RE Log Fall 2019

24 Ransom Everglades LOG FALL 2019 You’ve become incredibly accomplished, even appearing on three episodes of Speargun Hunter (MyOutdoorTV) in 2008 and 2009. Spearfishing is a sport that you can get better at as you get older. In spearfishing, physically your skills may decline, but at the same time you get smarter and more intuitive and develop tricks and techniques. I still go out twice a week. Last summer, I broke my own world record for scamp grouper for the third time. Can you apply spearfishing skills to your work life? Yes – many. You have to plan. You need to map out a strategy, particularly if it’s a longer trip. You need to know where to go, where to find fish, what the weather’s going to be, the mechanics of the boat. Spearfishing requires that you judge the fish and learn their behaviors. Is that fish scared, or curious? Is it going to come to you, or do you need to go to it? In the case of a shark, is it aggressive? How aggressive? I’ve had to push sharks away, and I’ve had them surround me. But I’ve never been bitten. I’ve never shot a shark. However, there are places I don’t spearfish anymore because the sharks have become too aggressive. You’re constantly thinking, evaluating. Did you go fishing with your family? I grew up on the Coral Gables waterway. We lived in the only house to this day – my mom still lives there – with no dock. Which meant we had no boat. I would fish on our neighbors’ docks. I loved to do that. I used to go out on the boat of a very good friend of mine whose father was a famous eye doctor – Dr. David Kasner, who helped make major advances in cataract surgery. He had a little laboratory that he built in his garage. It was filled with glass jars containing formaldehyde and eyeballs. I would sit with my friend and we would watch him dissecting eyeballs before we would go fishing. He kept the boat in the driveway in the front of the house and we would take that out, usually from Key Biscayne. His son ended up going into ophthalmology; he is Louis Kasner ’81 , an RE graduate who practices at Baptist Hospital. That’s quite a story! What do you remember about those fishing trips? I always wanted to go farther. Back then, that meant Fowey Rocks Lighthouse. I was like that on my bicycle, too. I always wanted to go farther and farther. So it’s really the same with RE. This is the first step in modernizing and upgrading the campus. It’s very exciting. It’s exciting to give something back to the school that did so much for me and my brother and sister. And now Sophie and Helen and, hopefully, Alex and Sidney, will get the benefits of the new facility. It’s definitely been an adventure. “In spearfishing, physically your skills may decline, but at the same time you get smarter and more intuitive and develop tricks and techniques. I still go out twice a week.” Photograph by Jose Errondosoro Sorron