MY JOURNEY

A writer recounts memories of his life, family, and career in the computer industry in this debut memoir.

As one reaches the end of a long and eventful life, it makes sense to record a bit of it for posterity. That’s what Eckhaus has done here: “I am going to try and document some of the things that I remember and what I have learned over these seventy-five years—how I remember my life—from the beginning, including what life was like in general, and for me as I was growing up.” Beginning with a brief history of his parents and grandparents (European Jews who settled in New York), the author describes growing up in Newburgh, New York, in the 1950s; hanging around with his gang of friends, the Botonos; and meeting his high school sweetheart (and future wife), Linda. After college, Eckhaus became interested in the relatively new field of computers, working at IBM and eventually founding industry groups like AFCOM and the Data Center Institute. He eventually discovered a passion for Republican Party politics and, in particular, for Israel. Perhaps most surprising of all is that late in life he founded a small record label—mostly as a favor to singer and friend Clint Holmes—and helped produce a song that earned two Grammy nominations in 2018. Eckhaus’ prose is friendly and direct: “Linda and I had always enjoyed live theater and now that I could afford it, we bought season tickets to a variety of performances at a number of wonderful venues. We had season tickets to a Broadway theater series at the Segerstrom Center in Costa Mesa.” The author is interested in documenting both success and failure, and while he seems to have more experience with the former than the latter, he wishes to share the intriguing tidbits he learned from his mistakes. Eckhaus began this book as a resource for his own descendants, and those will likely be the readers most captivated by the minutiae of his life (and there are a lot of details contained in these pages). The general audience will perhaps have a bit harder time finding relevance in this work.

A thorough baby boomer account about business and family.