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Issue link: https://digital.macdirectory.com/i/839
MacDirectory 145 INTERVIEW did! Went out and got a bunch of friends, got married in front of a Christmas tree and then went out for Chinese food. We have three little girls, as I said, and the oldest is 29 today. This is the day I became a father 29 years ago. She was a teacher and then she dropped out after five years and went to law school. She's a really smart kid. A real 'eager beaver' kid. The principal of the school where she was teaching asked her, "How would you like to be on the committee that negotiates our teaching contracts?" She said, "Sure," like she says to everything else and then she came home and said, "Dad, I can't believe these two girls who are attorneys and representing us. One is dumb and the other is dumber. I have more brains in my little finger and they are making a hundred thousand a year and I am struggling away for thirty." I said, "If you are so smart, why don't you just go take the law boards?" So she did and she got 98-percentile flat-out sight unseen and changed her career. My next daughter is 26, she's hell on wheels. She's turned out to be a really great kid. She's living in Florida with my mom and she's…I don't know what she does exactly, but it has something to do with cosmetics. My youngest is working for an advertising agency in Manhattan, New York but she went to school for music. She went on a music scholarship; in fact my oldest one went on a music scholarship as well. My middle one just went on our life's savings (laughing). (The phone rings and it's one of the daughters on the line.) The kid had a really incredible talent. She has sung everywhere. In St. Patrick's Cathedral on Christmas Eve, she sang at the closing ceremonies at the 100th anniversary of Disney, baseball games, things like that, she's a very talented kid. She got promised a job with a record distributor after college and when she got there she was told, "Oh we can't hire you. We've been taken over," and so she was stuck. She is doing something that she is totally miserable with. They promised her a $10,000 raise and then told her that they couldn't give it to her because of the economy. The raises had been frozen for 18 months. So she's in the real, real world, my daughter is. My wife is a former model and nurse. She's a surgical nurse. She's been one forever and she works in a surgical practice with 10 surgeons and they just got bought out by a local health system, which is good news for her. She will get better benefits. Now…me, well let's see: I was born in a log cabin in February of 1952 (laughs). When I was in high school I was president of my student government and they were writing a profile of me in the student newspaper. They wrote that "Gil Numeroff was born in a log cabin February 5, 1952." I'll never forget that. I'm a 2-5-52 guy – I'm a palindromic birthday guy. My father named me after his older brother who died when I was fifteen. I was born on my grandfather's birthday. Like any other kid, I grew up; I went to college; Binghamton – University of New York at Binghamton and I graduated there in '74 with a degree in biochemistry. Then I went to Europe. I went to medical school in France for two years. At the time I was there, President Nixon was under pressure to limit the number of doctors in the United States – there were too many. MD > You got a degree in biochemistry and spent two years in medical school so how did you get in to computers and involved with Helix? GN > I came home because they had basically screwed anyone who was trying to get their medical degree while studying overseas. I wasn't going to wait until I was 38 or 40 to try to get into a medical school in the states. So I came home and got a job working for a medical trade journal. I was an assistant editor and had a very fortuitous situation. II was suddenly left putting the magazine out by myself. Shortly after that they gave me a promotion and I became the editor-in- chief, then I became a co-publisher and then a group-publisher of three different medical journals that they published. I would spend my Christmas vacation at the typesetter watching them put things in bold type and making sure everything was spelled right. There were no computers yet but there were Lanier word processors so I said, "Why don't we get word processors?" I was told no, that it took too many keystrokes and all sorts of problems. But I continued to fight for something and eventually we got an arrangement with a company to do this so I didn't have to spend my Christmas vacation at the typesetters. Around 1982 I finally went to work for another ad agency that had a machine called a Voyager. This was a slide carousel machine that combined music and slides. In the 'trades' you learn to do a lot of things. I knew something about music and video so I put together a big presentation for one of the clients, who couldn't even speak English, and it went off well. A few days later the boss came into my office and said, "Do you know anything about computers?" And to answer your question in a roundabout manner, that's how I got into computers. In MacDirectory's February issue, the Gil Numeroff interview continues with his experiences in the rapidly changing computer world. GIL NUMEROFF > A PIONEER IN THE BUSINESS I knew something about music and video so I put together a big presentation for one of the clients... that's how I got into computers.