Sarasota PC Monitor
Meet Our Members (09/03)
Brian Lewis
by Pete Theisen
Member of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc.Dr. Lewis was born in Durban, Natal, South Africa of parents who were US citizens. His parents were teaching missionaries for the Congregational Church. His father was on the faculty of Adams College in Amanzimtoti, teaching agriculture to the mostly Zulu students. Most of his childhood was spent in Missouri and Ohio. During high school he was a farmer, learning how to maintain everything from tractors to manure spreaders and how to repair fences in below zero weather. He and his dad milked a herd of 20 -30 cows twice every day, by hand. It wasn't until he left for college that his dad installed milking machines. All this gave him just enough farming experience to convince him that farming was not what he wanted to do with his life.
Dr. Lewis graduated from Ohio State University with BS in Secondary Science Education and was commissioned as an Ensign, Supply Corps, of the United States Naval Reserves. After Supply Corps School in Athens, Georgia, he was assigned to Naval Air Station, Glenview, Illinois as paymaster. After two years, he converted from the Naval Reserve to a regular Navy commission and was sent to Fort Lee, Virginia for training in Food Service Management. After this three months schooling he was assigned to the USS Saratoga (CVA-60) as Wardroom Officer. This involved feeding and housing the ship and squadron officers, as well as any distinguished visitors. The Sara was the navy's newest aircraft carrier at the time.
The Wardroom was responsible for hosting many VIP's, such as President Eisenhower, U. S. Postmaster General, the Consular Corps of Genoa, Italy, the creator of the comic strip ABuzz Sawyer and many newspaper reporters from all over the world. During the Sara's Mediterranean cruise, he was transferred from the Wardroom to the Ships Store division. This included all the retail stores, vending machines, laundry, tailor and cobbler shops, and barbershops. After 30 months on the Sara he was assigned to the Naval Supply Center, Bayonne, New Jersey. His first assignments there were the Order processing and Receipt Control divisions. Later he took over the stock control division. In both positions he worked with the Data Processing office on input/output requirements for the IBM 650 computer. Also involved liaison with the Defense Department distribution centers. After the Operations Department head retired, he was assigned to this position, which placed him in charge of 600 civilian personnel in five divisions.
After only 18 months in Bayonne he was ordered to the re-commissioning detail of the USS Algol (AKA-54). The Algol was a WWII vessel being re-commissioned along with several hundred other vessels as a result of the building of the Berlin Wall. This was part of President Kennedy's response to build up the American armed forces.
At the end of his two years on the Algol, he resigned his commission and took a job with Houghton Mifflin Company in Geneva, Illinois. Here he was in charge of the warehouse and shipping department. After 6 months the company transferred him to their main branch in Burlington, Massachusetts. As Educational Inventory Manager for the company he was responsible for printing/binding orders on all educational titles, inventory control and distribution to the five branch warehouses across the U.S. He worked with the Data Processing department to develop programming for calculating order quantities and reorder levels for the educational inventory. Houghton Mifflin had a Honeywell 800 system, which was pretty much state of the art at that time.
After three years in this position, he left to teach biology in a local high school. He started taking some refresher courses in the math/science area at night. Then, realizingthat he needed to start working on a Master's degree in the summer he started investigating opportunities at the many Universities in the Boston area. As his interest was related to Endocrinology he started by talking to Department Chairs in the medical schools. This resulted in an offer to enter the Ph.D. program at Tufts University in their Physiology department located in downtown Boston. He received his Ph.D. in June of 1971. During his graduate study, his family increased to 6 children. His wife helped support the family during these years by working at a Nursing Home in Concord, Mass. When he started talking about also getting a MD in Endocrinology she said, "No Way! I am not going to support two of you in college." Dr. Lewis' oldest son graduated from high school within weeks of his own graduation from Tufts. After receiving his Ph.D., he moved to Cincinnati, Ohio where he was associated with a research institute and the University of Cincinnati Medical School. His research results have been published in a number of peer-reviewed scientific journals over the years. His research field involved studies in the endocrine aspects of metabolic diseases such as heart disease, stroke, diabetes and obesity. He also collaborated on research projects related to AIDS/HIV. His dissertation was related to in-vitro fertilization and was also published in a research journal.
