My parents gave me the name "Kalon S. Holdbrook". What kind of a name is that? Well, I'm glad you asked! I'm told that my first name, Kalon, was chosen by my mother from an article in the newspaper. (The context of the article has been long forgotten, but I have always assumed that it was not overly heinous.) I've never been succesful in finding any reference to Kalon in the usual Name resources (baby books and the like), which left my wondering if I was actually a typo... I can also assert, after extensive field testing, that the pronounciation she used in reading it, "Kal-on" (sorta' rhymes with "Allen"), is decidedly different from 90% of the population at large. Still, when my name is yelled in a crowd, I haven't been wrong yet in assuming I was the one being yelled at.
Finally, my good friend and ace-researcher, Karen Myers, with some help from the Complete Oxford Unabridged Dictionary, found a definition for "Kalon". Paraphrasing, it read:
Kalon -- from the Greek. n. 1. Of great moral and physical beauty.
You'd have to know me better to appreciate how terribly funny that really is!
With a first name like Kalon, one may assume that I would have an unusual middle name, and they would be right. My middle name is "S.". That's it -- just the letter "S". It doesn't stand for anything (although I've received numerous "suggestions" over the years). My mother's creativity at work again. She told me that she couldn't think of anything else to go with "Kalon". I can picture her even now ...
Kalon A. Holdbrook! Nah.
Kalon B. Holdbrook? Nope!
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Kalon S. Holdbrook? Yesss!
I started my school years with Kindergarten at John Muir Elementary. I'm told I didn't like it much. Mom took me out, and started me over again at Carol Murdoch Elementary (guess you could say I flunked Kindergarten!). Mom was right about everything, of course, as I really loved my new school.
After Murdoch, I attended Miller Jr. High School. That was a very big year for me, as there were a handful of elementary schools feeding lots of new faces into Miller and, much more importantly, that was the year I discovered girls.
I was part of the class of 1980 at Lynbrook High School.
My Undergraduate and graduate college experiences are summarized in my resume.