So we’ve heard that you used to play basketball. Can you tell us a little about that?
Well I grew up in the Bronx and my father was my first basketball coach in the seventh and eight grade and he gave me a big head start over a lot of people because he taught us the basic fundamentals. I worked my way up from being a sub to being an all-state player as a senior and then was fortunate enough to get a scholarship to play college basketball at Holy Cross where I started for four years we had very good teams there and at the end of that I wound up playing in Spain for a year in Madrid for what is there professionally,
What/Who is your favorite thing/person about BSGE?
I just think the students are so nice, it’s a really great diverse population, people are very tolerant of one another, respectful and I think that goes for everyone, like not just the students, but the faculty as well, like it’s a really neat interaction among all the people here.
Would you say you like NY better than RI?
Well it’s home for me. You know I married into the state of RI and I really like RI, being down here there are things that I miss about it. When I go take a trip up there..there’s that little sense of homesickness because I lived up there for 24 years. But coming back to NY I feel like I’m really home having grown up in the Bronx.
How many countries or cities have you lived in? You said Spain and RI…
Well, Massachusetts for a couple of years while I was in graduate school. That is pretty much it, really.
And how would you say you got into teaching after having played bball?
Well I taught while I was in graduate school, and at the end of graduate school I though well I have to get a real job because I was getting married so I went into banking and after my daughters were born and were growing up it seemed like a good move to go back to something that I’d liked doing while I was in graduate school which was teaching. It would give me a lot more time to be with the girls and so it worked out really well.
I don’t think a lot of daughters have the same taste in music as their dad.
No, it is interesting and they have probably introduced me to stuff that I probably would not have picked to listen to, like Radiohead for example…I had not really been drawn to it but my younger daughter kept telling me Oh you need to listen to this song and that kind of thing and at least making me appreciate that band. I like a lot of music. Its not like a I have any one band right now that I think is great that I listen to a lot. I have hundreds of CDs.
So, how do you like your coffee? (laughter)
I like my coffee black, no sugar.
So, do you cook?
Yeah I do. Yeah, I really like to cook. And it’s really one of the very unfortunate things about having a small apartment in NYC as opposed to living in a house like in RI because my kitchen area is so tiny it’s less inviting to cook because it’s so inconvenient to move things around. I really have no counter space, but I do like to cook and actually when I go visit my mother she lets me cook.
Do you have a favorite thing to cook?
When I’m up there I usually grill.
Even in the winter?
Oh yeah, throughout the whole…I took that up in RI I always grilled throughout the whole winter no matter what it was like outside.
Have you ever grilled in the snow?
Oh yea. In fact the first time that I carried over grilling into the winter it was because we’d lost power in the middle of a snow storm and I thought well we could still cook, and I thought at that point, well I could just do this all year round. We could do grilling anytime.
Mr. Potter, thank you.
Now you know all about me huh?
I do. And we’re publishing it in the newspaper.
