From Ray Guyer

Hello old classmates. I was surprised to hear from Gloria and pleased to be able to see your senior yearbook pictures – they brought back a lot of memories.  Gloria asked me to provide an update on how things turned out for me – following are the highlights.

After leaving LI following the freshman year, my family moved to the Midwest. I graduated from a high school in the Kansas City suburbs, joined the navy and spent 6 years on submarines.  I returned to school and graduated from the University of Missouri.  The majority of my career has been in retail.  I worked for a number of companies in the New England area until 1989 when I became the founder and CEO of a pet supply retail chain (PetCare Super Stores), based in Chicago.  Over the next seven years, with the help of venture capital investors, we grew to become the third largest pet supply chain in the US, with 82 stores in five states.  We sold the company to PetCo in 1997 and I started a consulting business.

I later became the Chairman and CEO of one of my client companies, a manufacturing holding company based in Boston.  We were engaged in acquiring and consolidating pet product companies and had manufacturing facilities located across the US and in Mexico.

I remarried (Pam) in 2000 and decided to quit the corporate life.  Since Pam had been in the fitness industry for most of her career we decided to buy a health club.  In a serendipitous turn of events, while we were on our honeymoon we visited Taos, New Mexico and really liked the area.  When we returned, I mentioned Taos to the business broker we were working with - two months later he called and said he had a club in Taos!  For those not familiar with the Southwest, Taos is a ski town\resort area – an eclectic community that is home to old Spanish families, retired hippies, Native Americans, baby boomers, artists and a few celebrities. We are located in northern New Mexico – high altitude (7000 ft.) semi-arid climate with lots of sunshine.  You can see our club at www.taosspa.com.

We spend our free time working with local animal rescue groups, hiking with our four dogs, exploring the west, and traveling.

I have two children, my son lives in New Hampshire and my daughter lives in San Francisco.