IDENTIFIED . HERSCHEL, HAROLD

Male

Heterosexual

Sixty-seven

November 1st, 1944

American

English
Spanish
Latin
CODES
Misc. Ancient Things

Occasionally called "Harry." Very occasionally. And he doesn't prefer it.

0.80

Identified

N/A

N/A

9/12/13 by Dani

Amy

N/A

Yes

Luciano from Ristorante Paradiso

Harold once maintained an active career as a cryptologist, having at one point worked as a government code-breaker. He has since retired and predominately lives off of savings and investments. He and his wife supplement their income by running a small shop that sells handmade sweets and old-fashioned candy. They are upper middle class.

Harold is a sixty-seven year old man, and likely not a remarkable-looking one at that. His posture has sunk, and a good deal of his robustness has gone out of him. Where he once had a head of dark brown hair, he now has grayed hair and a receding hairline. He has kept his well-structured nose and green eyes, even if his eyesight is slipping more and more. He usually wears glasses when he's reading or working.

Dress-wise, he's fairly predictable. He most usually wears slacks and button-up shirts, with a sweater or jacket thrown in during colder weather. He's slowly changing his habits to accommodate a life in California, and so isn't beyond shorts and tacky "Hawaiian" shirts. He does, unfortunately, carry the elder-persons habit of occasionally wearing socks with sandals. He's never considered himself particularly fashion-conscious, and keeps to unofficial uniforms fitting his lifestyle and whatever his wife buys him.

Harold spent his youth as a personable and mild-mannered man, actively interested in his education and prone to letting his mind wander. While this has remained largely true to his character over the years, he's certainly changed some habits as he's aged. He still very much enjoys company and getting to know more about others through conversation, but his calm exterior often gives way to an older man's gruffness; he's become less prone to passively tolerating what he deems as nonsense. In other words, he's a socially active man on the edge of being and out-and-out curmudgeon.

Having spent the majority of his life as a scholar, Harold takes a certain amount of pride in his intelligence and reasoning abilities. He still keeps up with things that crop up in his area of expertise, although he's getting irritated at the changing state of cryptography in the face of growing technology. He daily occupies himself with puzzle-books while he's not dealing hands-on with his business, and always tries to keep his mind active and his hands busy. Further, when he knows something, he knows it, and there's little room for argument. He's a sore loser when proven wrong.

Overall, Harold is an aged man of fanciful intellect, still holding romantic adventure and never-ending wonder in high regard while keeping a straight face. He believes in enjoying life, love, and any other little pleasures. He's got a best friend and partner in his wife, Edith, and believes himself to have lived a life full of great happenings. He's down to Earth, even if his mind is sometimes in the clouds, and he's just trying to leave a decent impression, even if he's getting a little rough around the edges.

Harold was born in upstate New York in 1944, the son of James and Eliza Herschel. His father was a stage writer and his mother a housewife. Harold was the oldest child, with his sister Gertrude following three years behind him. As a child, Harold was active and imaginative; he grew up on adventure stories and comic strips. He was especially fond of characters like Dick Tracy, who used their smarts and daring to wiggle out of do-or-die situations. His possession of gimmicky decoder rings and love of solving puzzles led to his eventual career path of cryptology.

(1963)Charming, mild-mannered, and a little on the nerdy side, Harold went through high school without any complications. After he finished his basic education, he was accepted into Columbia University, where he studied Communications right off the bat. It was while in school, during his sophomore year, that he first met Edith Blum.

(1964)Harold and Edith first spoke on the evening of October 3rd, after Harold's friend Paul Truman got into a disagreement with Edith over an airing baseball game. It escalated to the point of Edith throwing a chair, which subsequently got her kicked out of the bar. Harold, having failed in mediating, left right afterwards to both apologize for his friend and to make sure that Edith made it back home without trouble. Out of that encounter, they began seeing each other, which eventually turned into going steady.

In between both of their studies, they maintained their relationship for about three years, with each keeping their goals for the future carefully in mind. Edith, being a strong-minded woman in her age, wouldn't be content to simply settle down, and Harold knew this. In the not-quite-end, they broke up when Edith graduated and got a job in Michigan (1967). Harold himself moved on to further his studies in California, where he earned a Masters' in 1971.

Freshly finished with higher education, at least for a time, Harold picked up on an exciting opportunity for field work in Peru, sussing out puzzles of the ancient Incans. Being so far from home and nearly five years gone from her, to say that Harold was surprised to run into Edith Blum again would be an understatement. Small world, they say… While it was his newly-hatching career that had led him there, Edie had come to the foreign land with a boyfriend (a Mister Damiãno), which stung a little hear. Fortunately for Harold's not-so-secret feelings, it turns out that they were both still pretty fond of each other; they inadvertently rekindled their romance on the hush-hush and eloped back to the states when the opportunity presented itself.

After a quick wedding in California and a honeymoon road trip across the USA, Harold and Edith settled in Virginia, where Harold got a job with the federal government. He also, after a few years on the job and in hopes of advancing his position of expertise, returned to school to earn his doctorate. After being more or less settled in Virginia from 1972-1984, they decided that twelve years in one place was quite enough. Harold moved on from his more direct ties with the government, moving himself into more of a consultant capacity in order to return to his initial exploration of ancient mysteries.

And thus did the Herschel's travel from place to place, living a year or two here and there, Edith collecting odd and interesting jobs while Harold delved into aged cryptograms and the like. Stops on their decade-long tour included locations such as Egypt, Turkey, Greece, India, and Scandinavia.

Upon their eventual return to the US in 1994, the pair again settled into a period of calm, ready to make the right moves towards a comfortable future. Harold wrapped up his career as an active cryptographer with guest lectures and temporary professorships at the university level, which left some of the free time that he used to develop his interest in making homemade sweets. Upon his official retirement in 2006, he felt satisfied in his accomplishments and comfortable in his investments.

Harold and Edith completed one last world tour before deciding to spend their Autumn years in sunny Los Angeles, California. They've established themselves in the neighborhood with a small, brightly-colored store, where they sell home-made and old-fashioned sweets alike, all of it kosher.