Juergen Juffa

Name: Juergen Juffa

Occupation: Director of Finance, Robert Bosch Tool Corporation

City/State: Arlington, Illinois

Spouse/Children: my beautiful wife, Kamala

Hobbies: hiking, biking, kayaking, and enjoying Chicago's cultural scene as much as I can

After high school: After graduating from Carroll I returned to my home country Germany. It took me another three years to graduate from what Germans call "Gymnasium" (the academic high school that allows you to study at a university). Since neither my parents nor I had enough money to support myself through college I joined the German army for 25 months where my career ended as a Private First Class. Having saved enough Army money, I joined a work-and-study program sponsored by Bosch, a German automotive and consumer goods conglomerate. In 1991 I graduated from that program with a bachelor's degree in business administration. Working my way through the ranks of Bosch's Finance organization I was offered a job as Controller of their North American Power Tool division (maker of Skil, Bosch, Dremel, Rotozip and Vermont American) here in Chicago in spring of 1999. Since then I have been living in the windy city and enjoying every minute of it. Our summers are pretty much like Corpus, but the winters sure are a different story. I live "smack in the middle" in a high-rise only about four blocks from the Sears Tower. It has been three years since I last visited Texas to see my former host parents (they lived in New Braunfels at that time) and even longer (1992) since I stopped in Corpus Christi.

Kamala and I got married in November of 2003. The ceremony took place in a wonderful small Victorian cottage on the Maine coast with the wedding party being eleven guests born in five different countries. Getting married meant saying good-bye to the wonderful City of Chicago and hello to the suburbs (my motto until then had been: "Mankind was meant to live in the 312-area code (the immediate downtown area of Chicago)" Kamala and I settled in Arlington Heights, Illinois, a suburb about 30 minutes (with no traffic, but when is there no traffic in Chicago?) from downtown Chicago. We own a beautifully rehabbed house that was built in 1927 in the town's "downtown" area. We love it. The INS (Now called the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services) finally decided to be good to me and granted me permanent resident status (green card) in June of 2004. That very same month I also graduated from the Kellogg School of Business (Northwestern University) with an MBA. We are planning to adopt children from India this year.

Sorry I could not make it to the reunion. I had definitely planned on coming but the same weekend a very good friend of mine from school got married in Toronto and I pretty much ended up flipping a coin and it fell on the Toronto side. I guess you can only be in one place at the same time. Hope to make it to the next reunion.

	Juergen & Kamala