The picture was taken in front of the Anderson home.

As the years roll by

2012 with TV's Cokie Roberts

Air Force Pilot

Before I turned 18 in 1943, I enlisted in the Air Force's Aviation Cadet program and in July, 1943 was called up to start pilot training. I graduated as Pilot with the rank of Flight Officer on March 11, 1945 at Pampa, Texas.

The plans were bought from House Beautiful magazine for $15.
Work started in May, 1953 in Munster, Ind., after my MBA program stopped for the Summer.



Below, that is Adele, pregnant with Becky, sitting on construction of the foundation.

In Feb., 1955 we moved in, but work still needed to be done in the interior and landscaping.
That is Adele, baby Becky and myself in front. The day we moved in was so rewarding.

Mark Robert

b. May 28, 1957, Hammond, Ind.

Mark joins our family

Mark graduated from San Jose State with a BSChE.

Pets

Cotton

Tuck (near), Teddy and Nip

Teddy

Whitey

Blacky

Molly

Masasa

Wally

Employment

Adele:

1942 - 1953 Deputy Clerk at the Northern Indiana Federal District Court in Hammond, Indiana


Bob:
Swift & Company
1949 - 1954 Research Chemical Engineer at the Swift & Co. fatty oil refinery in Hammond, Ind.
1954 - 1959 Process Control Specialist at Swift's Laboratory in Chicago, Ill.

Information Systems Inc.
1959 - 1962 Senior Systems Engineer at ISI's Skokie Plant

IBM Corporation
1962 - 1965 Industry Marketing Specialist in Chicago. Ill.
1965 - 1984 San Jose, Cal.: Market Planner, Manufacturing System Simulation Specialist,
Financial System programmer and computer simulation model specialist

I was shift supervisor in the Pilot Plant shown as the white building on the left.

Because of my analog computer experience at Swift, I was hired as a specialist in on line digital computer process control applications by Information Systems, Inc. in Skokie, Ill. in 1959.

The main accomplishment was the Conference Paper on the Dynamic Optimization of a Chemical Reactor presented at MIT and judged one of the best Chemical Engineering papers of that year.

In 1962, I was hired by IBM as an Industry Marking Specialist in Chicago, covering the Gas Industry's technical applications in the United States.


In 1965, I was transferred to IBM's San Jose, Cal. facilities.




Happy IBM Engineer in San Jose, Cal.

I presented a paper in Orlando, Fla at the Software Engineering Conference in March, 1984.

The Move to California

In 1965, I was transferred by IBM from the Chicago Regional office on Michigan Blvd. to IBM's San Jose Plant site to do market planning. We sold our Munster, Indiana house and had a house constructed in the Almaden Valley of San Jose and moved in August, 1965. While the house was being constructed, we stayed in a rental unit in Los Gatos.

Our new San Jose house at 6781 Elwood Road in 1965How we look in 2012

An early trip to Chinatown in San Francisco is emblematic of our new life in California with its climate and scenery.

We lived there for almost 47 years at this writing in 2012.

Our 1966 Passport Photo.

1967 - Six week IBM business trip to Sweden, England, Germany, Spain and Portugal. Adele and Mark accompanied me.

1972 - a personal three week trip to Japan. Mark, Adele and I went together.

1984 - a two week trip to England and Greece. Just Adele and I this time.

1993 - a three week trip to Japan.

1999 - a two week trip to "Famous Trains" of England, France, Switzerland and Germany in celebration of our 50th wedding anniversity.


1967: Mark in Old Town, Bremen, Germany.

1972: Our stay in Tokyo at a Japanese Inn.

1984: The Olmsted Manor House near Cambridge.


Built in the 10th century by my ancestors.

1993: At the Lover's Point on Japan's Isu Peninsula.

1999: Lunch on the Orient Express,(in England)

After my retirement from IBM in 1984, our volunteer efforts increased.

Adele was a Docent at the Quicksilver Museum

We both worked at Red Cross blood drives; Adele at Registration; Bob in the canteen.

Bob was Treasurer at the University of Chicago Bay Area Alumni Club

Bob was also Treasurer of the IBM Retirement Club in San Jose.

Bob became Treasurer, Web Page Editor and President of the Almaden Valley Community Association.

We both picked up litter monthly on the Almaden Expressway
(Note by Mark: With some pleasure, He told me a humorous story of being mistaken for a convict while doing his monthly trash pick up... that really was selfless work!)

Bob taught, as a volunteer, Intermediate Japanese conversation at Foothill College in San Mateo.

1997 at the IBM Red Cross Blood Drive

Bob giving cookies to a donor.

Dancing was a very important function in our lives. We started Square Dancing in 1967 and started Round Dancing the following year. We reached Advanced Levels in both Square and Round Dancing

It was a wonderful activity for us and we made friends like Don and Joan Matsui.

We continue dancing to this day.







Leaving for a Square Dance

With Dean and Diane Thomas at a round dance weekend in Southern California.

When I transferred to San Jose from Chicago, I brought along several objectives: I wanted to learn to sail, sail under the Golden Gate Bridge and make a trip to Asia.



My first sailing experience was from a friend at IBM who took me for a sail in his small sloop on Vasona Reservoir in 1966.

We then bought the FJ small centerboard sloop, shown on the left and sailed that sloop in Vasona and Chesbro Reservoirs, Half Moon Bay, Foster City, Monterey and the Alameda Estuary.

