Bio, 2014: Connie Babb Merlis
I have so enjoyed reading about the last 50 years of your lives (how can that be possible), I am finally going to document mine. Most of you left me marrying Bob Walton in 1969 a year out of high school. After working as a secretary to help get him through school, we moved to Richardson, Texas, and I completed my degree in accounting at The University of Texas at Arlington in 1971. I went to work for what is now Price Waterhouse Coopers in the Dallas office. Then only the second woman ever hired (now women almost equal men in national accounting firms). I specialized in oil and gas accounting with clients including Atlantic Richfield and Gulf Oil. One of the more interesting things I did was in the early to middle 70’s, I made trips to Alaska while working on the Atlantic Richfield audit including trips to Anchorage, Fairbanks, and Prudhoe Bay before the Alaskan pipeline was completed (no women worked at Prudhoe Bay at that time). Bob and I married too young and couldn’t make it work. After divorcing in the late 70’s, I was transferred to the Houston office. I married John Green and two years later started my own CPA firm with another friend with whom I worked. We had our practice of about 20 people for 3 years and then we merged into another national CPA firm. Second marriage ended after 8 years. In 1987 I moved to Los Angeles with the same firm and married my third husband, Michael Merlis, who was also a partner in that firm (we had met in New York at a partners’ meeting). Yikes, three marriages...I may get a prize! In 1990 we merged our portion of that practice into Deloitte & Touche, stayed 3 years and realized we wanted to be in control of our lives and not be constantly attending partner meetings and answering to billable hours, realization on accounts, etc.. Upon good terms we left to start our own CPA firm. In 2013 20 years after starting our own practice) we sold it and have retired. We have now been married 24 years.Interesting things (at least to me):
We moved from LA to San Juan Capistrano in 1997 (halfway between LA and San Diego...about 65 miles each way). We reduced our work to 2-3 days a week in LA and stayed in LA the days we worked. We live on a golf course in a gated community and play golf 3-4 times a week now (our bodies won’t let us play every day!). We definitely should be better as much as we play. We have travelled a lot around the world and in the US and look forward next summer to celebrating our 25th anniversary with a 3 week trip to London and Paris including a 2 week golf cruise to Ireland and Scotland that includes 7 rounds of golf at historic courses and going to the British Open Golf Tournament one day. Michael has two daughters that have been wonderful stepdaughters and provided us with four grandchildren (girl,10, twin boys, 8, and boy, 7). They live about 2 hours north of us in Woodland Hills, California.
My mother died in 1988 and my father married Arlene Walkup (Jerry and Terry’s mother) in 1989. They became the brothers I never had. Our fathers had worked together at the airport since we were 2 years old. We can remember having the same babysitter while our parents went out. Must have been destined. We mourned the death of Terry from ALS and Arlene shortly thereafter. Jerry and his wife, Lisa, and Michael and I have become real family and Jerry was there for my father until his death a few years ago. We have visited between Texas and California, vacationed together in Puerto Vallarta, Pagosa Springs, Colorado and Mount Rushmore.
Michael grew up in New York City and went to a huge high school that has never had a reunion that he knows of. He says everyone else is probably in prison! He has enjoyed going to our last few reunions and getting to know a lot of you. I so appreciate all the work everyone on the committee has done this year and in the past to keep us connected. We all know Ann is the captain that keeps us together, but we also know she has a lot of soldiers helping her. Looking forward to seeing you all soon.
©2009 Stillwater High School Class of 1964