Dick Schmitt lives with his wife of 32+ years, Pietrina, in Paris, France. He and
Pietrina have four children - who are scattered around the United
States:
Joe |
Maria |
John |
Paul |
Dick grew up in Garden City, Michigan as the second of twelve children. Along with 50 others
(including his twin sister Mary), he graduated from St. Raphael's
Grade School in the late 50s. Next he attended the University of Detroit High
School graduating four years later.
Dick graduated in 1967 (B. A. English) and 1970 (M. A. Education) from the University of Detroit where he met Pietrina while playing bass with the school's choral groups.
Later he received a Masters in Management from the University of Michigan (1978)
and did post degree work in computer science at Wayne State University.
To get through college, Dick played with various music groups (mostly "acoustic" bass which was called "string" bass in those days) and loaded trucks on the midnight shift. During his senior year he first worked as a clerk with General Motors in Detroit and then spent his final semester as a third grade teacher at St. Dunstan's Grade School in Garden City, Michigan. He returned there to teach fourth grade the following year. One of his students, Ann Marie Hughes, went on to be among the first women to graduate from West Point.
In the late 1960s, Dick returned to the University of Detroit High
School to teach English and Journalism (a lot), Latin (some),
and a lot of other stuff like 8th grade science,
mythology (there's a combination!), social studies besides
moderating the yearbook and newspaper (which given that this was
the 1960s and 1970s, were anything but moderate). While there he
finished his Masters in Education and started on a Masters in
Management.
In the middle 1970s, Dick entered the business world at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of
Michigan as a technical writer in the research department.
Somehow he stumbled into programming classes and moved to the
Quality Control Department as a supervisor and eventually into
the systems department as an application programmer/analyst
working on claims processing systems. Blue Cross was the leading
health care insurer in Michigan at the time but steadily lost
market share while Dick was employed there.
In the early 1980s, Dick moved to the Chevrolet Engineering
Center at the General
Motors Tech Center in Warren, Michigan, as a database
administrator. For the first time in its history, GM lost money!
Soon after, Dick moved to Houston for a job as a database administrator with Exxon. He stayed there for many years, mostly in management positions within the systems department of the former Exxon Company USA including a several stints in applications and technology planning. For several years, he taught various MIS and computer science courses as an adjunct professor at the University of Houston and Houston Baptist University.
After two stints in HR systems, Dick was moved to Paris,
France, to manage the SAP R3 HR project for Exxon (now
Exxon-Mobil). Please visit our Paris pages to learn all of the
details.
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Dick has finished the Houston Marathon every year since 1986 (except for 1997) and a few Dallas marathons. He hopes to run the Paris and possibly London Marathons this year, seeing what foreign marathons a like (outside of Dallas, that is). He still plays a little music but not much now that he has discovered the web and its ability to absorb all of his free time. Currently he spends a lot of time travelling with his bride and writing up the experience for his web page which is typically read by 2 or 3 people. (If you got this far, you've probably got that kind of time). |
Here's a picture of my new laptop: 
(OK, it's an old Dilbert joke,
but the gearheads who work for me had the nerve to show this to
me!)
Send Dick Email
to tell him that
you don't have a life either.