David Charles Pressel – 50th Reunion Essay

David Charles Pressel

4120 Oak Park Rd

Raleigh, NC 27612

dpressel@nc.rr.com

919-395-4872

Spouse(s): Leslie Bennett Pressel (1969)

Child(ren): Katie Pressel Gillespie (1976), Abby Pressel (1979)

Grandchild(ren): Bennett (2004), Logan (2007), Joe (2010), and Susanna (2013) Gillespie

Education: BS YC ’69, MBA UNC ’73

National Service: SSgt, CTARNG, NCARNG, ’70–’76

Career: 35 years in R&D at Glaxo Smithkline

Forty-nine years out of Yale College, my wife Leslie and I are retired and living in Raleigh, North Carolina, in the house we bought in 1977 and where we raised our two daughters, Katie and Abby.

Out of B-school at UNC, I spent 35 years in drug development. A veteran of two mergers and numerous reorganizations, I left Glaxo SmithKline in 2008. Leslie retired from teaching high school biology in 2009, after 22 years at Ravenscroft School. We are all still active in that school community; both daughters graduated from there and all four grandchildren now attend.

Happily, all the immediate family lives in Raleigh. Daughter Katie, who trained and worked as a lawyer, now works full time raising three sons and a daughter. Her husband Rich is a vascular surgeon. For good or ill, both are rabid Dukies, most apparent during basketball season. Daughter Abby (Yale/Silliman ’01) is a PhD pediatric psychologist practicing in Chapel Hill.

Reflecting on the changes we’ve seen, technology has had the most impact on me. I started out in the punch card, paper tape era and got to experience the revolution to distributed computing and networks. I’ve always enjoyed home entertainment systems and really can’t keep up any more.

The South has grown a lot since we arrived. We spent four years in Greenville, North Carolina in the ’70s. It was then a small country tobacco town where folks would drive the two hours to Raleigh to shop. Greenville and its ECU campus have since grown enormously. Similarly, Raleigh-Durham has mushroomed. The era of moving everything out of downtown has been replaced by a resurgence of inner-city restaurants and condos. Traffic is reminiscent of the Northeast or DC.

Retirement has offered us more control over our time to devote to interests and hobbies. My major pastime is gourmet cooking (I also like eating). I also pursue instrumental and electronic music, photography, computing and collect too much gear and gadgets. We were sometime sailors but finally sold our boat last fall. I also spend a fair amount of time on home repair (thank you, Boy Scouts, for the plumbing merit badge). Leslie volunteers at the North Carolina Museum of Natural History. Both of us are Presbyterian Elders. I’ve been on the board of Welcome Federal Credit Union for 40 years and treasurer for about the past 30. Everyone spends time ferrying children—it may not “take a village,” but it does take a dedicated transportation department.

On reunions—we’ve been to several past Yale, Alley Cat, and high school reunions and look forward to number 50. I think we enjoy them more for the “return to the place” and socializing than the formal programs. Unlike my suburban New York high school, no one has showed up at a Yale reunion with an armed body guard because of a perceived threat from a classmate! Hopefully, 2019 will see a joyous gathering back in New Haven.