Born in Brookside, New Jersey, Ted had an almost idyllic Tom Sawyer boyhood. He spent his summers fishing and catching snakes and getting into the kind of adventures boys think up. There were chores too, like mowing the grass and working in the vegetable garden to help his father care for their two acres.

So how did this young fellow grow up to be a jet engineer and a true Renaissance man of arts and letters? We asked him in our recent interview.

AW: How did you wind up in naval architecture college?

TA: I always loved boats and the water. A family friend told me about the Webb Institute of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering. Also, my dad and grandfather were both engineers. All three of us hold patents and my father and I hold ribbon copies to prove it.

AW: Where was Webb Institute?

TA: It was in the Bronx, New York when I started and then moved to Long Island. They averaged about one hundred students a class, but mine was only nine people. I quickly found I was more interested in naval engineering and power plants than architecture.

The exposure to architecture must have stuck to Ted, because he is a multi-talented artist who has worked in pencil, watercolor, pastel and oil and even took sculpture classes at Skidmore College.

Ted can also attribute some of his artistic interests back to his grandfather, who started when Ted was about three to include drawings and tall tales for boys in his weekly letters to his daughter. The charming drawings executed in pen on the backs of old blueprints have been reproduced by Ted in a book that he has shared with members of his family.

AW: Where did you go after you graduated?

TA: I got into a test engineering program at GE…and spent the next thirty-eight years with the company, interrupted only by two years in the active Naval Reserve.

AW: What kind of work did you do?

TA: I worked in the development of jet engines and then on gas turbines. One of my many interesting assignments was working on the development of a Mars or moon lander for the space division.

Ted is the only person we’ve ever met who can explain a sonic boom, with a diagram, that an ordinary citizen can understand. It starts with some ducks in water…but you’ll have to ask him about that yourself.

AW: What about your family?

TA: Maxine and I have been married fifty-one years. We have two daughters and one grandson. We met when I was a naval officer at an air turbine test station where Maxine was the station nurse. She talked me into keeping score for their bowling league and the rest is history.

While we moved around with GE, Maxine kept up her nursing license in six states. We moved to this area thirty-five years ago. We live on four acres in Ballston Spa where we grow garden vegetables and barter hay from our field with local farmers.

AW: I understand Max is an important “hand” on the property.

TA: Max is our eleven-year old golden retriever. He and I take a pre-breakfast walk to check out our field and then an after-breakfast walk to check up on neighborhood friends, dogs, cats and a nearby herd of longhorn cattle.

AW: What else are you doing with your so-called retirement years?

TA: I love to hike. I’ve almost always belonged to a choir or barber shop chorus. And I’m an amateur astronomer.

Recently I’ve gotten involved in another hobby, tracing my family history.  I think genealogy is the documentation of the dates and places at which one’s direct ancestors were hatched, matched or dispatched. But family history is interested in the character of one’s ancestors, whether in the direct line or not. I’m having a lot of fun and contacting many interested and helpful people, including the Alderson Family History Society in England.

Ted is too modest to brag about his creative writing, a more recent interest. He has been published in “Ourselves, Then and Now” and “The Apple Tree,” publications of the Academy for Lifelong Learning at Empire State College, where he also served on the editorial board of the Third Age Press and leads writing workshops.

AW: What writing project are you working on right now?

TA: I’m preparing a book about my aunt. My daughter, Nan, is acting as my editor and publisher and we hope to have it ready sometime this year. It will give a personal insight, from the caregiver’s point of view, of the decline of an independent woman into the final years of Alzheimer’s disease.

AW: People who know you often call you a Renaissance man. Is there anything you can’t do?

TA: Well, I can’t play the piano and I don’t speak any foreign languages.

We think Ted speaks to us well enough through his art and his literature and the very style of his life. We think of him as a cross between Jimmy Stewart and Ben Franklin and a role model for all of us who are still living out the story of this country’s Greatest Generation.

Note: If you are interested in pursuing art or writing interests, look into the many classes offered locally by SCAC (Saratoga County Arts Council), Academy for Lifelong Learning (A.L..L.) and Skidmore College. Take a walk through the Beekman Street Art District and visit the Saratoga Springs Public Library to learn about their community programs. Some of these opportunities are free, charge a nominal fee, or offer half scholarships (A.L.L.), or permit seniors to audit classes.

Your life as a Renaissance man or woman is just a phone call away.