Christopher J. Deighan
Christopher J. Deighan
Email Address: christopher_deighan@yahoo.com
Pre-WLU Hometown: Pennsauken, NJ
Current Hometown: Pennsauken, NJ
On the day we graduated from W&L, I bought my one and only car (a Ford Escort) from our late classmate Doug Turrell. I drove the car around Lexington for five years, initially as assistant to Dick Sessoms in the Alumni Office and later as the Office of Development’s liaison to the Computer Center. W&L was in the throes of a $126 million campaign then. In 1992, I left Lexington for Northern Virginia to join a software development company in the role of marketing but quickly transitioned to traveling consultant/trainer for higher education clients implementing new software. I moved to San Francisco in 1996, and in 1999 two clients convinced me to leave the security of a paycheck to join their startup consulting firm as a partner. We had a better than good run of it, but in 2004 I left the work force and moved back East to help my mother care for my father, who later died of Alzheimer Disease. That journey led me to nursing school at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, and I’m now a bedside nurse in the neurosurgical intermediate ICU at Jefferson Hospital for Neuroscience. I had always been asking myself what I would be when I grew up; now I know. I’ve never felt more useful.
I cannot get enough of traveling. I have seven more states to explore but have recently been focusing on international travels. Highlights have included discovering the artwork of Caravaggio in Rome and being in the presence of Michelangelo’s “David” in Florence; examining statues on Charles Bridge in Prague and drinking the local beer in Český Krumlov; soaring over Cappadocia’s Fairy Chimneys in a hot-air balloon; floating down the Seine at midnight in Paris, skiing the French Alps, and exploring 13,000-year-old etchings of mammoths in Rouffignac cave in southern France; observing sharks while snorkeling off the Pacific Coast of Costa Rica; riding the Peak Tram in Hong Kong; hiking past shrines and temples through the hills of Kyoto; standing next to a 4,500-year-old boat in Cairo at the base of the Great Pyramids; walking past tulip bed after tulip bed at the world’s largest flower garden (Keukenhof) near Lisse, the Netherlands.
My wish list is even longer.
Each year, I look forward to receiving notes of gratitude from current W&L students who have been recipients of the Todd D. Jones ’85 Memorial Scholarship. Honoring the memory of my late partner, this fund – supported by Todd’s generous family and friends – has provided the opportunity for students to compose and produce their own music; study Italian, Latin and Russian works at the Sonoma Bach Chanticleer Choral Workshop; study aerial fabric and instigate a new dance course at W&L; take a clarinet lesson with New York Philharmonic legend Stanley Drucker; attend a conference sponsored by the United States Institute for Theatre Technology; study Brazilian music and dance in the California redwood forest.
I still sing when a willing accompanist is nearby and have even learned a few tap routines in the past five years. An avid amateur photographer, I am constantly exploring ways to share my images.
