It was a long path from
Chicago's Albany Park neighborhood to Honolulu, the University of Hawaii
grad school, then the new UH law school in 1973. My 52 classmates mostly
were a few years younger - I was 29 when we started - just a few days
short of 32 when we graduated.
My story begins on the
4700 N. Whipple St. block in Chicago. My family lived in three
adjacent two-story houses, all rented from my grandfather. It was at
4712 N. Whipple where I had my first job at age 9, delivering 50 copies
of the Chicago Daily News with a bike that I won on a TV quiz show.
Unless there was snow on the ground, the delivery was easy - except my
earnings were the difference between what I collected each week from
every customer and the bill from the newspaper distributor. That
was generally between $3 & $4 a week. But it paid for my
hobbies, Boy Scout camp and everything else.
When I was 11, our family
- Dad, Mom, brothers Jim, Mike, Dan and Joe - moved to an apartment at
4606 N. Kedzie Ave, above a delicatessen. Rent was $110
monthly. The backyard was concrete, but we had use of two
garages - one large one that opened to the alley and a smaller one for
bikes and similar. The block also had a hardware store, a synagogue, an
A&P market and a bakery. It was a short walk to the Kedzie
Ave. station on the CTA "El" Ravenswood line. My dad
rode it 6 days a week to his job in the Chicago Loop.
A new Illinois law allowed
a 14 year-old to drive a motor scooter with less than 5 hp. So in 1958 I bought a 1955 Vespa motor scooter with a sidecar from the
owner of the Manor News
Agency - the newspaper distributor. I could then deliver the morning Chicago Tribune and
Sun-Times on three routes - no collections were necessary. Manor
News soon offered to pay my $75.00/
month to "fill-in where needed" for all their deliveries and I
gave up my morning routes.
This new-found wealth paid
for my tuition at St. George H.S. in Evanston. That was 6 miles
from home or 45 minutes by bus or "El". My Boy Scout
advancement stalled - I could not become an Eagle scout because I never
learned to swim! At St. George, I followed a few classmates to the
swim team where I bluffed myself into a breast-stroke only swimmer. The
school's pool was small - 20 yards. Our meet were almost always
"away" and I may have won a few races. I had more
success on the speech and debate teams and we traveled as far as
to Milwaukee and Kenosha for tournaments.
After my freshman year I
had a traditional job with Duro Art Supply, very close to St. George at
$1.25/hour! I used the Vespa, without the sidecar, to
commute. I was in the "honors" class at St. George with
30 classmates for all four years. We had 3 years of Latin, a year
of German, physics, chemistry, algebra, history and religion!
My next two summer jobs
were caddying at the Edgewater Country Club. Carrying two golf
bags over 18 holes generally yielded $5-$6.
"Double-doubles" meant one round early and one in the
afternoon. This was 4.5 miles from home and I got there on the bus
or by my Vespa.
Graduation in 1962 was at
the magnificent Granada Theater on Chicago's north side. I was the
salutatorian, a few grade points short of valedictorian, but the summer
of 1962 looked very promising.
I had the best job of my
life (really!) after my senior year - a lifeguard for the Chicago Park
District at Hollywood-Ardmore Beach - $7.50/hour. Well-paying and
great scenery!
College planning started
in my junior year, but how could I afford it? While caddying, a
friend told me about ROTC scholarships. I had done well on the SAT
and ACT tests, so other scholarships were possible. Early in my senior
year, I applied for both a NROTC scholarship and to the University of
Notre Dame, possibly influenced by a cousin who was two years older and
at Notre Dame.
I started at Notre Dame as
an engineering major. My dorm room was shared with a guy from
Newark NJ. We had a 10 pm curfew and compulsory chapel every
day. Classes included advanced math, physics, history, theology
and military science - and drill (marching)! High
school classes had been easy for me. This was not! I lasted two years
in engineering then became a communication arts major. After
failing to get on the swim team, in the spring of my freshman year I signed up for the for the annual charity
tournament "Bengal Bouts" and learned boxing fundamentals. I lost my only bout. Better luck next
year?
