Brooklyn Tech prepared me for law school, teaching me how to study and think. After college at SUNY Oneonta, I attended Albany Law School in Albany, N.Y., graduating cum laude. After law school, I stayed in the Albany area and had a wonderful career, retiring in April 2008. I worked in private practice; served as Counsel to a New York State Senator for two legislative sessions: and later worked as Executive Director of a small public-benefit corporation housed in the Department of Social Services while simultaneously heading a legal unit that defended the State from federal audit disallowances in various welfare programs, most prominently including Medicaid.

My greatest and most personally rewarding, achievements came after retirement, working as a volunteer.

Unfortunately, my only daughter recently died of Huntington’s disease. I was an advocate for people with HD for many years. After a year of meetings with the Governor’s Deputy Secretary for Health, Governor Cuomo in 2014 announced a special nursing home program, Centers of Excellence for Neurodegenerative Diseases. I served on the Department of Health advisory committee. We wrote the regulations and guidelines. Three nursing homes stepped up and created a special unit only for Huntington’s Disease and ALS patients. This is my most rewarding achievement. One of the nursing homes now has 66 beds in the unit and is the largest Huntington’s nursing home in the U.S. Last year I self-published, Charise, A Woman with Huntington’s Disease Who Changed the World: Her Poetry and Memoir, on Amazon (paperback or Kindle e-book. Besides her deeply emotional and wonderful poetry, I share her Peace Corps story, teaching English to children in rural Turkmenistan. She also volunteered to teach English at a foster care center in Israel and taught in Thailand, Argentina, and Manhattan. When children in underdeveloped countries can speak and read English, his or her life is transformed.

The book includes wonderful pictures, small-world stories, and details everything from how she inspired me to become an advocate to advice on nursing homes.

So, my thanks to Tech for preparing me for this journey.