Ed Greer

Seven years ago, electronics engineer Ed Greer, 33, was on the fast track at Hughes Aircraft Co. and an unlikely candidate to become a cult figure symbolizing rebellion against the corporate world. Armed with a master's degree in electrical engineering from UCLA, promoted quickly to section head, promised a position in higher management, Greer worked on classified defense contracts developing a night-vision gun and bomb sights. He had a nice home, a lovely wife and two young boys.

I love all of Merl Reagle's crossword puzzles, including "The Short Form" in the May 2 issue. But if Reagle was going to graduate Troy Aikman from any other school than UCLA, I wish he'd chosen the University of Michigan. Ed Greer Hemet Editor's note: Chalk it up to wishful thinking? Or was it Troy's name that led puzzle writer Merl Reagle to mistakenly (and to the horror of UCLA fans) credit cross-town rival USC and its Trojans as the alma mater of the Dallas Cowboys superstar?

The past caught up with Ed Greer in Houston. FBI agents walked into his office, wanting to know if the tall, bearded man masquerading under the name of Kenneth Roy Hearn was a drug runner or a money launderer. Instead, the agents found a software engineer seeking anonymity, a man whose sudden disappearance from a fast-track job at Hughes Aircraft Co. seven years ago made him a cult figure of rebellion against the corporate world.

At Hughes Aircraft, minds have changed about Ed Greer. A Hughes dropout from the corporate fast track, engineer Greer had become the subject of a fantasy cult since he vanished eight years ago without telling a soul. The colleagues he left behind imagined that Greer, 41, was on some tropical beach, sunning himself--free of deadline stress, his arm around a good-looking woman. His smiling face adorned gag pictures propped on desks at Hughes.

I love all of Merl Reagle's crossword puzzles, including "The Short Form" in the May 2 issue. But if Reagle was going to graduate Troy Aikman from any other school than UCLA, I wish he'd chosen the University of Michigan. Ed Greer Hemet Editor's note: Chalk it up to wishful thinking? Or was it Troy's name that led puzzle writer Merl Reagle to mistakenly (and to the horror of UCLA fans) credit cross-town rival USC and its Trojans as the alma mater of the Dallas Cowboys superstar?

At Hughes Aircraft, minds have changed about Ed Greer. A Hughes dropout from the corporate fast track, engineer Greer had become the subject of a fantasy cult since he vanished eight years ago without telling a soul. The colleagues he left behind imagined that Greer, 41, was on some tropical beach, sunning himself--free of deadline stress, his arm around a good-looking woman. His smiling face adorned gag pictures propped on desks at Hughes.

When English artists Doug Bower and Dave Chorley showed how they flattened a circle of grain stalks in Kent by dragging around some wooden planks, they became the bad boys of an international hoax dispute. The artists had been creating crop circles in England for 13 years, they announced last fall, duping self-styled sleuths who claimed the patterns were made by visiting space aliens. Only now, it's the sleuths who are crying hoax.

A Yorba Linda woman, disgruntled over her lack of golfing time, sued her country club Thursday in an attack on allegedly sexist policies that force single women golfers to wait until men and couples have teed off. Avid golfer Jan Bradshaw, 41, said she feels cheated out of her $14,000 membership fee at the Yorba Linda Country Club. The exclusive club's policies, she said, give men more and better hours on the course.

In fiction and our fantasies, we run away to sea, the circus and the Foreign Legion. Or build a raft to ride the Mississippi and just go somewhere. In reality, stifled and stressed modern man opts for anonymity in more prosaic surrounds--a community college in El Paso, a computer company in Houston--usually settling for much less than they left.

The past caught up with Ed Greer in Houston. FBI agents walked into his office, wanting to know if the tall, bearded man masquerading under the name of Kenneth Roy Hearn was a drug runner or a money launderer. Instead, the agents found a software engineer seeking anonymity, a man whose sudden disappearance from a fast-track job at Hughes Aircraft Co. seven years ago made him a cult figure of rebellion against the corporate world.

Seven years ago, electronics engineer Ed Greer, 33, was on the fast track at Hughes Aircraft Co. and an unlikely candidate to become a cult figure symbolizing rebellion against the corporate world. Armed with a master's degree in electrical engineering from UCLA, promoted quickly to section head, promised a position in higher management, Greer worked on classified defense contracts developing a night-vision gun and bomb sights. He had a nice home, a lovely wife and two young boys.

The Mission Bay boys' basketball team came within a point of defeating Vermont of Australia in overtime, but the Bucanneers could not get off a shot in the final 11 seconds and lost, 76-75, in a nonleague game Friday at Mission Bay. Mission Bay's Rick Moe (eight points) hit a three-pointer at the end of regulation to tie the game, 71-71. Nick Tenner (19 points) scored all five of Vermont's points in overtime, including the game-winner on a layup with 11 seconds left.