Steve Henderson

Background After high school I went to City College of San Francisco for one and a half years and then on to San Francisco State College for three and a half years, graduating with a BA in anthropology. I was in ROTC in college and was commissioned in the air force in 1967. I spent four years there, stationed in Germany and Kansas. It wasn't a very exciting time for me except for being in Germany as a nuclear weapons release officer during the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia.

I'm a founding member of the Society for Creative Anachronism, a medievalist group that puts on sword fighting tournaments and has the avowed goal of recreating the middle ages as they should have been.

After the air force I spent a year in law school, a couple of years as a bank guard, four years in the Veterans Administration as a claims examiner, and finally got into data processing, ending up with a career as a data base administrator for Kaiser Permanente. I retired from there in December, 2000, and have done some contracting as a DBA and system architect since.

I've been married for 19 years to Gigi Ward and have one child, Alexander, age 6.Start late, do it right. My wife is working at Kaiser as a programmer/analyst while I currently do day care for my son.

High School Stuff: High school wasn't really the happiest time of my life. I didn't do a lot at the school and always felt a little left out when there. I was more active at my church in Palo Alto.

My favorite teachers were Mr. Mayer who got me interested in history and Miss Wing who ran my toughest single class, biology in 10th grade. Tougher than the college 4 unit course I took later but well worth it. She always took us on interesting field trips as well.

Extracurricular activities for me in school mostly involved my church in Palo Alto where everyone else went to Cubberly or Palo Alto high school. I was much shyer then and did no dating at the school. I was interested in girls, I just didn't have any aptitude with them, probably helped by being one of the youngest in the class of 62 (17 at time of graduation.)