Happy birthday to… GTSI’s Leslie Barry

GTSI's Leslie Barry
Happy October 19th birthday to… GTSI’s Leslie Adams Barry, the vice president of government affairs and business development.
In addition to being one of the stalwarts of the government IT community, Barry each year leads a team of people to Nicaragua to help build homes. See photos and hear an interview with Barry here. I got to know Barry well when she was a judge on FCW’s Rising Star awards program — and she was amazing. She actually went and checked on people’s nominations — and found people that we didn’t even know about.
So… happy birthday Leslie. On this date…
It seems there is always a lot of action on Wall Street in the month of October. Of course, we’ve all been watching Wall Street and the economy in recent weeks. But there have been a number of Wall Street events on this date. On Oct. 19, 1987, the stock market crashed as the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged 508 points, or 22.6 percent in value – its second biggest percentage drop. Coincidentally, on this date in 2006 The Dow Jones industrial average closed above 12,000 for the first time, ending at 12,011.73. (For the record, on Friday, the Dow Jones closed at 8852.22.
Furthermore, on this date in 1885, Charles E. Merrill, the American investment banker who helped create the largest brokerage firm in the United States, was born. (The NYT has their Merrill obit posted here.)
One government IT event from this date back in 1998:
By COLLEEN O’HARA
The House may curtail some of the unprecedented budget authority over departmental information technology spending that a Senate bill would give the Agriculture Department’s chief information officer. The USDA IT Reform and Year 2000 Compliance Act
Some of the other events on this date, culled from public radio’s Writer’s Almanac:
It’s the birthday of the novelist Tracy Chevalier, (books by this author) born in Washington, D.C., in 1962. She wrote a book, and one morning she was lying on her bed trying to think of an idea for a second novel, and she looked at a poster on her wall — a poster that she had owned since she was 19. It was a picture of the Johannes Vermeer painting Girl with a Pearl Earring. She said, “I looked up at the painting and wondered what Vermeer did or said to the model to get her to look like that. And right then I made up the story.” That story became Girl with a Pearl Earring, a best-selling novel, published in 2000….
Other famous people born on this date:
63 Patricia Ireland
Feminist activist
46 Evander Holyfield
Boxer
44 Ty Pennington
TV host (“Extreme Makeover: Home Edition”)
41 Amy Carter
Daughter of former President Jimmy Carter
Happy birthday to Leslie.
[Tips always welcome. Let me know. Here is how you contact me.]
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