After getting experience in sailing small sloops, we rented a small keel boat at Cass Marina in Sausalito.

The boat was the Corinthian and we started in the calm weather in Richardson Bay,
but I wandered out into the high wind at Racoon Straight and got beyond my experience. I had to do a Jibe to get us back in the direction of the home base and nearly capsized.


We made our way to the back of Angel Island and recovered.

The next week I made us all rent a boat at Cass's and sailed calmly confined to Richardson Bay.

We then rented a larger keel sloop, the Tempest, and the three of us, plus Cotton, our dog, sailed under the Golden Gate Bridge.

Corinthian Tempest

In 1970, with fellow IBMer, Vic Rodgers and his family, we bought a Santana 22, a keel sloop, for $4,500
and had a berth on the Alameda Estuary. Later we moved to new marina in Emoryville.

Our Santana 22, berthed at Emeryville Mark, sailing the Santana on SF Bay with Cotton, our dog.

We usually sailed once a week in the Santana 22. Sometimes we would take friends to give them the experience of sailing on SF Bay

The Santana had a low side board insuring that in the Bay winds, a lot of spray came aboard.


In 1973, Vic and his wife divorced and the boat was sold.

Stock Market

I started investing in stocks in 1962 after I joined IBM, with participation in the IBM stock discount plan. I invested in a small number of other stocks

Over the years I tried to develop methods of investment with little success. By 1974, I found that I had actually made no money on my stock investments.

In an OpEd in 1976 in the Wall Street Journal, Peter Drucker explained that there was no good measure for determining a stock's worth.

I had done a considerable amount of computer modeling at IBM, particularly using Regression Analysis, so I accepted the challenge to develop a regression equation to determine the Intrinsic Value of common stocks.

I used IBM's Main Frames during lunch and was making headway, but I was using IBM equipment for my own use, so I discontinued any further work.

When IBM introduced the PC in 1982, I ordered it the first day and completed the Intrinsic Value equation. It was applied in 1982 and by 1984, I had made enough money to retire.

This model has been applied to the present day with excellent financial success. At this time in 2012, there were 127 transactions with an average annual yield of 19.09%.

Foundation

During the dot com bubble in the late 1990s, I could not buy stocks because they were overpriced. I put any stock sales into 6 Month T Bills.

When the bubble burst in 2001, stocks became very under priced and I invested $800,000 in stocks by selling T Bills.

In 2003 the market recovered and I had an $850,000 profit. The tax liability was estimated to be about $200,000 State and Federal, so in 2003 the Robert E. and Adele M. Boydston Foundation was incorporated in the state of Delaware.

The Foundation objective is to give grants to educational, environmental and artistic organizations

The Foundation has profited from the stock market

The objective of giving over $100,000 in grants was realized in 2011 when $127,651 in grants was given to 21 charitable organizations.

Japanese Hobby

In 1971, an IBM Japanese engineer, Katsuhiko Asakawa, came to the IBM San Jose Laboratory on a three month assignment. I invited him to dinner at our house as a courtesy. He had never been to America before. We had him over several times. Soon he had his wife, Yoko, join him. To give them a flavor of American life, we took them to a square dance, to places in San Francisco, Big Sur and to Yosemite.

When his job in San Jose was finished, we took them to the SF Airport. We agreed to vacation together in Japan the next year

I had never been interested in foreign languages before, but I took interest in learning something about Japanese. Since we had almost a year to learn, Adele and I took a course in Adult Education about Beginning Japanese. I was surprised to learn that I liked it and did well in school

The following year when we arrived in Japan for three weeks, I surprised the Asakawas by having a Japanese vocabulary of about a thousand words. We stayed in a Ryookan, (traveler's lodge)in Tokyo and using my Japanese, did the sight seeing there and then went to the Asakawa home in Fujisawa. Together we took the Shinkansen, (bullet train), to a Ryookan in Kyoto.




With Kats and Yoko on the Shinkansen to Kyoto.
After I retired from IBM, I took Intermediate Japanese at San Jose State and also Foothill College, where I did well. Because I was an excellent student, I was asked to teach the Intermediate Language Course at Foothill because of a shortage of teachers. I taught for two quarters and got good appraisals from the students. I was not paid by Foothill for my service.

In 1988 we became active in the Japanese student Home Stay Program. For three weeks we housed a Japanese student from a junior college for women in Okayama, Japan.

From 1988 to 1991, we had the following Japanese daughters: Marie Yague, Mayumi Kasaka, Yumi Wakita and Kauri Shimizu.

We were invited to Okayama in 1991 to attend the graduation ceremony for Mayumi and Yumi. We stayed in the home of their teacher, Kenji and Fujiko Numoto. During our visit to Japan, we stayed at ten homes in Honshu and Shikoku, of the parents of the girls we had taken care of.

I had no trouble speaking at these homes where English was not known. My Japanese vocabulary had grown to approximately 10,000 words.



Marie

Kats and Kauri

Mayumi, our second girl, second from the right, with her family in Hiroshima.

As we reach the end of our lives, Adele and I can truly say that we had a good marriage. We stayed and worked hard together: raising two good kids, building a house with our own hands, creating an independent financial situation and formed a Foundation, achieving technical success, doing volunteer work and being active in the community.