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FOUR SEASONS SPOTLIGHT Let Joe know - He wants to show you how By Leighton McLaughlin Joe Ligori wants to hear from you. He's started teaching computer courses in the Lodge and he'd like to know what you want to learn. "I started out with basic, intermediate and advanced courses," he said. "But I soon found out almost no one was interested in the advanced course – and very few in intermediate. The people who come to class have very little experience. They want to know how to do email or get on the Internet to do research, to look things up." Ligori thinks there must be residents who would like to learn other functions and he'd like to hear from them. He's at joeligori@verizon.net. He got into the computer business unintentionally. Back during the birth of the digital age, he worked as an auto mechanic and letter carrier while studying nights to be an accountant. He took some computer courses and because computer skills were so rare and so in demand he was hired away from college to be a programmer. "The pay was better than an accountant with a B.A.," he said. Back then there were no personal computers, but Ligori worked with their ancestors: microcomputers linked together in business applications. "It was a very volatile industry. I worked for 12 different companies in 26 years. "It was exciting. There were startup companies on the leading edge of computer technology, designing and building their own computers and their own software," he said. But there also 6 companies that skyrocketed and fizzled out, buyouts and mergers that led to layoffs. Over the years he was a programmer, a system designer, a project director and a trainer of other directors and engineers. In 2001, his company "was on the way down" and laid off 30 percent of the workforce, including Ligori. "I tried to stay retired for three or four years but decided I couldn't." He started a small computer company and returned to college "and went after my original degree – to be an accountant." Again, greener pastures beckoned and he left before graduation to become an enrolled agent -- an expert in income tax law very much like an acountant, certified by the IRS, who helps taxpayers prepare their returns and represents them if they run into problems. He holds an associate's degree in business administration from Fullerton College and – with all his years in college – has more than enough credits for a bachelor's, but never put them together to graduate. He and his wife Peggy – also an enrolled agent – operated a tax practice in Orange County for a number of years. He is out of the business now, but she still has an office in San Jacinto with six employees. "I only help out with the computers. She has good equipment and it needs to be maintained," he said. Ligori moved to California from Rhode Island when he was 16. At 17, without graduating from high school, he enlisted in the Navy on a "kiddie tour," where the sailor joins before 18 and serves until 21. He became a diesel engine mechanic, FOUR SEASONS BREEZE | AUGUST 2013 | community News picked up a GED, and spent a year on an LSD ("That stands for Landing Ship Dock, not the drug LSD," he said.) off Viet Nam, ferrying Marines to and from landings. He began his Four Seasons computer courses after seeing an article in the Breeze by Activities Director Cindy Graves looking for someone to teach them. Now he wants to hear from residents to learn, "What do you need? Where can we go with this to do some good?" If he can get that guidance, with his experience and education he can surely provide what is needed — and he knows how to do taxes, too. Joe Ligori in the Computer Room

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