Howard Christian Floyd – 50th Reunion Essay

Howard Christian Floyd

16 Oxford Street

Lexington, Massachusetts 02420-2940

Spouse(s): Norma Dominick Floyd (1989)

Career: Lead Software Systems Engineer, Retired, The MITRE Corporation

College: Branford

My life changes but stays much the same as I wrote 25 years ago.

I retired in spring 2016 from full time at the MITRE Corporation but still work part-time on call, often at Hanscom AFB. Norma and I live in the same house in Lexington, Massachusetts, and expect to stay here.

My birding zeal continues, now enhanced by photography, hearing aids, and eBird. I’m active in the same organizations, especially the local journal Bird Observer and the Harvard-based Nuttall Ornithological Club. I was president of the journal for over 10 years and president of NOC for three years. I now serve NOC as a trustee of club investments, which fund club publications and ornithological research grants. Recent birding travel has been our annual spring trip to Florida. Though I’m doing less world birding travel, I still have a wanderlust for unvisited places, like Australia!

The story is similar with skiing, which I still do with youthful enthusiasm but less energy. Currently I content myself with local Wachusett Mountain but long to get back to the big mountains in New Hampshire and Vermont. For several years, Norma and I enjoyed visiting wonderful sporting friends in Lake Placid, where I skied all over Whiteface. I’m lucky to have no significant deterioration of my knees.

Dormant sporting loves have come back into my life, largely thanks to our annual week at YMCA family camp on Sandy Island, Lake Winnipesaukee. There, I’m a kid again. I water-ski, play tennis and sail, eagerly venturing onto the Broads on a Sunfish on a 20-knot day. Tennis has expanded beyond camp; I recently bought my first ever nonwooden racket and play just for fun with Norma on our local courts and occasionally with my older brother in Rhode Island.

Though I got my instrument rating and loved flying around New England in a little Cessna 150, especially practicing instrument approaches in the clouds, my onetime big interest in flying is now past. I do miss it.

The newly intense interest in my life is music, largely thanks to Norma. She got me to sing a Papageno song from the Magic Flute for the camp talent show, and then had me try out with our UU church choir. These efforts were well enough received that I began voice lessons with Robert Gartside, formerly of the BU voice faculty. Bob and I hit it off and I spent over three years with him learning great repertoire, including many songs of Fauré and Schubert. I now sing tenor in the choir of First Parish UU of Arlington. We recently performed moving and beautiful choral songs of Mark Miller ’89, under his personal direction.

Yale connections continue to enrich life in diverse ways, like singing with Mark (our chat revealed us as fellow Yalies, him a Harkness carilloneur!); hearing local talks by ornithology professor Rick Prum and reading his intriguing new book The Evolution of Beauty; crossing paths with classmates; and looking forward eagerly to seeing many of you at the reunion!