Meet Your Fellow Subscribers: Randy Brandt

Manitoba bred, former Apple software writer

The latest in a series of stories profiling you, the subscriber, to Dater On Avalanche. If you want me to write on you too, email me a thumbnail sketch of your life, how old you are, a picture of yourself and I’ll then email you back to ask five random questions to fill these out. Email me: adater@comcast.net.

RANDY BRANDT

Randy Brandt, who has lived the last 33 years in Arvada, grew up in Manitoba where “following hockey was kind of mandatory.”

As a younger man, though, he went to college in California, with a secondary education major and a minor in English. Like many with degrees involving the written word, however, Brandt went into a career outside the field - and it sounds like a good decision in this case.

Brandt married a woman from the state of Washington and they settled in Arvada in 1990. In the 1980s, he wrote software code for the Apple II. He’s also taught some school in California and Colorado, and today primarily writes Java code for a company in New Jersey.

“I’ve been to the office once in nine years, so I was fully remote long before COVID,” Brandt says.

He and his wife have five kids and eight grandkids.

“Despite some lasting damage from injuries including a torn retina, at 62 I still play adult hockey with both of my sons at the Ice Centre in Westminster, and play in a lunch league at the Apex in Arvada,” he says. “As a bit of a fanatic, I have played over 1,500 official games (and a lot of drop-ins) since moving to Colorado at age 30. I play defense and my sons are forwards, but last year I played a game up front with them and my oldest son set me up for a goal. Great memory!

My favorite off-ice hobby is leading World War II-themed tours to Europe via my www.bandoftours.com. We do some Civil War tours here in the USA as well. It was great to get back to Europe last September after the pandemic cost me a few planned trips. I’ll never get tired of visiting old sites like the Normandy American Cemetery, or the new sites that I add every trip, such as the bridge at Remagen in Germany (there’s an old movie about it) that we visited in 2022.”

About the picture above: “The picture shows me in the Normandy American Cemetery at the grave of Robert Bloser, mentioned briefly in Band of Brothers. He was the best buddy of my paratrooper friend Ed Tipper, so I visit Bob's grave whenever I go to France.”

FIVE RANDOM QUESTIONS

1. Manitoba is the coldest place I've ever been - and I've been in some cold places, covering hockey, and I grew up in New Hampshire, where it gets mighty cold. But never like Manitoba cold that I can remember. How would YOU describe what it's like at its coldest there? “I'm not saying it's cold, but a high school friend claimed to have frozen his eyeballs while snowmobiling. He said it was the worst pain of his life. Bryan Adams is from Ontario, not Manitoba, but his song Cuts Like a Knife describes the Manitoba wind pretty well. My buddy and I went cross-country skiing at -20, but once it gets past -35, it's better to stay inside if you value your body parts!”

2. You wrote software code for the Apple II in the '80s - awesome. Did you ever get to meet Steve Jobs? “Better than that--I met Steve Wozniak, the actual tech genius behind Apple. We all respected him more than Steve Jobs, the marketing genius. Woz was a much nicer person to everyone. I have his autograph on an Apple II and on his metal business card.”

3. Be honest: did you like hockey better when it had a ton of fighting and lots of dirty blood and guts stuff, or do you like the more civil, more skilled game of today?

“There's something primal about a bench-clearing brawl that gets the adrenaline going! We used to go to Brandon to watch the Wheat Kings. There's nothing as terrifying as Dave Semenko in a teenaged rage. What I hate today is that the only fights are after good, clean hits. That seems stupid. I'd like the NHL a bit rougher and no stupid offside reviews 14 passes after a zone entry.”

4. When you first saw the Avalanche logo and uniforms in 1995, what did you think?

“Mixed feelings. I liked the "A" logo but overall the design seemed a bit lacking. Still, I was just thrilled to have a team. I liked the game or two they got to wear the black helmets. For some reason, I picture Val Kamensky like that.”

5. If you have to choose from one Avs jersey to wear, in honor of that player, which is it?
”I own a regular white Roy. My goalie at the time was Roy's golfing buddy/coach and he was going to get it signed for me. Sadly, that was the weekend of the "domestic incident" and it never got signed. Then I have a MacKinnon dark third jersey with the triangle Colorado flag logo. That one is pretty sweet. I also have a Nordiques jersey that I bought in 1990 that I got autographed by a bunch of legends like Jari Kurri, Marcel Dionne, Barry Beck, Pierre Pilote and Bill Gadsby at the All-Star game in Denver. I got Doug Smail later when my wife taught his daughter. No current Avs on it, though. All that to say, I need to get a Makar. I have a son-in-law from Brooks, where Cale played his junior hockey, and I'm a defenseman, so that's going to be my answer.”

Thank you Randy.