![[Picture of Captain Father Neal]](graphics/Cfn2.jpg)
Neal Pollack was honorably discharged from the United States Army on 17 April 1969 after serving a two-year tour in Viet Nam. Prior to his induction in 1966, he had long hair, tight pants, and was playing bass with legendary guitarist/song writer, Howard Berkman, in the Knaves--a
bad-boy Blues/Rock band in Chicago. "Talk about sex and drugs and rock
'n' roll--we had it all!" he reminisces. His military training provided
him with expert knowledge of the then state-of-the-art genre of light
weapons and his specialty was the M-60 machine gun. Having placed
highly in math on his SATs, he was also trained as a Finance Clerk.
When he returned to Chicago, he knew that his previously acquired
skills would be of very little use to him and he drove a cab while
trying to decide what to do with the rest of his life. An old friend of
his, Marvin Berkman, had just opened a "hand-made" jewelry shop in
Chicago's trendy Old Town and Pollack stopped by to scope it out. "It
was a little 10' x 10' x 10' cubicle with a workbench and some display
cases. Just as I walked in, Marv was silver soldering a ring together.
It was the closest thing to magic I had ever seen and I was hooked!"
Pollack asked Marv if he'd teach him how to make jewelry. Marv told him
to sit down and the apprenticeship began. Pollack studied under the old
master for 3 1/2 years learning all phases of jewelry fabrication and
repair. In May of 1970, inspired by the Kent State Massacre, which was
caused by some moron giving the Ohio National Guard live ammunition,
Howard decided to "get the old squad together" and we formed The Euphoria Blimpworks Band to play the soundtrack for The Revolution.
In an attempt to improve his skills, he packed up his hand tools and
moved to Pforzheim, Germany. He did production work at Güntner u. Cie,
designed, manufactured and exported his own line to the U.S., and
attended the prestigious Goldschmiede Schule. "I was working about 16
hours a day, but I was inspired and was really developing some awesome
chops."
After two years he felt he was ready to return to the U.S. and open his
own shop. Having developed the skills, he intended to create fine
handmade jewelry in the traditional manner. He opened a shop on
Chicago's exclusive North Shore and plied his trade there for 13 years,
catering to the desires of a wealthy clientele. After several vacations
in Colorado, he found he preferred the mountains to the concrete and in
1987, closed his shop and moved to the Aspen area. He set up a studio
in his house, did model and production work for other designers, custom
work and wholesale manufacturing and is currently selling his work exclusively from his website, Neal
Pollack Goldsmith.
In 1995, he had a revelation, "The jewelry business isn't what it was
500 years ago. It's time for a change. If I don't become computer
literate, I won't be able to get into a pay toilet by the year 2000."
He signed up for an introductory computer course with Traci Collins
at Colorado Mountain College and pursued it with the same dedication
and zeal with which he studied jewelry over a quarter century earlier.
"Any measure of success I've achieved, I owe directly to Traci. Her
knowledge of computers is broad, deep and awesome and her lectures are
spellbinding. She took me under her wing and went way above and beyond
the call of duty in rounding out my computer education." Besides
attending school, he spent over fifty hours a week reading, "doinking",
building and trouble-shooting old computers. "My first PC was a Tandy
2810HD laptop. It was a 286 with 1Mb of RAM, a 10Mb hard drive, a
2400bps modem, and a mono display. I couldn't run Windows and my only
online access was through Compuserve and AOL on a text only basis. I
thought it was way cool. I used to run from lab to lab at CMC to use
Windows machines. When a class was in session I had to leave the lab,
so I'd drive from Spring Valley to Glenwood or Carbondale just to get
next to a 486 running Windows."
In January 1997, he started
PressPlay Computer Consultants and has been devoting most of his time
to that. "I like to think of myself as semi-retired when it comes to
jewelry. I still do custom work by appointment and look forward to
creating a small collection of fine one-of-a-kind pieces without any
commercial consideration. Just for the sheer joy of it. It may seem
strange, after all these years, but I still feel the same magic every
time I sit down at the bench."
"Working with computers makes me feel like I'm 9 years old again.
Everything is new and
exciting. This is the fastest growing technology in the history of the
human race and I feel lucky to be a part of it. I'm into this with both
hands and feet and love every minute of it."
Pollack lives, with his wife Jean Dupré, on 11 acres with a trout
stream running through it. Their dependents and neighbors include, but are not
limited to seven indoor cats, a beaver family, a skunk family, a transient blue heron family, a couple of
bears, a raccoon gang, a plethora of songbirds and about a gazillion hummingbirds. "All I wanted when I returned from
Vietnam was a beautiful wife, a place in the country with a studio,
interesting work, some dogs and cats and a car that was paid for and
started every day. I've got all that and more. I believe I'm the
luckiest man in the world and a roaring success."