He went from this…

…to this in a mere 25 years.

Along the way he fished with his little brother,

and recycled Halloween costumes.

Halloween was always a big deal.

I recorded his progress with annual school photos.

He was never much interested in sports, but he ran cross-country in high school
and was an enthusiastic swimmer all summer.

I used to have this photo on the wall of my cube at the accounting firm. One day my cube neighbor said, “Oh, is that your daughter?” An understandable mistake.

We put him to work during the summers.

The first of his international travels: Paris with the high school French club.

where he got squirrely and let his friends braid his hair.

Moving into freshman dorm with roommates Tim at left and Adam in front, with miscellaneous sibling and parents scattered about.

Freshman year dormitory; photo taken from Washington Square Park.

Senior year housing, a fifth-floor walk-up in Spanish Harlem (*somebody* didn’t turn in his housing request in time to get NYU-sponsored housing, which just goes to prove that graduating magna cum laude doesn’t guarantee practical intelligence).

He did his semester abroad at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. This is him with Bondi, the woman whom he worked with to get a volunteer position at an AIDS nursing home while he was there. The pile of bedding and pjs are some of the 100+ pounds that Younger Son and I brought to donate when we visited at the end of his semester; we did a donation drive at the local libraries and high schools.

At the Cape of Good Hope.

He held the sock on NYU graduation day. (Sock OTN was one I was making for his favorite uncle, who went to Canada during the Vietnam war and never returned.)

He has never been afraid to share his anti-war sentiments. Clockwise from top left: lying on the Broadway during a die-in to protest the School of the Americas at the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York City (he was arrested and spent 40 hours at Guantanamo On The Hudson); his college laptop; article from the Wausau, WI paper about an anti-war rally, January 2003 (I donated the sheet for that sign); another anti-war rally, this one in Central Park, May 2004 (he and his gf are in the outer circle, lower left); he met one his heroes, Amy Goodman, left, and her brother; article from local paper about that same 2003 anti-war rally.

At his request, I gave him an *unusual* haircut before he left for a year as a volunteer teacher in Chiapas.
His students there asked if he wore his hair that way because of his religion.

I sent my camera with him to Chiapas. He returned with a LOT of photos of the people there.

He did a presentation at the library about his time there.

He collected some diplomas (huh. I never got a shot of the UMich grad school diploma)…

…and some t-shirts.

But mostly he has collect books. This is about half of his current collection. I hadn’t seen him so happy in a long time as when he was able to unpack ALL his books after eight years of living in tiny dorm rooms.

Happy birthday, Elder Son!