Other Alumni Echoes
	Arun Ravi
	Matthew M. McDole, PE, FASCE
	Peter J. Boyle
	Bala Krishnan
	Tony Torng
	David W. Pershing

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ALUMNI ECHOES

Herb Burton

Engineering Mechanics/1960

The retired executive director of AT&T Bell Laboratories talks about his time at the University of Arizona and why he gives back to the college he greatly appreciates.

How has your UA education benefitted you?
The best benefit was that it enabled me to get a job at Bell Labs. Fortunately, the UA was one of the engineering schools that Bell Labs recruited from. My career was with AT&T Bell Laboratories, mostly developing communications systems for the old Bell System. I retired from Bell Labs in 1996.

What are your favorite memories from your time at UA?
I met my wife here and we got married before we graduated. We were poor as church mice; tiny apartment, no telephone, no TV, but we had a lot of fun.

Tell us something about yourself that people might be surprised to learn.
I do all of the cooking. We have a deal: Sylvia cleans and I cook. I got hooked on French cooking years ago when I bought Julia Child’s two volumes. I don’t do many of her recipes anymore – too much butter! My favorite cookbook these days is Mark Bittman's "How to Cook Everything."

What are your reasons for supporting UA financially?
I was the first in my family to go to college. My parents hadn’t been to college. Fortunately, tuition for residents was zero. All I had to pay for were books and lab fees, my car, insurance, etc. I worked all of the time I was in college, sometimes as many as three part-time jobs. I was also fortunate also to get some financial support from the UA. So, in a sense, it is paying back.

The students I have helped to support with scholarship funds and through the da Vinci Circle are delightful. It gives Sylvia and me a great deal of satisfaction to help. We also are members of the Medici Circle (Fine Arts) and the Galileo Circle (Science).

Tell us about your hobbies and pastimes.
I still am able to play tennis and enjoy a couple of games a week while I am in Tucson. We spend the summers in Vermont and play a lot of golf, as well as attend great summer theaters and musical events. We also like to travel. This spring we are going to the Galapagos. We have been on many UA Alumni travel trips, including China, Peru (the upper Amazon and Machu Picchu), Copper Canyon in Mexico and several other trips to Mexico. We also have traveled independently in much of Europe.

What are your hopes for the future of UA?

I think the UA has done remarkably well in maintaining excellence as the state has provided less and less support. For example, the College of Engineering continues to attract an incoming freshman class with the highest SATs… science and astronomy also are highly ranked nationally, as is the medical school. I am hopeful that the citizens of Arizona will continue to support higher education and even return again to better support in the future.

What else would you like our readers to know?

There is so much to enjoy as seniors living near the UA: the Distinguished Lecture Series; humanities seminars; dance, music and theater in UA Fine Arts; annual science lectures in the spring; Steward Observatory Public Evening Series lectures. We love being here and enjoying these as well as the athletics.