Name: George Sammis
Birthday: June 21, 1941
Nickname: George
Home address: Box 7062 SVRB, Saipan, MP 96950 (USA)
Phone: USA 670-322-7062
Cell phone: I do, but doubt anyone will be calling me overseas!
Marital status: YES, happily and absolutely. (She's an angel in disguise).
Spouse's name: Hilda Dizon Sammis
What's happened since 1959: What a loaded question! :) Life for me has been diverse, always interesting, and my goal is to stay on top of it at least 51% of the time. After all, "life IS like a box of chocolates".
After graduation I attended Drake University in the music department, which I left a year and a half later to earn my "bread" playing trumpet with a band. In 1963 I was married to Sharon Deets from the CLHS class of'60. By then I was a road salesman and a few years later, manager of the New York office of an Oklahoma glass company. It was there that I began my business career in earnest and in '67 moved back to an acreage north of Clear Lake.
Until 1993 I operated Mach III, a textile transfer producer (specialty printer) that was often times successful, but I learned to be a businessman from the “School of Hard Knocks”. The company ran out of traditional markets so to keep growing we became the first Internet Provider in North Iowa (River City Internet - 1995). Since then we've expanded into several wildly diverse marketing projects including a process patented, high nitrogen, stabilized, bio-fertilizer product made from agricultural wastes.
What's happening now?* In 1993 I ceased daily management of the company and moved to Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands with my only progeny Theodore, following the breakup of my marriage with Sharon after 28 years. She was later diagnosed with cancer and passed on in 1995. I semi-retired in Saipan but co-opened a T-Shirt printing business with my Iowa brother-in-law Mike Deets, my son and nephew, catering to the Japanese tourist trade in Micronesia. In 2001 I signed agreements with a Chinese company to produce a range of products using the technologies I'd developed years earlier in Mason City. I took a separate independent consulting job with them in 2003 for a couple of years to assist them to build, staff, and manage a factory in Enping, Guangdong Province. In 2007 that company was sold so I'm finally unemployed! Without realizing it I retired by default.
I remarried in 1996 to a wonderful Asian lady and in 1997 adopted and helped raise three Filipino teenagers, first in Saipan, then in North Iowa, so they could graduate from High School in the USA. We travel back and forth to Mason City once or twice a year for meetings or to help as exhibit staff at Trade Shows, but we are empty nesters these days. Son TR manages the IT department at Mach III. Our Filipino kids Arliss and Ronald are in the U.S. Air Force and Edward worked as a mechanic in Des Moines. He’s now at the house and working in Mason City. None are yet married.
What are your hobbies? We built a house in Luzon, Northern Philippines. We'll retire there when we are too feeble to travel. The PI has great medical care and no nursing homes. Family cares for family and Hilda's older kids are there. It was and still is quite an experience that has been underway several years but is finally finished. We'll also travel on holiday much more now than before. I've been a student of The Urantia Papers for 33 years (following in my Mom's footsteps studying synthesis of Science, Religion and Philosophy). In 2007 I got into digitizing my old LP’s and live performance tapes in Iowa so I could get them onto my iPod for listening.
Are you planning on attending the 50th reunion?: YES, God willing.
Who have you kept in touch with?: Jim Smalldridge, Gary and Larry McDonald, Don Stebbins, Dave Coe, Jim Cox and others.
Memories from school days: Mrs. Smiley's 8th grade class and the "Infra Ray" film episode. Various adventures and exploits with my inseparable friend Garf (Gary McDonald). Learning about business as a would-be valve oil tycoon!
Favorite song from the 50's*(For background sound on your profile page): Stan Kenton's rendition of Peanut Vendor
