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CEE
alumnus hits home run on third career choice
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Richard Nye with one of his patients, Harvey, a hyacinth macaw.
PHOTOS COURTESY OF RICHARD NYE |
Richard Nye (B.S.'66 CEE) took the long route to his current
profession. First there was the engineering degree; then there
was the professional baseball career. Now he runs his own veterinary
practice in the Chicago suburb of Westchester.
“I thought that baseball was a fluke, and I wanted something
to fall back on,” Nye says of his engineering degree. “Besides
I didn’t think I was drafted high enough to take the whole
thing seriously.”
Nye was working toward his degree on an academic and athletic
scholarship when, as a junior, he was drafted in the first-ever
baseball draft by the Houston Astros. Drafted again in 1966 by
the Chicago Cubs, he finished that year pitching in the majors.
After a taste of the big leagues, although he returned to school
to complete his bachelor’s and even considered graduate
school, he soon had an epiphany: Engineering was no longer his
passion.
“Engineering didn’t inspire me, so I went off to
spring training and played professional baseball for four years.
I even got an opportunity to throw fast balls to Willie Mays and
the rest of the Giants,” Nye says.
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Nye, who played professional baseball for four years, pitched
for the Chicago Cubs. |
He played for the Cardinals and the Expos before a torn rotator
cuff halted his five-summer career. He was 28 years old and had
a young family to raise. Unfortunately, there was no baseball
nest egg to cushion the blow. Unlike the highly paid athletes
of today, ball players in the ’60s made a minimum starting
salary of about $7,000 a year. He decided to go back to school,
this time in veterinary science because of his deep-rooted love
of animals.
In 1986—inspired by Susan Brown, a veterinarian colleague
who later became his second wife—Nye opened the Midwest
Bird and Exotic Animal Hospital. The first all-exotic animal hospital
in the U.S., it caters specifically to birds and exotic pets like
ferrets and iguanas. With a staff of 26, the hospital has about
15,000 client visits a year.
“I get a lot of pleasure from communicating with the pets’
owners and connecting with the animals,” he says. Although
he rarely uses his engineering skills, he says his various career
choices have steered his life in the right direction.
“If I had gotten involved in medicine right off the bat
(no pun intended),” Nye says, “I would have ended
up in human medicine, and I wouldn’t have been happy. I
prefer working with animals.”
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FOREFRONT takes you into the
labs, classrooms, and lives of professors, students, and alumni
for an intimate look at the innovative research, teaching, and
campus life that define the College of Engineering at the University
of California, Berkeley.
Published three times a year by the Engineering Public Affairs
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