Linda McKinney (Molleston) ‘65
It has been fun seeing all the pictures from the past and I am sure that everyone will have a great time at the reunion. My brother John (Class of 68) will have to represent the Molleston family as I have had three straight weeks of travel and have company through September 7.
How to distill 43 years in a few paragraphs? After graduating I spent a year at Southwestern University (with Pam Pratt and John Hartig) then moved on to North Texas State. I ended up in Washington, D.C. in 1968 and lived there until I moved to Colorado in 1998. After five years of working as the administrative assistant to the senior partner of a law firm and primarily concentrating on my social life, I decided to take the winter off and think about what I wanted to do next. I spent a winter in Steamboat Springs skiing and having a great time and decided to move to Colorado permanently.
Fate intervened. While back in DC tying up loose ends, I got a job offer with an association in their convention and meetings department. That was the beginning of a career in the hospitality industry that is still continuing today. My job with the association led to a job with the largest producer of conventions and special events in the US where for over 15 years I was involved with sales and marketing while still producing a couple of large trade shows. I got the chance to meet an amazing array of people including all the US presidents from Reagan through Clinton and from public figures like Colin Powell to the Hollywood types like Kevin Costner and Don Johnson (during the height of Miami Vice mania). I also had the opportunity to serve on a number of company boards so the 15 years went quickly. By 98 I was tired of living on an airplane, tired of DC and ready for a change. I was thinking of joining a colleague who did sales training in the hospitality industry when the phone rang and I got an offer to manage the trade show division of a publishing company and it was based in Denver.
After 28 months working for a big public company and running both the east and west divisions (a week in Denver, a week in New York) I decided it was time for a change and did what I never thought I would do – I started my own business on October 1, 2000.
Fortunately, when I moved to Denver, I bought a house just outside Vail so the world headquarters of McKinney & Company is just 15 miles west of Vail and 6 miles west of Beaver Creek. My business does take me out of the mountains about once a month but the rest of the time I live in the beautiful Colorado Rockies at 7500 feet. The majority of my business is consulting for major convention destinations including Washington, DC, Atlanta, San Antonio, Baltimore, Denver and Chicago. I also do some customer service training for the front line staff in convention centers. Business is good and I am still having fun so no thoughts of retirement.
For the first time, I have time to play and living that close to Vail I get in about 60 days of skiing a season. I work on Vail Mountain on the weekends in guest service. I spend some time in Europe each fall and spend most of May in Hilton Head, South Carolina. Another great thing about being my own boss is that I have time for my other new interest – cooking.
For someone who was not the least interested in sports in high school, I now ski and snowshoe in the winter and hike in the summer and for most of the 90’s rode horses in Virginia. Of course, that has led to a few broken bones and I have more than my share of metal in my body. I blew out my knee this spring skiing so I’ve added a metal plate and a few screws to the leg. After 12 weeks on crutches I am walking again and I will have the ski boots on when the mountain opens November 23.
I am looking forward to hearing all about the reunion from John and hopefully there will be lots of pictures.
Linda McKinney (Molleston)
Pictures: Current pictures of Linda, Reid and Dorothy Molleston and John.
John Molleston ‘68
Although Linda is three years my senior, she is still able to hike me under the table, or is that off the mountain, whenever I visit her in Vail. I blame it on the high altitude.
I’ve lived in Austin since I graduated from RHS and I retired this week after 36 years in state government at the Texas General Land Office. I’ve been privileged to be senior researcher for the Archives of the General Land Office. Our archives consist of 36 million documents that tell the story of the history of land settlement in Texas.
I plan on taking a month off and then mull over new job opportunities. I am leaning toward accepting a position as senior greeter at a local Walmart. Or I may study medicine and become a surgeon so I can remove that creepy third hand growing out of Linda’s left shoulder.
Our younger sister Julie, who went to Randolph Elementary, is living in Los Angeles. She is Vice President of Human Resources for Sony Pictures Digital Production. They are the folks who make the animated features like “Surf’s Up” and “Open Season” and they also do the visual effects for movies like “Beowulf” and “I Am Legend” and “Hancock.” She is excited about two upcoming Sony distributed releases: The new James Bond film, “Quantum of Solace” coming this winter (I’ll be there) and a new animated film, “Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs” coming in 2010. I think they are striking a special print of “Cloudy” in two-track mono so it can play at the RAFB Theater and rock the joint. If any of you don’t like these movies, please contact Julie for a refund. I get to hear great stories from her about the movie biz and look forward to a visit and tour of the Sony Lot.
I have to think that our five years at Randolph went a long way in shaping our lives for the better. Our parents, Reid and Dorothy Molleston, and the parents of our friends at Randolph, many of them gone now, deserve our undying admiration and gratitude for all the support and love, for all these years.
John Molleston ‘68
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