Adrift in Memories — Turner '59

By Deane B. Turner, Class of 1959

You might assume that someone who had moved twenty-nine times in their life—the last being to romantic Cape Cod in 2000— would be weary and eager to settle down and finally retire to a full-time life of leisure. For Deane Turner the opposite happened; he flunked retirement and had to reinvent himself. In Adrift in Memories Deane shares how his desire to explore and travel started early with summer jobs during his high school and college years: crewing aboard schooners off Camden, Maine and Marblehead, Massachusetts, harvesting hay in the fields of Walla Walla, Washington, working in a cannery in Oakland, California, and hitchhiking home to Boston from Seattle. After graduating from Bowdoin, he continued to crisscross the United States in his professional career while ascending the ranks of five companies. In his final role with Union Carbide as an international management consultant, he literally traveled around the world. Over his twenty years with Lee Hecht Harrison, he helped thousands of people laid off by corporate restructuring reinvent themselves in new jobs and careers. His memoir recounts victories and losses, celebrations and despair, triumphs and failures. With each he shares valuable lessons learned he hopes his readers will find both aspirational and inspirational as they continue on their own journey.