For the 1963
summer NROTC cruise, I took the train with a few Chicago-area
classmates/midshipmen to Norfolk VA - 26 hours! I was assigned to an aircraft carrier and we
went to the Virgin Islands, Trinidad, Panama and Guantanamo Bay
Cuba. The plan to rotate us on different shipboard assignments
failed - I had most of my time in
the boiler room and below decks. However, I won a boxing match as
part of the crews entertainment. The two-hour flight home was a
mere $25. I then was a beach lifeguard for the remainder of the summer.
I had a different dorm for
my sophomore year and a new roommate. Dan recruited me to the
NROTC rifle and pistol team - the range was in the ND stadium. Dan
also let me borrow "Catch-22", which he did not like. I did.
Chuck & Paul, across the hall, recruited me to sell doughnuts and
sandwiches each night on our dorm floor. It paid $12-14 a
week. Over Christmas, I delivered mail for 10 days - heavy bags
and snow! I won one Bengal Bout and lost the next one - and retired
from boxing.
The 1964 NROTC summer
training was split between aviation orientation at Corpus Christi TX and
a taste of the Marine Corps at Little Creek VA. And another
half-summer life-guarding on the same Chicago beach. Also the same
dorm my junior year with Jim, a new roommate. Jim & I now made
pizza for the dorm on the weekends. We assembled one every 5 minutes
and made $35/week each. That allowed me to buy a 1952 Jaguar
XK-120 for $750. It was partly restored by a lifeguard friend,
Rick Kelly. Because of the experience with the Navy on the summer
cruise, I took the
"Marine option" for my future military service. The 1965
future looked to be peaceful.
Our Marine-option 1965
summer "cruise" was at Quantico VA. It was probably a 75%
experience of real Marine training. Again I returned to the
Chicago beach for the final time. I did not register for a dorm in
my senior year. I
joined Paul, Chuck and Chuck's younger brother in a $125/month house on
the South Bend's south side. We each put in $5/week for food, so
expenses were low. This was not "approved off-campus
housing", but the administration never missed me. Classes
were interesting and I contributed a few articles to a new campus humor magazine - the
Leprechaun.
I graduated and was
commissioned in the Marine Corps in May, 1966. The Jaguar
had developed a rear-axle noise and was sold, so I bought a 1963 Saab 850GT
because of a good review in Road & Track. Off to Quantico VA
in June. All was fine until city-specific spark plugs caused
overheating to the 2-stroke engine on the PA turnpike. We limped
in to a Maryland Saab dealer who overhauled the engine over night.
Our TBS-167 Basic School
classes ran from July to November. My roommate, Jim Scott, had a
'50s Corvette, so we became and still are, good friends. We hiked, did
PT, ran, marched, shot many weapons and had classes such as
history, tactics, weapons and traditions. Washington DC and
Georgetown were visited frequently. In August, we had to select a
military specialty. Following the hero of Catch-22 Yossarian's advice,
I chose aviation. Surely the Vietnam War would be over before I
finished training! We graduated in late November.
After holiday leave in
Chicago, I drove to the Naval Aviation Station in Pensacola FL. We
had 12 weeks of "basic aviation training". Then in March
1967 I started non-pilot classes to become a Naval Flight Officers - either
as a bombardier/navigator in the A-6 Intruder or a Radar Intercept
Officer (RIO) in the F-4 Phantom. The A-6 was very "high-tech"
and my first choice, but I was sent to NAS Glynco GA for further RIO
training in July 1967. Bad luck for 3 friends who were also at
Glynco for A-6 training. They were killed, crashing on a training flight
over the FL swamps.
We graduated with aviation
wings in September. Then I was ordered to Marine Corps squadron
VMFA-513 at MCAS Cherry Point VA where I reported in October. In
the backseat of the Phantom, we practiced radar intercepts and
bombing. New pilots wanted "stick-time", ao I often flew
cross-country flights with them on weekends. My next orders in
April 1968 were to Treasure Island CA for a flight to Vietnam. Yossarian's advice had failed!
