Walter Joseph Cummings III – 50th Reunion Essay

Walter Joseph Cummings III

Date of Death: 12-Nov-2000

College: Timothy Dwight

(Walter’s 1994 essay for the 25th Reunion is reprinted in part here.)

In 1966, on a family trip, I’d taken one look at San Francisco. Its beauty was (and is) captivating. So, on graduation, Westward Ho. A Judy Collins concert-inspired blind date led me, in 1970, to Polly Field, visiting San Francisco from Milton, Massachusetts. My father married us on Cape Cod in 1975.

Life has taken us a marvelous journey. Polly’s support, and love, has been unwavering. Daughter Julie fills me with love and lights up my life. Julie, a redhead, is quick of tongue, filled with a gentle sense of humor, and sees the need for symmetry in all things. Walter IV sends love’s tinglings up and down my spine. He’s smart as all getout and a superjock besides.

The four of us love the outdoors (this is especially handy in Northern California). We spend a great deal of energy and family time skiing. Polly adores tennis, Julie running, and Walter IV soccer, baseball, and fishing. Family aside, I’m happiest either riding a chairlift, cruising groomed snow, or knee-deep in powder, anywhere, anytime; or riding horseback through the open spaces and places of Wyoming and Montana. Jackson Hole, in particular, gives my serenity a real shot in the arm. I also take great pleasure plotting a trip (or doing the trip) to an Egypt or a Guatemala. Learning about, and collecting, antique wooden sailing ship models absorbs me, too.

Not being able in 1969 to decide what to do, I took a job in San Francisco. I applied to Stanford Law School and its Business School, eventually completing both, and, in 1974, passed the California Bar. My business hankerings ran deep. For a while I fought them, making a living in San Diego trying lawsuits. In 1978 a recruiter steered me to transportation equipment transaction financing. The job was in San Francisco. Private placement work has been the consistent theme of my business life since. The lion’s share of that work has been, and continues to be, for transportation and high technology companies. High technology, in particular, fascinates me: it’s a window on the future. The business of growth equities manages to consume the balance of my work interest.

As Polly, Julie, Walter IV, and I face the future, I’m particularly concerned about the exponentially increasing complexity of their lives, and ours. Information pounds us at a thousand miles per hour. It seems to me that more powerful, never-let-you-alone, intrusive, telecommunications will make this more, rather than less, difficult. The technology which not only fascinates me but also provides part of the basis of my livelihood may, in the end, stress us into oblivion.