new mountain on a clear day  . . .  
hates sitting in one of Sr. Virginia's 
math classes on a beautiful spring day  . . .  
remembers Bro. Eugene's "Board of Education."

Activities:  Chess Club

Current Info

Larry and his wife Kate live in Westborough, MA. along their nephews Dan and Brian.  They are in the process of selling their property in Massachusetts and moving to New Hampshire.  Both Larry and Kate are retired software consultants and they enjoy sailing in the summers and snowmobiling in the winters.

Left:  Picture of Larry in front of one of the trail groomers owned by the snowmobile club he belongs to.  Larry is one of 17 volunteer groomer operators that spend over 1,000 hours per year grooming their clubs 92-mile trail system in Berlin, NH.

 Their club is one of 15 clubs in the Coos County, the northern most county of New Hampshire where there are over 1,500 miles of snowmobile trails.

This picture was taken in mid-March 2011 at the end of the snowmobile season.

Biography - July 2006

Dear Classmates,

After graduating from De La Salle in 1971, I attended URI and got my degree in Operations Research in just over 3 years. At URI, I roomed with Sal Depasquale and we both graduated in August of 1974.  In September, our school loans arrived and we used the money to go to Europe for a 6-week vacation.

When I got back, I began work as a programmer for Amica Insurance in Providence, then left there and took another programming job for Keane Associates in Worcester, MA.    After about a year in Worcester, a friend called from Newport and offered me a job running a waterfront restaurant ("The Wholly Mackerel") during the Cup summer of 1977.  I could not resist and spent the summer working on the wharfs and watching the Cup Trials, eventually seeing Ted Turner and Courageous defeat Australia.  

After that crazy summer (with no money to my name), I decided to start my own software consulting company called Independent Data Services, Inc.  So with an American Express credit card, I financed everything and got it started.  While on a consulting job in 1978, I met my wife Kate and we eventually got married and settled in central MA.  The company continued to grow and with help from my wife, it grew to employ 15 people.  

I kept in touch with Sal over the years, but he passed away in 1991 from cancer.  He was married and had a daughter who now lives in Denmark.  

My wife and I took a break from work in 1993-1994 and sailed our boat down to the Bahamas for the winter.  It was a great trip with cocktails on the beach every day at 4:00pm with our fellow boaters.

We came back totally relaxed, but then we entered the high stakes game of trading system software.  As a vendor of this type of software, you have to sign some pretty scary contracts.  If something goes wrong, you can lose everything.  Luckily for us, things went well and we ended up with our software being used in brokerage houses in Toronto, NYC, London and Hong Kong.  

We never had any of our own kids, but 2 of our nephews came to live with us in 1995. For the next 10 years, we guided them through school and they are just now getting out on their own. All this time, we continued to visit RI in the summers, since we kept our boat at the Bristol Yacht Club from 1983 to 2004. 

In the winters, we spent weekends in New Hampshire snowmobiling.  In 2000, we purchased land on a lake in NH and built our dream retirement house, which we are currently running as a vacation rental property.

I was in NYC during the 9/11 tragedy and almost became a casualty myself. I had been in those towers dozens of times over the previous 20 years and that day changed my life. I sold off parts of my software company and decided to retire in 2003.  Currently we are in the process of liquidating real-estate holdings in MA and eventually we are going to move to our vacation house in the White Mountains of NH.  

Now that I have a little time, I hope to catch up with my classmates from De La Salle at the next reunion and I am working with Bart Grimes to create a website so that we can all stay in touch. 

Sincerely,

Website Links

Two Lakes Lodge  - (Larry and Kate's Lodge in New Hampshire, which they 
are currently running as a vacation rental property.)

Home Automation Overview  - (Planning document used for creating home automation system for Two Lakes Lodge.)

Canvas Link, Inc. - (A software company Larry and Kate started in 1986 that sells graphic 
visualization software to awning fabricators.   This software (designed by Larry) is available in three languages and is currently used by over 1,000 awning and sign shops in the US, Canada, Mexico and South America.  The company was sold in 2009 to TriVantage.)

Midnight Wind - (Larry and Kate's sailboat that they sold in 2007 but are still partners in the boat.  During the 24 years they owned this boat, they cruised Narragansett Bay, the Cape and Islands, the coast of Maine, Chesapeake Bay, the Florida Keys and the Bahamas as far south as Rum Cay (near the Turks and Caicos).  The lake where they are moving to in NH is too small for this boat, so they are downsizing).

White Mountain Ridge Runners - (Snowmobile club that Larry and Kate are members of.  
Larry drives the trail groomers owned by the club in the winter as a volunteer operator.)

Jericho Warming Hut - A small solar powered log cabin on the side of Black Crescent Mountain in Berlin, NH.
All the materials had to be brought in by 4-wheel drive truck.  It took 6-months to build with
all-volunteer labor.  Larry and Kate raised the funds for the project and Larry was the project manager.
Check the NEWS page of this website for building pictures.

Larry was in NYC on 9/11.  Here are some articles about his experiences.

Larry's First Hand Account From the 9/11 Disaster

One Week After the Attack, A Return Trip to NYC

Two Weeks After the Attack, Another Trip to NYC

 In Memory of My Friend Richard King

Richard King lived in Newport his entire life.  He was one year younger than me and he became paralyzed when he was 15 years old in a swimming accident while on vacation with his family in New Hampshire.  

Richard graduated from Rogers High School and then got his degree from Roger Williams College.  He worked at the Navy Base in Newport using a sip-and-puff motorized wheelchair to get around.  When he got to work, he had a voice-activated computer system that allowed him to do everything you normally would do with a keyboard and mouse. 

I met Richard at a party in Bristol in 1971 and we became close friends.  Since he loved sailing, I used to take him out in our boat "Midnight Wind".  He used one of his old non-motorized wheelchairs and the staff at the Bristol Yacht Club would help me hoist him aboard and we would lash his chair to the steering pedestal.  After that it was just a matter of keeping the beer flowing and the tunes cranked up.  Since "Midnight Wind" is a cutter, we were able to keep the main furled and just use the Yankee and the Staysail jibs, which made it very comfortable for Richard.   

During his life, Richard never complained about his situation.  He always had a positive attitude and was an inspiration to me and everyone else he met.  He and his brother Fred made a trip to our Lodge in New Hampshire in September 2005 and as a side trip, we drove to the top of Mt. Washington.  At the top, it was 68 degrees with no wind, a very rare occurrence up there.   The last time Richard had been to the top of Mt. Washington was a couple of days before his accident in 1969, over 36 years earlier.