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Alumnus of the Month |
| Alumnus of the Month for August 2012 |
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When we saw Skip Moony last June at the First Annual 5TH Quarter Football Banquet he had not been back on campus since he graduated in the Mid-Sixties. He was flabbergasted!...Cal Lutheran had grown up!
After talking with Skip and finding out what he had done with his life since he graduated, then we were flabbergasted and realized how much we were missing by not reconnecting with more alumni, catching up and engaging them again at CLU. Here is what “Skipper” related to us about how his path had developed after he left Cal Lutheran.
After graduating from CLC (as it was known back then) he first attended Oregon State University and graduated with an MBA in1967. His first real job was with the Carnation Company in their management training program, but this only lasted about 6 months as he was drafted by the US Army.
After completing basic training and advanced individual training, he was accepted into Officer Candidate School and graduated as a "Distinguished Military Graduate" and 2nd Lieutenant, being next sent to Fort Bragg for Special Warfare School and then on to Panama for Jungle Survival School. His group was trained to replace Special Forces in teaching indigenous people how to fight, form small militia units, and they accompanied them in combat. The big KNOWN secret was that the real SF were sent to Cambodia and Laos (where US troops were not supposed to be). In Viet Nam he was second in command of a 6 man Mobile Advisory Team with the mission just described. All of this training took about a year and was added to his original 2 year commitment. So his military career took 3 years with 1 year in Viet Nam, where he received the Combat Infantry Badge, the Bronze Star, and Viet Nam Cross of Gallantry for various combat related incidents.
After his military career, he settled in Colorado and became engrossed in skiing, backpacking and mountain climbing.
He joined Merrill Lynch as an Account Executive (stock Broker) in Colorado Springs and spent 17 years there, finding the intellectual challenge of the stock market, demanding pace, and working with people a complete thrill. At Merrill Lynch he met his current wife, Joanie, and have had a fabulous marriage for 32 years.
In 1987 he moved his career from Merrill Lynch to a much smaller firm in Colorado Springs by the name of Dain Bosworth. This enabled him to expand his financial services in a new direction and take on a partner. He went back to school (week ends and nights for 2 ½ years) studying to become a Certified Financial Planner., and with this credential he and his partner teamed up with CPA's, Estate Planning Lawyers, and insurance specialists to provide clients with a much broader avenue to financial planning than simply trading securities. He retired from Dain as Senior VP in 2001.
Retirement for Skip has been an incredible journey. He went back to school (again). This time it was University of Colorado in Colorado Springs studying lots of fun stuff with absolutely no objective in mind. He have found that his deepest interests were in the natural sciences. He studied lots of Geology because Colorado is full of it. To really understand Geology, however, you need to know a little Chemistry, a little Astronomy, biology, and on and on. It just kept going. He admitted that as things got deeper he really didn't understand a lot of what he was studying, but it really didn't matter because the Senior Program he was in didn't issue grades, he didn't have to take tests or do papers (sweet). He laughingly said no one could know his intellectual deficits.
Joanie, his wife, retired from her career as a Family Therapist in mid 2000 and that slowed his “faux college career” as he calls it. They started traveling. Antarctic, Arctic, Africa, S. America, Thailand, Viet Nam, India, Croatia, Slovenia, Australia, New Zealand, Central America, Norway, and almost every country in Western Europe. An amazing journey.
He has one daughter, Casey, from his first marriage to Grace, who is living in Atlanta. She graduated from Colorado College in Colorado Springs and married an Air Force Academy graduate, Dave, an instructor pilot.
The first thing Skip did before he left Cal Lutheran this past June was to give our Football Club a check for $3,000. He said, “Use this to keep this going, and let me know how I can help further”.
Can you just imagine how many Cal Lutheran undergraduates would like to spend some time with Skip Mooney? He’s been there and back and is willing to share.
Now that is a Kingsmen!
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