Free Preview: Playmate of the Month December 1983 - Terry Nihen

Route Two winds along the Charles River in Boston before leaving behind the red-brick buildings of Harvard, the white sails and the flashing oars, the jogging scholars, to head northwest toward Concord. The shot-heard-round-the-world Concord. It had been years since any girl we knew lived next door to a national monument, but Terry Nihen (pronounced Ni-yen), our first Massachusetts Playmate in recent memory, does. Of course, Concord Bridge is still there, but New England is changing. The Colonial houses are still there, tucked in the dense green New England forests. But at every crossroads, there is a computer company, another building with Data or Digital in the company name. Terry Nihen grew up in this region, in Acton, and she has changed. In a part of the country where every child goes on to college, if not graduate school, she opted to enroll in a technical-trade high school in nearby Lexington. "I wanted to try something new, to test myself against other kids. The school drew people from seven or eight towns. I was thrown in with a new crowd of very bright kids, just like that. I was studying something I was interested in." After graduation, she worked for a bank for four years. She added two more jobs to pay her way through a local community college. She changed direction and went to work for a firm she calls Digital-in-the-Woods. "I looked at other places that were too ultraprofessional. I've learned that what appears to be professional isn't. A preppie look isn't eno...