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"Under the Western Sky" is a quiet yet resonant piece of narrative nonfiction, blending personal reminiscence with the portrait of a man whose life bridged industry and passion. At its core, it is about paths taken, paths abandoned, and the bittersweet symmetry of mentorship across generations.

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Under the Western Sky

By Harry Arabian

Under the Western Sky

Mr. Dave Wallberg rarely called me. When he did, it was for one of two reasons: either to get my opinion on a company or technology he was considering acquiring, or to invite me to the rooftop observatory outside his office to watch some celestial wonder unfold in the night sky.

The observatory wasn’t much—just a small, amateur setup accessed by a spiral metal staircase—but it offered an unobstructed view of the western horizon over the Upper Charles River Reservation. On clear evenings, you could see the first stars before the rest of the city noticed them.

Dave was a pleasant man of seventy, originally from Portland, Maine. At his father’s urging, he had enrolled at Harvard Business School, setting aside his real dream of studying astronomy. His family had deep roots in the paper pulp business—“trees to paper conversion,” as he called it—and they expected him to take his place in the operation. In his final year at Harvard, months before graduation, his father passed away. Instead of a diploma, Dave went home to run the mill.

I first met him a decade ago, when he was one of the people interviewing me for an engineering position fresh out of UMass Lowell. I’d started my studies with my heart set on nuclear physics—harnessing atomic energy felt like the future. But the 1970s were turbulent for nuclear power, with protests in the streets and the East Coast tech boom pulling bright minds toward electronics. I shifted to electrical engineering. Perhaps Dave saw in that change a reflection of his own—an abandoned first love, a career reshaped by circumstance.

He had a knack for catching the wind before it shifted. While running the pulp mill, he noticed a rising demand for cardboard and bought a box manufacturer. Later, seeing the word “circuit” appear in many of his orders, he purchased a circuit board company. By the day of my interview, he was clearly hunting for his next horizon.

Ten years later, I was summoned to his office again. The sun was dipping low, gilding the water outside his window. I half expected to hear him say something like, The moons of Jupiter are aligned or Orion’s belt is at its zenith. Instead, he greeted me warmly and said he was pleased with our recent acquisition of Sensor Inc., especially my work in turning the startup into a thriving division.

Then he leaned back, his eyes catching the light.
“You know,” he said, “running direct power and changing batteries in sensors all the time is an impediment. What if we developed a cheap nuclear battery?”

I smiled. “Ambitious. NASA might want to get in line behind us. Were you watching StarTalk last night?”

He shook his head. “No. I called because I have good news. I’m embarking on the next stage of my life. I’m retiring at the end of the month and moving back home. The skies are darker in Maine.”

That caught me off guard. I’d thought he’d never retire.

“I’ll announce it tomorrow at the end-of-month meeting,” he continued. “But I wanted you to hear it first. I’ll still be on the board for quarterly meetings.”

“That’s good news, Dave,” I said—though the words felt smaller than the moment. I remembered one of our first nights in the observatory, how he’d stood quietly at the telescope until a meteor flashed across the view. He had simply said, There. That’s why we look up.

He grinned. “I have better news. I asked the board to name you Director of New Acquisitions. They agreed.”

For a moment, I had no words. Outside, the late-afternoon sun was melting into the horizon, the first stars pushing through the blue. I couldn’t help thinking that while Dave was heading toward darker skies, I was about to step into a brighter one of my own.