Steve Grant

Gainfully unemployed.

Taught for a few years (GWU), became a research associate at the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies (Smithsonian's Wilson Center) and published a couple reference works. Became a freelance researcher/writer, then joined the US Information Agency's Office of Research. Spent three years in Moscow - 1982-85 - with family, at the embassy as a cultural affairs officer (fun to be there after Reagan's "evil empire" speech!).

Returned to head the Russia and Eurasia branch of the office and began conducting public opinion polls in all of the former Soviet Union in 1989. Retired in 2004, not long after USIA was folded into the State Dept. Have returned to my first love - history. My first monograph appeared in 2012 (see photos).

Love tennis, golf, poker, travel, anything life affords. Joined a "men only" book club in 2016 -- reading (al

One fond memory is that we were the first class allowed to hold our senior prom in San Francisco.

Life-shifting insight at LAHS: taking Latin freshman year, meeting instructor James Marshall who taught up a storm -- and then some; learning he made $16 an hour (!!!) tutoring Latin outside of school; realizing one could actually make a living teaching.

Life-changing moment at LAHS: walking into the classroom of the sweetest faculty member at LAHS -- Ernie Carleton -- for elementary Russian sophomore year, with Jerry Hearn, Sylvia Salassi et al.; getting acquainted with the language, culture, and people of "the enemy;" and falling in love with all of it. I was hooked and that's been my life.

probably Irkutsk, Siberia, Russia

or Uzbekistan or Kyrgyzstan in Central Asia