Henry M. Gunn High School Alumni
Palo Alto, California (CA)
Jerry Dickens
Henry M. Gunn High School
Class of 1982
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JERRY'S PROFILE
| First Name | Jerry |
| Last Name | Dickens |
| Graduation Year | Class of 1982 |
| Gender | Male |
| City | N/A |
| State/Province | TX |
| Country | United States |
| Occupation | Professor |
| Married | Yes |
| Favorite School Memory | laughing now 30 years later that, when asked above for "class officer", I have to be honest and put down vice president. How did that happen? Because I liked playing music across speakers for lunch? Favorite high school memory? Painting Dave Bruce's VW bug in peace signs, putting on long-haired wigs and army hats, and driving right into the main quad for lunch with Norm chasing us, all the while laughing and smoking. Or was it when, at a pep rally, I was wearing Julia Bowers' cheerleading outfit and mooned the school and principal and got suspended? I don't know. Lot's of funny memories. Still no clue why you all made me Homecoming King, but was great to be with Carrie ...(read more) |
| About Me | What have I done? Well, a few things here and there. If you really want the details, here’s the biopic. After graduation, I went to Whitman and dropped out. Bought a one-way ticket to New Zealand and spent a year building houses and rounding up sheep on motorcycles. Returned to the U.S. and went to Colorado for a few years and was in and out of school (including, funny enough, playing rugby on a team with Dan Shedroff). Came back to Foothill College, played lots of rugby with PAXO, somehow got into UC-Davis, and received a chemistry degree, although I never collected my diploma. I then moved to Lake Tahoe to become a blackjack dealer at Harrah's. I think I wrote in my senior thing-o for life goals, half-joking, it would be cool to travel a bit, experience some culture, and then live in a little house in the Sierras (i.e., Lake Tahoe). I was set at age 24: I hit all my Gunn High goals and almost all my Gunn High teacher expectations. I still remember Mr H. in honors math calling me and my parents in for an afternoon conference and saying to us that I just was not cut out for math or science, and I should take art and shop instead, which I did, along with home economics, where I still remember making purple coconut bread with Becky Sox. Unfortunately, counting cards between 12 and 26 for several years gets pretty boring, despite great friends, dreamy times with cocktail waitresses, the cool outdoor Tahoe scene, and the wonderful prospect of becoming a pit boss. So, on a lark, I took the GRE and applied to several graduate schools, and ended up at U. Michigan in a PhD program for oceanography, simply because the program did not require an essay and accepted me on GRE scores and a phone interview. While in Michigan, a fantastic woman from Napa Valley then literally dropped into my life, and we became married in Yountville (yes, in the little old Catholic church between all the wineries). As I was finishing my PhD, I received an odd phone call asking me if I would be interested in a tenure position in Australia. I took it, moving to Queensland to become a professor at JCU off the Great Barrier Reef. Here, we had three kids, but after 5 years received another odd phone call. This led to a pan-Pacific crate shipment of all belongings back to the US to become a professor at Rice. After three years, I then got roped into running an entire undergraduate college for 5 years, where we lived in "Martel House" on the Rice campus, the architectural digest home designed and built by Michael Graves (as an aside, great architects cannot seem to put electrical plugs in obvious places). This meant living with and supervising 350 undergraduates students 24/7 nine months a year, along with truly unique experiences. As best as I can convey without pages and pages, I was Dumbledore for 5 years, as Rice and Hogwarts are both modeled after Oxford. For this effort, I received an extended sabbatical, and we moved to Stockholm for 15 months and then back to Rice, where I currently live in the Houston ‘burbs (all past friends always welcome, and Houston is actually a much better place than it’s reputation). Somehow, between sabbaticals and summers, over the last 10 years, I have spent about 30% of my time living and working in Europe, mostly in Stockholm, Utrecht, Bremen and Urbino. (All off the beaten track but four very cool cities -- definitely encourage anyone travelling to Europe to visit). And somehow, along this silly, and completely random path over the last 20 years, I have sailed on 15 research cruises in every ocean from 50 degrees south latitude to the North Pole, and collected ancient marine rocks and taught courses on every continent except Antarctica. I’m still not sure what's my most bizarre experience: taking students across a bit of the Sahara on camels, swishing booby birds from my samples off Papua New Guinea, or pounding beers with communist officials to gain special access to the Three Gorges Dam area in China. Anyway, I was the selected international chemist for the ACEX expedition, the first cruise to drill the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean. Apparently, according to colleagues, I was the obvious choice because I was the only chemist experienced enough and crazy enough to sit for 6 weeks on the back of an ice-breaker making chemical measurements in sub-freezing conditions surrounded by laser trip wires for polar bears. I mostly state this for Ms. B, rest her soul, as she thought Rob Peterson and I were complete screw-ups in her honors chemistry classes, and constantly doing stupid things, but encouraged us to better ourselves. I am not sure what Rob is up to these days (have not heard of him since Gunn), but clearly some smidgens of her advice and some odd mash-up of her inspiration came through. Advice for current or recent Gunn students? After well over 100 international round-trip flights scattered across the globe, living on 3 continents, and spending three years sailing our world's oceans, beware what you joke about when asked about high school goals. I have not been back to Tahoe since I was a dealer at Harrah's, but maybe 15 years from now, all will oddly come to fruition a second time, but at a more fulfilling level. And don't listen to crappy high school math teachers. At the same time, don’t sit in the back of the room and torture a very good chemistry teacher, as she may have...(read more) |
Class of 1982 Alumni
→ Reunite with 42 class of 1982 alumni that have joined.
Erica Ducker
Class of 2009
Chris Chaney
Class of 1968
Rusty Nodel
Class of 1973
Janelle Rotha
Class of 1982
Matthew Richard
Class of 2008
Anne Dusterberry
Class of 1969
Andrew Miccolis
Class of 1988
Ramesh Azariah
Class of 1980
Nicholas Yanofsky
Class of 2011
Chloe Blanchard
Class of 2012
Mary Schaefer
Class of 1973
Judy Garrard
Class of 1978
Susan Hall
Class of 1988
Jonathan Walzer
Class of 1969
Kathleen Horley
Class of 1988
Libby Grinton
Class of 1992
Jake Urbassik
Class of 2007
Carol Braun
Class of 1976
Rachel Levi
Class of 1981
Kevin Lohrey Kevin Lohrey
Class of 1978
Tad Takeuchi
Class of 1968
Scott Swinyard
Class of 1976
Susan Morton
Class of 1966
Eugene Kim
Class of 1998
Recent Class of 1982 Reunions
Plan a Class of 1982 Reunion for Free
Class of 82 4th 10-year reunion
Invited Classes: 1981, 1982, 1983
Date: Sep 09, 2022
Description: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/its-our-4th-10-year-high-school-reunion-tickets-264945688687
Gunn's 50th Anniversary
Invited Classes: All Classes
Date: Sep 12, 2014
Description: Gunn High School is turning 50! We are celebrating this historic event over the weekend of September 12-14, 2014. We w...(read more)
Grand Opening of Gunn's New Gym and Titan Training Center
Invited Classes: All Classes
Date: Aug 18, 2013
Description: Come see the new Titan Gym at the Grand Opening, Sunday, August 18th! We want to see lots of alumni at this event so be...(read more)