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not just me,” the VP stressed. “No one person can do billions
of dollars in sales. I’m like a conductor of an orchestra. It
takes dozens and dozens of people to make these sales happen.”
When Perich wants to entertain his Rolls-Royce clients,
he gives them an experience they’ll never forget: a bumpy
ride in a World War II vintage airplane, complete with a
fighter pilot’s uniform and an open-air machine gun turret.
“Out of all the events Roll-Royce does – including the
Master’s golf tournament and the Indy 500 – our customers’
favorite is flying in those vintage planes,” he said.
Aerospace sales has been a dream job for the Warren
native, who fantasized about flying since his father, a professional
photographer, took him along on an aerial photo shoot
as a small boy. Now a jet-rated commercial pilot, he started
flight training at 16 and had his first pilot’s license at 18.
For Perich, the Rolls-Royce position has opened doors to
pursue another passion – preserving and showcasing vintage
Alumni Spotlight
aircraft, like the old World War II bombers.
He’s founder and executive director of the National
Aviation Heritage Invitational, held annually in Reno, Nev. to
spotlight refurbished aircraft dating back to the 1920s, ’30s
and ’40s. It’s presented by Rolls-Royce in partnership with the
Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, the National
Aviation Hall of Fame and the Reno Air Foundation.
The event has put him on a first-name basis with aerospace
greats who share his passion, such as astronauts Neil Armstrong
and Jim Lovell. “I look at myself, a kid from Warren
Ohio, and I’ve had the chance to share the podium with a lot of
aviation legends,” he mused. “I think it’s pretty cool.”
Perich lives in Oak Hill, Va., with his wife, the former
Judy Popovich, also a YSU grad (’74) with a bachelor’s degree
in medical technology. So far, only one of the couple’s three
daughters, Regina, has caught the flying bug. She’s business
coordinator for the Cavanaugh Flight Museum, a nonprofit
operation near Dallas that restores vintage aircraft.
Met Debut Gives
Operatic Career a Boost
Gary Lehman, ’87
Growing up in Niles, Ohio,
Gary Lehman knew exactly what he
wanted to do with his life. He’d join
the Navy, and then he’d follow his
father and brother to work at RTI
Niles, a local titanium mill.
But Lehman had a surprising
change of heart. Encouraged
by his high school chorus director
and his YSU voice instructor David
Starkey, he earned a baccalaureate
in vocal performance from YSU’s
Dana School of Music and set out to
become an opera singer.
Now the 1987 alumnus performs
operatic roles around the world. His
career reached a peak in March when
he was tapped to perform the male
lead in a production of “Tristan und
Isolde” – one of the most difficult
tenor roles ever written – at the Metropolitan
Opera in New York.
Lehman said his debut at the
prestigious opera house has given his
career a major boost. “I’ve been performing
all over the world, and I’ve
been paying the bills,” he related,
“but things have really started to pick up since my debut at
the Met.”
Lehman’s Metropolitan Opera debut was serendipitous.
He’d been recruited to serve as a second cover, ready to fill in
as Tristan, the male lead, if the first cover could not perform.
Lehman had recently prepared to serve as first cover for the
same opera in Los Angeles, though he was never called on to
sing the role there.
Remarkably, the lead male singer
Gary Lehman
and the first cover both became ill
on the same evening, and Lehman
stepped in to sing the role. That same
night the lead female singer also got
sick and left the stage in the middle
of the performance, to be replaced
by an understudy. Lehman and his
female counterpart received rave
reviews for their performance of the
five-hour opera before a Met crowd
of 3,500.
“I was in the right place at the
right time, and I was prepared,” he
said of that fateful night.
Lehman’s operatic career has
spanned two decades and included
leading roles in cities such as Los
Angeles, Boston, Orlando, Philadelphia,
Dallas and St. Louis, as well
as performances abroad in Germany,
Finland and Montreal, Canada.
He remembers taking some
ribbing from family members in the
early days of his career. “My parents
would suggest I try teaching. They’d
ask how I could expect to make a living
just singing,” he recalled. “And it
didn’t happen overnight.”
Lehman met his wife, Susan
Foster, a Cortland, Ohio, native and also an opera singer,
when both were enrolled in a training program at the Chicago
Lyric Opera Center for American Artists at The Lyric Opera of
(continued on page 50)
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