Class Note 1963
Issue
Nov - Dec 2018
This month’s column focuses on two guys who did it their way.
Tom Washing gave up a stable career with an East Coast tax, corporate, and securities law firm in 1985 to move to Boulder, Colorado, where, with little capital of his own, he founded Sequel Venture Partners. One client, the early startup company Pan Theryx, inspired a new book by Tom titled An Unlikely Intervention (Leather Apron Media, July) about Pan Theryx’s battle to eradicate acute infectious diarrhea, the second leading cause of death globally among children aged 5 and under. An Unlikely Intervention is available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other sites. With dramatic flair, Tom chronicles the creation of DiaResQ, an inexpensive food-based product, and how Pan Theryx founders Tim and Bimia Starzi got the medicine accepted in India and Guatemala, where the disease has struck hard. Tom served as founding chairman of the University of Colorado Center for Entrepreneurship, chairman of the Colorado Venture Capital Association, and chairman of the University of Michigan technology transfer advisory board. He is a coauthor of Passion for Skiing (2010) and was an assistant film producer of Passion for Snow (2013), the Emmy Award-nominated documentary based on his 2010 book about skiing. Net proceeds from An Unlikely Intervention will be put toward free diarrhea prevention and treatment and access to medical supplies for underserved rural and low-income populations.
Charlie Pugh had a good thing going as officer and director of Wheat, First Securities, a regional investment firm in Richmond, Virginia, and six years as chair of the Richmond City board of education, among many other public service projects, when in 1982 the Tuck School grad and wife Pat decided to pack it all in. The Pughs sold their house and 31-foot sailboat and headed to Mount Desert Island in Maine, where they built a home largely with their own hands. A self-described “corporate dropout,” Charlie took an 80-percent income cut while finding multiple part-time jobs that included serving as a crewmate on sailboats up and down the East Coast and Mississippi River. “I had experienced an epiphany of sorts,” Charlie wrote in our 50th reunion book. “I wanted to know my wife and our two daughters (Sherri and Davonne) better, and I wanted the girls to know me before striking out on their own.” Now married 54 years, the Pughs have six grandchildren, and one of their daughters has returned to build a home next to their parents on part of the original land. These days you can hear Charlie on Maine’s WERU FM Community Radio, streaming on WERU.org, where he is a rotating host of Sunday Morning Coffeehouse, 7 to 10 a.m. playing folk, bluegrass, and Celtic music, and cohost of Front Porch Folk, Tuesdays 9 to 10 a.m., taking requests for old and new songs, especially ones with historically, socially, or politically significant lyrics. Former PBS broadcaster John Merrow is one of his listeners.
—Harry Zlokower, 190 Amity St., Brooklyn, NY 11201; (917) 541-8162; harry@zlokower.com
Tom Washing gave up a stable career with an East Coast tax, corporate, and securities law firm in 1985 to move to Boulder, Colorado, where, with little capital of his own, he founded Sequel Venture Partners. One client, the early startup company Pan Theryx, inspired a new book by Tom titled An Unlikely Intervention (Leather Apron Media, July) about Pan Theryx’s battle to eradicate acute infectious diarrhea, the second leading cause of death globally among children aged 5 and under. An Unlikely Intervention is available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other sites. With dramatic flair, Tom chronicles the creation of DiaResQ, an inexpensive food-based product, and how Pan Theryx founders Tim and Bimia Starzi got the medicine accepted in India and Guatemala, where the disease has struck hard. Tom served as founding chairman of the University of Colorado Center for Entrepreneurship, chairman of the Colorado Venture Capital Association, and chairman of the University of Michigan technology transfer advisory board. He is a coauthor of Passion for Skiing (2010) and was an assistant film producer of Passion for Snow (2013), the Emmy Award-nominated documentary based on his 2010 book about skiing. Net proceeds from An Unlikely Intervention will be put toward free diarrhea prevention and treatment and access to medical supplies for underserved rural and low-income populations.
Charlie Pugh had a good thing going as officer and director of Wheat, First Securities, a regional investment firm in Richmond, Virginia, and six years as chair of the Richmond City board of education, among many other public service projects, when in 1982 the Tuck School grad and wife Pat decided to pack it all in. The Pughs sold their house and 31-foot sailboat and headed to Mount Desert Island in Maine, where they built a home largely with their own hands. A self-described “corporate dropout,” Charlie took an 80-percent income cut while finding multiple part-time jobs that included serving as a crewmate on sailboats up and down the East Coast and Mississippi River. “I had experienced an epiphany of sorts,” Charlie wrote in our 50th reunion book. “I wanted to know my wife and our two daughters (Sherri and Davonne) better, and I wanted the girls to know me before striking out on their own.” Now married 54 years, the Pughs have six grandchildren, and one of their daughters has returned to build a home next to their parents on part of the original land. These days you can hear Charlie on Maine’s WERU FM Community Radio, streaming on WERU.org, where he is a rotating host of Sunday Morning Coffeehouse, 7 to 10 a.m. playing folk, bluegrass, and Celtic music, and cohost of Front Porch Folk, Tuesdays 9 to 10 a.m., taking requests for old and new songs, especially ones with historically, socially, or politically significant lyrics. Former PBS broadcaster John Merrow is one of his listeners.
—Harry Zlokower, 190 Amity St., Brooklyn, NY 11201; (917) 541-8162; harry@zlokower.com