I drove from Virginia to
Chicago, then took the Saab cross-country through Iowa, Nebraska,
Colorado - then south through New Mexico, Arizona and finally visited
friends at El Toro, California before heading north. I left the
car with a Saab dealer in Berkeley, toured San Francisco, and flew from
Travis AFB early in May to Okinawa. I was there for a while,
arriving in Chu Lai, RVN late in May. The squadron was
VMFA-314. I flew 2-3 missions everyday. I had out-of-country breaks
in Japan and Hong Kong. The missions were routine except for a
"crash-landing" in November. Then more flying until I took R&R
in December to Maui. More out-of-country excursions in 1969, finally
leaving RVN on June 13, 1969 with 424 missions - and orders to MCAS
Kaneohe in Hawaii.
Hawaii lived up to my
expectations. After a few months living on base, I was approved to
receive the standard bachelor housing allowance, so we had an apartment
across from Ft. DeRussey. I commuted to Kaneohe everyday with the trusty
Saab. I
planned to resign from the Marine Corps in 1970, after my four-year
obligation was completed. However, the Marine Corps held that a
tour in Hawaii
came with a new two year obligation. This was not disclosed on my orders
to Hawaii - my appeals were useless. I then left the squadron and
had several admin jobs with the group headquarters.
With very regular hours, I
took evening math classes at the University of Hawaii and was eventually
accepted to grad school in Information Science. We learned several
programming languages and ran programs with punch cards on the UH
mainframe. I had a single interactive programming experience -
typing commands in a IBM Selectric to the mainframe. UH made me a
"Master of Science" in December 1972. In spite of that
degree, I was never sure that I was a real "IT master".
With more years of GI Bill
remaining and reading rumors of a new UH law school in 1973, I applied
to UH and two other law schools. Good news arrived in July and I
accepted the offer.
It was a good experience
until the final exam in one first semester course. "Modern
Methodology" has a full chapter in the law school history. I
stayed optimistic until we had another bizarre course in the second
year. Nearly all of my classmates dutifully completed evaluation
forms for every class and we were assured by the faculty that nothing
was amiss. I could relate this to an episode in Catch-22, so took
notes and a few interesting classes until graduation in May 1976.
The Josephson's bar review course filled
in many of the gaps in legal knowledge that would be tested in the
Hawaii Bar Exam. I passed and started as an assistant division
counsel with the Army Corps of Engineers at Ft. Shafter.
During my time at UH, I
sold the Saab, bought and sold both a Triumph TR-6 and Porsche
356. I also bought a rare and very shabby 1952 Frazer Nash
Mille Miglia in 1975. It wasn't on the road until 2004, after
restorations stops in Honolulu, Arizona and finally New Zealand.
It was sold in England in 2024.
After the Corps of
Engineers, I worked for Lt. Gov/law school classmate John Waihee on a
reapportionment court case. We were successful.
In 1985, I moved to San
Diego to negotiate and manage aerospace contracts. I again used
the Josephson bar review course while in San Diego and was admitted to
the California bar in 1987. Also in 1987, I took a contracts
management position with a Santa Barbara company developing projects for
the U.S. Navy.
My sketchy IT background finally paid off in 1990, when I was hired by
Disney in Burbank to manage their IT contracts as Disney transitioned from
a single IT provider to multipe software vendors for their new IBM
mainframe and mini computers. I lived near the office and walked
to work!
In 1998 I was recruited by
a health insurance company for a similar position and unwisely left Disney. It didn't
last. My next job was with another health insurance company. In
2001, I was managing IT contracts for Toyota Financial Services.
Unlike Disney, all my later employments had long commutes! I retired when I first was eligible for
Social Security in 2007 and left Toyota with an employee-discounted 2007
Corolla.
The Frazer Nash was
completed in New Zealand in 2004. We joined a Frazer Nash Car Club
tour on the South Island and have been there almost every year until
2020. In 1985, I bought a1969 Alfa Romeo Spider 1750 in Honolulu,
later brought it to California. The Alfa was much improved over the years, it took us
many places in California and once to Arizona. It's now getting a
full restoration.