Tailwinds

Are you in this picture?

Crowd of students at a concert inside the old Student Center
Click or tap the photo to look closer.

Do you remember this moment, captured at the John Paul Riddle Student Center at the Daytona Beach Campus? We’re guessing this photo was taken at an on-campus concert of some kind, sometime in the 1980s.

Help us fill the gaps in Embry-Riddle’s institutional knowledge. Tell us about the story and people in this photo. We’ll share the details in our next issue of Lift. Email us at liftmag@erau.edu.

Note: With the construction of the new Student Union, the John Paul Riddle Student Center was demolished in February 2019, to create a multi-purpose green space for students.
Photos courtesy of Embry-Riddle Archives

Talking about Tailwinds

Group of students posed on the grass at the Prescott Campus circa the 1980s.
John Molnar (’89) helps solve the mystery behind this photo, which published in the fall 2018 edition of Lift.

I was in the 1989 graduating class at Embry-Riddle’s Daytona Beach Campus. An old classmate, Tara Alexander (’91), contacted me when the fall 2018 edition of Lift came out. She spotted me in the Tailwinds picture.

I am in the first row, in the middle, lying on the ground and wearing very big glasses (the style at the time). I am wearing short shorts and no shirt (also the style at the time). Oh god! I was about 20 years old. I was at the Prescott Campus in 1986 and 1987. This was taken around August 1987, right before I transferred to the Daytona Beach Campus.

If my memory recalls, we were just finishing up an intramural flag football game. A photographer was there and he asked if we wanted a group photo to remember the day by. As for the others in the photo, their faces look familiar but I cannot remember their names. The gentleman in the second row, wearing big sunglasses, on the left side with his right fist in the air was one of my suite mates. His first name is Jamie, but that is all I remember.

My Story

After graduating from Embry-Riddle, I went back to Pennsylvania to continue my education at Marywood University in Scranton. I went for a Masters in Management Information Systems. While at Marywood University, I started dating a girl by the name of Mary, and we were married in 1993.

In my last semester at Marywood, I was employed by a German software company called SAP. I was with SAP until 1998 when I formed my software company, Integrated Software Solutions Inc.

In 2017, I left the consulting world and went to work full time with The Walt Disney Company in Orlando, Florida, as an integration analyst for Global HR Operations.

I have been married to Mary for 25 fantastic years. We have two sons, Daniel and Joseph, who work for the Cape Canaveral Port Authority and Florida Fish and Wildlife, respectively.

Go Eagles!
John Molnar (’89)