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KIRK McMICHAEL
1215 NW State Street
Pullman, Washington 99163-3344
(509) 332-2224
I actually didn't graduate from Grant, as I would have if I had stayed for my senior year. As you may recall, the school went on half-day shifts for the '51-52 school year. That irritated my mother to the extent that she investigated other options, and I eventually went to Shimer College, then in Mt. Carroll. Shimer had high school accreditation too, so I received a HS diploma from Shimer in the Spring of '52. I finished another year there graduating with an AB degree in '53. No, it isn't a "regular" degree, but the University of Chicago knew what to make of it, so I went there for graduate school, finishing with a PhD in Chemistry in 1960. After a couple of years of postdoctoral research at the University of Wisconsin, I joined the faculty here at Washington State University in 1962. I've been here ever since, except for a sabbatical year in Scotland in 1975-76. I partially retired in 1999, and completely retired in the fall of 2001. I enjoyed teaching at the University level, although I never made any serious mark in research.
I married a fellow U of C student (in social work) in 1958, and we are still married 43 years later. We have two kids, a son who is a physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology near Washington DC (rather far to go to see our two grandkids) and a daughter who is a correctional officer in North Carolina (soon to move to Spokane WA, which is just fine with us).
