Melbourne High School Alumni
Melbourne, Florida (FL)
Oystein Sorbye
Melbourne High School
Class of 1966
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OYSTEIN'S PROFILE
| First Name | Oystein |
| Last Name | Sorbye |
| Graduation Year | Class of 1966 |
| Gender | Male |
| City | N/A |
| State/Province | Norway |
| Country | Norway |
| Occupation | Medical Doctor, Child And Adolescent Psychiatrist |
| Married | Yes |
| Favorite School Memory | Rose Bowl in Miami where the football team lost, but anyway we made it far. And it was a great tour. |
| About Me | Short version first: Studied medicine, married, 3 children, 8 grandchildren, specialized in Child Psychiatry, Family therapy, psychotherapy research. Long version: Life I was the exchange student (organized through American Field Service -AFS) at Mel Hi 1965-66, from Norway, and to me, Florida was like eternal summer, compared to Norway which has a climate more or less like Vermont or Canada. When returning to Trondheim in 1966, I finished Gymnasium at Trondheim Katedralskole in 1967, studied Medicine in Bergen 1967-73, and married 1970 to Liv Wergeland (1947). We got three children, Sveinung (1971), Torgeir (1973) and Ingrid born 1978. After serving as a doctor in the Norwegian Navy at Haakonsvern near Bergen for a year, I moved to Lysaker near Oslo in 1974, to take over the house of my grandmother who had become frail and needed someone to stay with her. We lived with her for 6 years before she died in 1980 at the age of 87, and it was a good time for her and for us, and our children loved her. We still live in that house, which was a place like Heaven in my childhood. We built it out with a winter garden and a new room so our three children all had their own bedroom. The two boys, Sveinung and Torgeir are doctors as I am. Ingrid took a Master in sociology at the University of Oslo in 2008, and has worked as a radio journalist in the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation. (NRK), and later as a political advisor. Sveinung married Sigrunn in 1993, they have three children, Aksel (1996), Eline (2000), and Sindre (2003). They live in Tromsö¸. Torgeir married Christine in August 2005, they got a boy, Karsten in November, 2007, and Haakon in October 2011. Ingrid married Odd Magnus in August 2004. She gave birth to Leonard in September 2005, Georg in september 2007, and finally Konrad Arthur in February 2011. They all live in Oslo. So at the moment we have 8 grandchildren, in addition to one stepgrandchild, Marie, who is the daughter of Christine. Our two cabins lie in the Norwegian mountains (Norefjell) where we spend our winter holidays, and at Tysnes, an island community on the west coast of Norway, where we go fishing, sailing and rowing during the summer. The photos I have published show much of the Norwegian nature where we love to row, sail, walk and ski. I pensioned myself at the age of 71, in January 2019. Until then, I have worked as a Child Psychiatrist at Oslo University Hospital, as a child psychiatyrist of a Family Ward, where families with children who have psychiatric problems can stay for 4 weeks and work with the relations within their family. I also have a part time job doing clinical work at a Family Ward far up north in Northern Norway, in the county of Finnmark, a small town called Karasjok, among the Saami people, who speak their own language, that is related to Finnish and Hungarian. To get from Oslo to Karasjok I have to take an airplane from Oslo to Alta, 2 hours straight north, and then 200 km by car across the mountain plateau of Finnmarksvidda. I worked there for a week once a month in the period of 2002-2012. So my profession has been relational work, which also my stay in Florida was: Making friends, communicating on the cultural differences, trying to convey other ways of living. I still have a small private practice in Oslo, and do some psychotherapy research. I revisited Melbourne in 1996 when I attended a big psychotherapy research conference (Society for Psychotherapy Research, SPR) in Jacksonville and met my host family again, like my "brother", Bill Van Atta. I also met some of my classmates, especially Kathy Sue Williams, now Kathy Doner, and Victor Ramey, then working at the University of Florida in Gainesville. Unfortunately he died some years later. I especially remember my time with the swim team at Melbourne, and the football games where I was the guest of the Marching Band when they followed the games across Florida, and to the Final in the Rose Bowl in Miami. Since 1995 I have been collecting personal stories on the Norwegian Resistance fighters (political prisoners) who were sent to Concentration Camps in Germany during WW II, especially the Night and Fog-prisoners (Nacht und Nebel) who went to KZ-Natzweiler west of Strasbourg. I collect their personal stories, so that their narratives not will be forgotten. My father survived Natzweiler and the camps that followed, and together, we have written his story down. In May 2005, he and I visited Ottobrunn, where my father spent 4 months in a small Concentration Camp under Dachau during the fall of 1944. We had lectures at the Gymnasium Ottobrunn and were interviewed by the staff at the Memorial Site in Dachau, who are collecting stories from survivors. November 3 the same year we participated in the opening of the new Resistance Museum by the Natzweiler Concentration Camp, by the French president Jaques Chirac. We revisited Ottobrunn and had another seminar for the high school students in 2010. My father traveled with youth to Auschwitz to witness about his time in the concentration camps, until he was 95 years old. He died one year later, in September 2016. In my free time, I like to go hiking in the glacier area of the Norwegian West Coast. I have put some of the pictures from those glacier hikes on my billboard so that you can have a glance of one of the wild areas of Norway. In 2006 Liv and I went to Beijing, where Liv attended an international conference on nursing homes and geriatrics. The Chinese upsurging economy is impressing, but I see a danger in the increasing suppression of human rights. I am grateful for having been an exchange student at MelHi. It makes me empathize with the suffering of people that live far away, because I know they have the same wishes and fears that I have myself. And fear of others grows when I do not know them. Do not let fear isolate you from foreigners and try to listen to other nations and people. We all share the sam...(read more) |
Class of 1966 Alumni and Other Nearby Classes
→ Reunite with 30 class of 1966 alumni that have joined.
Kevin Palmeri
Class of 1989
Gordie Focht
Class of 1973
Belinda Day
Class of 1967
John Perkins
Class of 1968
Jay Edminster/wheat
Class of 1967
Michael Rose
Class of 1996
Candi N
Class of 1995
Helen Morissette
Class of 1968
Phillip Hennigan
Class of 1965
Gary Miller
Class of 1985
Gloria Boyd
Class of 1977
Sharon Mac Ewan
Class of 1966
Brayden Smith
Class of 2010
Paul Harbach
Class of 1978
Mary Sharp
Class of 1973
Craig Colvin
Class of 1960
Corey Lehnertz
Class of 2000
Stefanie Ames
Class of 1993
Recent Class of 1966 Reunions
Plan a Class of 1966 Reunion for Free
Classes of 64-70
Invited Classes: All Classes
Date: Oct 21, 2016
Description: Reunion dates are Oct 21 and 22 at the Airport Hilton near Mel Hi- there will be a reception hosted by the high school ...(read more)
1965 to 1970
Invited Classes: 1965, 1966, 1967, 1968, 1969, 1970
Date: Sep 19, 2014
Description: Contact Graham Smith glsmith12@verizon.net
50th Reunion Mel Hi & EGHS classes of 1964
Invited Classes: All Classes
Date: May 02, 2014
Description: All events are casual attire. Friday night is on the ocean deck at the hotel. Saturday brunch and cocktail party are i...(read more)
Mel Hi Classes 64-70
Invited Classes: All Classes
Description: Big Reunion News for 2016 Plans have begun for a multi-class reunion for Melhi graduates from 1964 to 1970. We would lik...(read more)