George Cyril Wellbeloved
Cyril of the Valley/
Sanders of the River/
Eques of the High Plains
About Cyril
My full name is George Cyril Wellbeloved. I was born at Crawford W. Long hospital in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1934 and spent my early years (1937-1943) on a subsistence farm outside Macon, Georgia. I graduated from Murphy High School, Atlanta, Georgia, in 1950 and attended Davidson College, Davidson, North Carolina, the Atlanta Division of the University of Georgia, Atlanta, Georgia, and Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia. I received a B.A. in Classics (combined major in Latin and Greek) from Emory University in 1954 and spent three years in the U. S. Army entering the Inactive Reserve in 1957 with the rank of Sergeant (E-5). In 1957 I was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to attend the University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia, where I received a B.Ed. in 1960 (First Class Honors, First in Class).
I married in early 1958 in the Emory University Theology School Chapel -- our first son was born in Melbourne, Australia, in 1959. On our return from Australia, I joined the IBM Corporation as a Junior Mathematician. While I was working for IBM, we had two more sons: the middle born in Endicott, New York, in 1962 and the youngest born in Wilmington, Delaware, in 1964.
I worked for IBM on permanent assignment in eight different locations: Endicott, New York (1960-1963), Wilmington, Delaware (1963-1964), Poughkeepsie, New York (1964-1965), Kingston, New York (1965), Research Triangle Park, North Carolina (1965-1972), Zurich, Switzerland (1972-1977), Rochester, Minnesota (1977-1982), and Boca Raton, Florida (1982-1987). I worked on short-term assignments in numerous other locations, mainly the IBM R&D laboratories in La Gaude, France, and Hursley, England, and the IBM World Trade Headquarters in Paris, France. I held a variety of job designations in addition to Junior Mathematician including Senior Engineer, Senior Planner, and Senior Programmer. While I was on assignment in Europe (early 1972 - late 1977), Jacques Maisonrouge, then President of the IBM World Trade Corporation, appointed me an "Honorary European".
My wife died on my 53rd birthday in 1987. I took early retirement from IBM and taught Computer Science for five years at Central Texas College in Killeen, Texas. During that time I did contract work for IBM in addition to starting a computer consulting partnership with one of my students. I moved to St. Simons Island, Georgia, in 1992 to care for my father and mother. Subsequent to their deaths in 1994, I lived with my middle son’s family (1994-2005) in Colorado Springs, Colorado, El Paso, Texas, and Fayetteville, North Carolina. Beginning in 2005, I lived with my youngest son in Guffey Valley, Union County, Georgia, near Blairsville. I will be returning shortly to Colorado.
I am an atheist by temperament, an agnostic by intellect, an Anglo-Catholic by tradition, and a transactional epistemologist by faith. I am the Founder, Good Shepherd, Regular Buckaroo, and Exalted Grand Pentarch of The Church Of The Simpler Faith (TCOTSerF, founded 1985 – the TCOTSerF motto is ecrasez l'infame or whatever). I am also a member of the American Legion Post No. 0005 in Colorado Springs, Colorado, The Wodehouse Society, The Philip Larkin Society, and The Georgia Mountain Writers Club. My memoir, Binding Time: Memoirs of a Programming Man, is possibly the most significant unpublished memoir of the 20th century.
Favorite Philosophers (as of August 8, 2007)
- Hume
- Dewey
- Andy Clark
- Quine
- Toulmin
- (Hobbes, Kant, Plotinus, Lucretius, Pascal, Schrödinger and Heisenberg are special cases)