From Cincinnati he went to Michigan as a member of the faculty of Grand Valley State College, now a University. There he taught in a Nursing baccalaureate program, MSN and MSc. programs, as well as teaching undergraduate pre-professional students. He conducted a research program for both undergraduate and graduate students. As part of the MSN program he developed a self-study course in Physiology. This was primarily for Nurses returning to obtain a BSN or MSN. He also held joint appointments with Wayne State, Michigan State and the University of Michigan.
After six years in Michigan, he moved to the Ponce School of Medicine in Ponce, Puerto Rico. By this time all but two of the children had moved on to their own careers. In Ponce, he was responsible for teaching several sections of the medical school physiology course and directed all the physiology labs. It was here that he purchased his first Apple computer and learned assembly language and Apple Basic. He also installed a CPM card in the Apple so he could program in Pascal. As the Medical School began to acquire its own computers, he assisted in setting up a computer lab in the Library. Then he setup a computer lab for Physiology using software obtained from other Physiology departments. Much of it had to be modified to fit the needs of the students in Ponce. He also wrote software for the Admissions Office for use in tracking and evaluating applicants.
Three years later he re-located the family to Sarasota and started his computer business. His original purpose had been to write educational software. It turned out that doing sales, service, installations and instruction took up much of his time, but the income was welcome. During this time he acquired an IBM clone and a Macintosh computer. For the next ten years he wrote and maintained Mac software that was used by a local tax office in Ohio. He also wrote many other custom software programs for local businesses. He has written programs in assembler, Pascal, dBase III, and Basic. He has also worked with programming tools such as Clarion and Delphi.
In 1987 the Ponce School of Medicine asked him to return for one semester to help with the teaching as they had lost some faculty in the Physiology department. At the end of that semester he was offered the Chairmanship of the Department. So he returned to Puerto Rico for another four years. At this time his collateral position included establishing computer systems in all the departments and setting up instruction for the staff and students. He also enlarged the Physiology computer lab and replaced the Apples with IBM clones. He had to hire faculty for his department and keep the teaching program for the medical students running. During the first year, he taught the entire two-semester Physiology course on his own. After that he had additional faculty in the department. They also were able to establish research programs that brought in additional funding for the school and the department. In addition, he established a branch of his Sarasota business in Ponce working with groups of Physicians, including the local Pathology group. He wrote a patient tracking and reporting program for this latter group. He also wrote software for use by the Medical Schools purchasing department and the financial records departments. He upgraded the student application program as well.
After returning to Sarasota on a full-time basis, he taught Macintosh computer courses for beginners at Sarasota County Technical Institute for several years. He also assisted the Sarasota Opera in restoring and updating their accounting department after they had a hard drive failure. He had started writing software reviews for "Computer Shopper" magazine in 1986. This continued until the Ziff-Davis Company bought them out in 1990. In 1992 he became a member of the Sarasota PC Users Group and started writing software reviews. His first Tech Talk article debuted in 1996. This was in addition to maintaining his one-man computer business.
His hobbies include genealogy, sailing, and singing. He and a cousin have tracked several branches of his family back to their first immigrant ancestors. On one side of the family they arrived in New England shortly after the Mayflower. Another branch arrived in Virginia from England in 1618. Another arrived in Philadelphia from the Rhineland in 1753. He hopes to be able to do further research in England and Germany, some day.
His primary hobby and method of relaxation is singing. He is a member of the St. Andrew UCC Choir, the Meadows Chorus, and the Sarasota & Manatee Chapters of SPEBSQSA (barbershop choruses). While in Puerto Rico he sang with Choral Polifonica and in Cincinnati with the Village Voices of Greenhills. He sings tenor and has done many tenor solos.
Dr.Lewis' biography was first published in American Men and Women of Science in 1979. It has appeared in the Marquis Who's Who in America since 1995, Who's Who in Science and Engineering since 1994, and Who's Who in the World since 1995.
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Copyright 2003. This article is from the September 2003 issue of the Sarasota PC Monitor, the official monthly publication of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc., P.O. Box 15889, Sarasota, FL 34277-1889. Permission to reprint is granted only to other non-profit computer user groups, provided proper credit is given to the author and our publication. We would appreciate receiving a copy of the publication the reprint appears in, please send to above address, Attn: Editor. For further information about our group, email: admin@spcug.org/ Web: http://www.spcug.org/The Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc. has 1,100+ members and was established in 1982. We are members of the Assoc. of PC User Groups (APCUG), the Florida Assoc. of PC Users Groups, Inc., and we are members of the America Online Ambassador Program.
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