If you would look up the term “nice guy” in the dictionary, you would see a picture of Michael B., shown here with his daughter Catherine. He likes his friends to call him Mike. Mike came to us from the Lone Star state of Texas to be close to his family and it didn’t take long before Mike was a regular at most of the activities around The Woodlands.
Mike grew up in Caracas, Venezuela, where his father worked as an accountant at the Atlantic Refining Company. He had a very interesting and exciting childhood living in Venezuela, where he attended an international school. Within six months of arriving in Caracas, Mike and his family witnessed an historic event when a military coup d’etat overthrew the president. This action changed the government but didn’t stop Mike and his siblings from experiencing the country’s many natural beauties and learning about the wonderful people of Venezuela. Though Mike had taken a Spanish class in school, he says he really learned the language on the streets of Caracas.
Mike returned to the United States to attend college at both the University of Texas and the University of Oklahoma and received degrees in English and Library Science. After college, Mike married and had three beautiful children – Catherine, Eric and Tom, and settled in Houston, Texas. Mike worked at the Houston Public Library as the Coordinator of Materials Selection which involved development of the entire library collection.
As a hobby, Mike enjoyed astronomy and he purchased a telescope and set up a small station in his garage where he studied and read all he could about the stars and planets. Mike divulges that, despite his passion for all things celestial, he could not convince his son to even look through the telescope. That was twenty years ago, though, and today his son is a professional astronomer. Funny how life is.
You will often see Mike with his daughter Catherine and his granddaughter strolling around the grounds of the campus. He’s excited that his other granddaughter will be close by this year while attending her freshman year at Georgetown University. Mike is a wonderful addition to our Woodlands family and we are so lucky that he chose us.