My wife Deena (Baram) is from Natick. We have been married for over 50 years and for most of that time have lived in Acton, Massachusetts. Deena taught for several years at the local Pre-K school, then moved to Idylwilde Farm, conveniently located right at the end our street. She was there for three decades before retiring in 2021. Our daughter Elizabeth lives nearby with her two wonderful children Sam and Annie (our grandchildren!). They are the light of our lives. Deena graduated from Smith College in Northampton, MA. For a time Liz worked on the Admissions staff there a well. Today Liz still works in admissions but in a variety of roles. On January 6, 2020 we learned that Liz's older brother, our son Michael, had died in Minnesota at the age of 46. Mike suffered from mental illness for all his adult life. Here is a web page dedicated to his memory.

Often I am confused with my identical twin brother Ray Ferrara. This causes problems as people periodically complain that I ignored them or did not even say hello. Apologies to all who experience this; sometimes I am absent-minded, but the more frequent explanation is that it was my brother who missed the social cue. He now lives in Miami, so we are not confused as often these days.

We are quite close to our 3 sisters, Marie, Nicole, and Genevieve, who designed these pages. We grew up in Chicago, in St. Ita's Parish on the North Side, not too far  from Wrigley Field. Here is a picture taken in front our house at 5407 N. Glenwood Ave. My talented sister Gen designed a collage of our years there as a Christmas gift to all of us. Gen took wonderful care of our Mom as she aged. Mom died on February 24, 2007 just a few days shy of her 92nd birthday. All  five of us were with her as she died in her bed at home. At the funeral service in beautiful Old St. Mary's church, my brother-in-law Fred Hamer gave this eulogy and I followed with this eulogy, a collaborative effort by all five of us. Just a few months later, our Dad died on June 12, 2007. All of us were there for his funeral, at which Marie gave the eulogy. We are now the oldest generation.

The '50s and early '60s were good times to be growing up in Chicago. We were blessed with a number of great friends, like the fellow who lived around the corner, Mike Long, the youngest of nine children. Mike now resides half way around the globe - in New Zealand, but we stay in touch. For many years, we have nice gatherings of the group of us who inhabited the corner of Bryn Mawr and Broadway during our adolescent Chicago years. This led to a wonderful 50th Grade School Reunion in June, 2009 and a 60th Reunion in July of 2019. Deja vu all over again.

For almost twenty years, Deena and I were host parents to several wonderful MIT international students, starting with the remarkable Mawuli Tse '90 (masters in ''92) from Ghana. Then came Mike Sy '97 from the Philippines, where he represented his country in the International Math Olympiad. We were thrilled when Mike and his wife Ellice came back to Cambridge when Mike earned his MBA at Sloan School. After Mike, we've been hosts to more fantastic young people from Ghana. Charles Boatin '01 seems still to know everybody at MIT even though he now works in Silicon Valley. Curtis Vanderpuije '05, who is now back working in Ghana, after earning a Masters in the MIT-Singapore program. Ato Ulzen-Appiah '06 followed MIT with graduate school at Stanford. More recently, we have been host family to Michelle Wilson '09, Sadik Antwi-Boampong '09, and William Kyei-Manu '10. Here is a picture of Michelle, Ato, Deena, me, and Sadik at an Ethiopian Restaurant in Cambridge.