I asked the ten Wabash men I visited—all of them native Midwesterners—what they enjoyed most about living in the Pacific Northwest. I remember one answer in particular to that question. Andrew Naugle ’98 was sitting at his desk on the 38th floor of the Rainier Building in downtown Seattle.
Naugle (pictured right with Milliman colleague, John Kasey ’08) is a principal for Milliman Inc., a management health care consulting firm. Over Andrew’s shoulder was a large window looking over Puget Sound. I could see the huge ships navigating their way to commerce. And of course, even in July, the snow-covered mountaintops in the distance.
"We can see a lot today," Naugle said when I pointed out his incredible view. "You can see the mountains with snow on them and the beautiful blue of the water and the green of the trees.
"When I first came out here I could not get over how green it was. Having spent eight years here now, I under-stand—because it rains all the time."
Naugle notices the details like few others. "The geraniums have blooms like they don’t have in Indiana, the rhododendrons, the flowers, there’s just a vibrancy that I don’t remember from Indiana."
Naugle’s only regret is traveling nearly 30 weeks a year and that he doesn’t get to enjoy Seattle more. "This will be the first summer (2008) that I’ve actually been here. That’s the hardest thing about my job: our customers aren’t here."
The summer months feature clear skies and temperatures often peaking in the 70s, Naugle said. Then he cackled a laugh his Wabash friends would remember and said, "Of course, it rains nine months of the year."