Chris Brotemarkle

1965

Following graduation, I enlisted in the USAF on the buddy-plan with Rick Bensemon, where at 18 years of age, we ran around Amarillo AFB for several weeks with our heads shaved – marking our first occasion of being bald! My four-year enlistment was cut short due to a flight-line injury, a bad fall off high scaffolding used in aircraft maintenance. The medical cause of my mishap wasn’t properly diagnosed until nearly 15 years following my return to civilian life - a birth-related heart defect.

    I took my GI Bill education benefits to Pierce College and grabbed a couple of degrees, then went on to CSUN, and later, Cal Lutheran University, while working odd jobs. Got married in 1970, went to work full time in computer-industry technical positions, and had a son, Robert Christian Brotemarkle, in May of 1972.

    My first marriage failed in late 1976, so I worked while raising Rob for the next couple of years, then enjoyed the great fortune of discovering and marrying my beloved life partner, Terry, going on some 36 years ago! Rob remained with us until he reached adulthood and moved out on his own, ultimately relocating to Fort Worth, TX to join Terry’s parents’ dental practice and work his way through the Engineering School of the University of Texas at Arlington. Terry taught Special Ed for a number of years, then secured an Extended Function RDA license, and later directed business and chairside clinical operations in two $M/year SoCal dental practices.

    At the ripe old age of 39, I came across my own adoption-at-birth records, documenting the event of which I had no prior knowledge. As I read them, the air left the room and Terry had to literally pick me up off the floor. My folks had carefully saved several letters from my birth mother who kept in touch with them during her pregnancy in Shreveport, LA, and who, in her ninth month, made a rail trip to Palm Springs where I was born as “Baby Boy Britt” and summarily handed off to the Brotemarkles. It was all very carefully arranged with attorneys, took a lot of courage back in that era, and given the lifelong secrecy employed by my adoptive parents, I never let on to them that I had stumbled upon the truth. To my classmates who share an adoption in your lives, I’m a kindred spirit, and leave you with this: Now I know why I have blue eyes when three generations of the people that raised me had brown!

     I remained in the high-tech field for my entire career, traveling extensively throughout domestic and international locales including cold-war Soviet Bloc nations. I became a sales & marketing program manager and technical attaché to Burroughs Corporation, Hewlett Packard, Digital Equipment Corporation, IBM, and other recognized key brands of the computer industry. I also enjoyed a rare opportunity to participate on behalf of the U.S. Trade Commission in the year-long American Bicentennial Celebration of Industry trade-show program throughout Europe and Asia.

     I returned to academics for a couple of summer sessions when chosen to pursue post-graduate-level research in advanced digital imaging at Stanford University on a company-paid sabbatical basis. The work involved the original patent estate in the game-changing technologies which today are known as 3D Printing.

     My folks passed away in the 1990’s, so we were free to move from our home in Newbury Park, CA to Fort Worth, TX in 2002 in order to assist Terry’s mother in her senior years, and love the added benefit of being near our son, Rob. Once we were settled in Fort Worth, I accepted a job as a Field Operations Director for a data systems installation & maintenance firm, where I was responsible for mission-critical contracts for U.S. Military & Federal Government site support, here and abroad. Didn’t get much of a chance to catch up on a lotta sleep during those years! We bought a modest home in Southwest Fort Worth near Benbrook Lake, where I retired in 2012.

     Throughout, it’s been an exciting and wonderful life, and growing up in Northridge at such a magical time made it all that much better! Traveling as much as I did, I missed most of Cleveland’s reunions, with the exception of the 20th when Terry and I attended the celebration aboard the Queen Mary, reconnecting with many, many fellow Cavaliers and folks I knew ‘way back from Cantara Street Elementary and Northridge Junior High. To the graduates of Grover Cleveland High School’s Class of 1965, we wish you all the greatest of good health and happiness!