Steve Immer

Hi, West Linn High School alumni! Steve Immer here, with a quick bio over the last 50 years since we finished our high school life in June 1960. I graduated from Whitman College, Walla Walla, WA in 1964 with a B.A. degree. I also began an on-going interest in outdoor adventures,starting with mountain climbing in the Cascades, including reaching the summits of Rainier, Hood (twice) and St. Helens (it was taller then). Next was a stint in the Coast Guard Reserve (with Bob Keeney, interestingly enough) to get my military obligation out of the way. I then attended the University of Oregon for two years, getting a Master’s Degree (M.A.) in History in 1968. I then taught history for three years in the south, in predominately African-American colleges in North Carolina and Mississippi. I moved to Charlotte, North Carolina, in 1972, where I worked for the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) for six years, picking up a Master of Public Administration (M.P.A.) degree from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, N.C. along the way. I then moved to Denver, CO, in 1978, taking an assignment with the U.S. Department of Housing and urban Development (HUD), where I worked until 1981. At that time I had a classic, textbook mid-life crisis, the details of which I will not bore you for even a second. At the age of 40 my life basically came crashing down, with my career, my relationships and my identity all seriously in question, if not total disarray. It seems like guys in that position only have two locales from which to choose to work through all this: the mountains or the beach. Since I like to ski, I chose Breckenridge, CO. I then started a new career, this time in real estate, working as the general manager for a property and vacation rental management company for 12 years. My partner and I then sold our business for a ridiculous profit in 1996, and I have been a semi-retired ski bum in Breckenridge ever since.

OK, so much for the standard job-oriented personal history. The more interesting stuff is my own private journey, the zigs and zags of love, adventure and even occasional insights of wisdom that one picks up over time. For openers, I have stayed single all these years. I like freedom. Plus, I watched most of my West Linn High School classmates (all of whom had much more developed social skills than me) fall in love, get married and eventually end up in divorce court. The astronomical divorce rate of the WLHS class of ’60 was an excellent role model for me on how NOT to do things relationship-wise. I instead put my non-business energies into more fun things like health, fitness, music, skiing and travel. Example: I attended the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Whistler, B.C. as a Volunteer Ski Jumping Distance Judge, where I got to hang out with classmates Carol McCarty Greenough and Denny Latham, a Volunteer at the Alpine Skiing events. At the age of 67 I can say with all sincerity that I have had a lot of fun with my bachelor lifestyle, and I look forward to many more years of spontaneous, free-wheeling experiences. I’ll see all of you in mid-August, so be sure to say hi so that we can all get caught up in each other’s experiences perceptions and wisdom over the past fifty years. See ya soon!!