Alumni Magazine - Spring 2008 - (Page 30)

At 24, Spector (right) competed in and won the 1979 Cuban Chess Championship. months old. Spector hoped to set a good example for Kimberly, who was 12 at the time. “She inspired me. I wanted her to see me working hard and know that she could make it, too,” she says. After a year and a half, Spector had earned her master’s degree and was consequently promoted. Still eager to learn, she enrolled in doctorate courses in Lehigh’s physics department and, after earning her Ph.D., she was promoted to Distinguished Member of Technical Staff. “My educational advancements were very important to and completely correlated with my progress at AT&T Bell Labs,” she says. Spector worked full time, drove the hour-long commute between Reading to Bethlehem for classes, and cared for her teenage daughter and infant son after she and her husband divorced. Every day, Spector spent two hours of her vacation time caring for her son until he was old enough to be enrolled in day care. When work or school took her away from home, her daughter babysat. After five rigorous years, Spector graduated in 1977—one of only five of the original 177 physics majors in her class to graduate on time. “I was sleeping four hours a night, but I was pretty young and had a lot of energy and a big determination to have a degree,” she says. “I had to do the same thing again when I came here to this country.” “I will never forget that day. My life stopped.” In 1989, Kimberly Spector entered Pennsylvania State University as a firstyear student. There, she met and fell in love with Peter Pandelios, a drummer in a band. The two married and moved to Los Angeles, where he planned to pursue a career as a professional drummer. Meanwhile, Kimberly Pandelios sought temporary work as a model. But Spector says that her daughter planned to complete her degree in computer science at the University of California. On Feb. 27, 1992, a warm, sunny Thursday, the aspiring model left her 13-month-old son with a babysitter before driving to the Angeles National Forest to meet a photographer she knew only as “Paul.” Although worried when his wife did not return for dinner, Peter Pandelios thought he had to wait 48 hours before reporting Kimberly as a missing person, according to press reports at the time. Later that night, Kimberly’s car was discovered in flames along the highway near the national park. The scorched Chrysler Laser contained no evidence of the missing woman. As the days passed, almost 2,300 miles away in Reading, Pa., Spector anxiously awaited news of her daughter, conjuring theories about her whereabouts. Despite her inner turmoil, Spector forced herself to continue living. In the year that followed, she completed her doctorate at Lehigh while working at AT&T Bell Labs and raising her 9-year-old son. “It was pretty difficult,” she says. “But I had to be strong even when I was falling apart because my son’s life was shattered after the loss of his only sister.” Advancing through education Because of her status as a chess champion, Spector feared that the Cuban government would prevent her from leaving the country. But in 1980, she and her family escaped on the Mariel Boatlift. They settled in New Jersey and after a year and a half moved to Pennsylvania. Spector enrolled in English–language courses at King’s College in Wilkes-Barre. The first U.S. dollars Spector earned were won in a chess championship. A professor at King’s College paid the tournament’s $50 entry fee, which Spector more than recovered after she took the first–place prize of $1,000. Afterward, Spector worked in a factory to support her family. Her co-workers laughed when she told them she held the equivalent of a master’s degree. “They didn’t believe me,” she says. “They asked me why I was working at a factory if I had that degree.” Once she mastered the complexities of English, Spector was hired by AT&T Bell Laboratories as a senior technical staff, an entry-level position, in 1981. She spent the next 25 years at AT&T Bell Laboratories, which later became part of Alcatel-Lucent. Determined to advance in her career, she enrolled in Lehigh University’s electrical engineering master’s program in 1983 when her son was just 4 30 LEHIGH ALUMNI BULLETIN

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Alumni Magazine - Spring 2008 Contents From the President's Desk Mailbox On Campus Research Arts & Culture Sports Alumni News Cover Story: In Galileo's Wake Technically Funny The Healing Game Looking for America The Last Word

Alumni Magazine - Spring 2008

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