With both of us working, before children, we were able to
cobble together a few thousand dollars, enough for the 20% down on the $27,500
purchase price of that first house in San Carlos. As I recall, I think we were $500 short and
borrowed it from Pam and Norm.
Interestingly, just a few months prior to our decision to buy a house I
had wandered into a stock brokerage office, saying I wanted to buy some Pan Am
stock. The broker I spoke with told me
that airline stocks were not doing well and that I should just open an account
with my few thousand dollars and let her manage and invest it. That scared me away, fortunately. If I had invested in the stock market at that
point, we never would have had the money for a down payment on a house. In those days, before the term “creative
financing” was even invented, you needed 20% down. So becoming a home owner was a big deal. Many couples never made it, partly because
they started having children so early: They lost the second income, and their
living expenses went up at the same time.
Imagine a blue-collar couple in their early twenties
buying a home these days, all on their own, with no help from relatives (except
for the $500, which we repaid within a few weeks). Also imagine them putting the husband through
Stanford University and the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Business, again with
no help from relatives. We did get some
help from Pan Am and from the GI Bill, but of course I had to have done some
things to qualify for that help – be a good soldier, be a good employee, be a
good student. So the point is that we
essentially qualified and did it on our own.
In those days, the two-year community colleges (I transferred to Stanford
as a junior) were nearly free. The books
cost more than the tuition. I think the
Stanford tuition was $750 to $900 per quarter during my time there. Berkeley would have been a lot less, since it
is not a private university. By way of
comparison, the tuition for Michelle and later for Amy at Cal Poly, about 30
years later, was about the same as that of Stanford in my day, and much more
affordable, given the inflation and progression in my income over those 30
years.
In the mid 1960s the GI Bill was available to veterans of
World War II and the Korean War and was being made available to returning
veterans of the Vietnam War. Someone in
congress asked why we didn’t extend the GI Bill to veterans of the Cold War,
rather than skipping over them. Long story
short, they did, and in 1967 I started taking advantage of it. That was an incredibly important turn of
events in my life. Without the GI Bill
benefit, I might very well have remained on the ramp crew my whole working
life, punching a clock, wandering around the airport with my coveralls on,
hanging with people who were resigned to a meager standard of living. Sandy may have been OK with that. I don’t recall her ever indicating that she
expected better. When she met and
decided to marry me, I was a blue collar union worker with no college
aspirations, and I think she was OK with that.
One of the most comical incidents from my Pan Am days has
just come to mind. There was a large
cargo door that opened when we approached by jeep and crossed a threshold. When the weight of our vehicle rolled onto a
metal plate it triggered the large door to roll up. This was in the days before
motion detection technology and was fairly uncommon – certainly not something
you would see at home or at school. One
of the older guys decided to play a trick on one of the new young fellows. As they approached the cargo door the old
timer told the new guy to yell, “Open Sesame!” and the door would magically
open. The kid didn’t believe him, but
finally went along with it. When it
didn’t work the first time, he was told to move a little closer and to shout a
little louder, which he did. On the
third try they both yelled together, the vehicle having finally crossed the
threshold. I’ll never forget the look on
that young fellow’s face when the door began to open all by itself!
Then there was Igloo Annie. The Post Office had an operation at the
airport where we would pick up and deliver large bags of mail. People at the PO operation also stacked bags
of mail into large containers that were shaped like igloos with one end
open. These we would haul over to the
cargo planes and load them by scissor lift and elbow grease. There were always empty igloos scattered
around waiting to be loaded. These made
good shelters from the rain or cold and warm places to hide if you didn’t want
to get picked for a job. Well, there was
a rather rough but curvy woman named Ann who worked at the PO and developed a
reputation that was no doubt more rumor and wishful thinking than it was
fact. Long story short, we called her
Igloo Annie, and if she did half the things they say she did, she was a legend
in her own lifetime.
We drove a lot of different motor vehicles on the ramp
crew at Pan Am, from small jeeps that could tow a train of baggage carts to
large trucks with conveyor belts or scissor lifts. We drove them up to multimillion dollar jets,
which required coordination and judgment.
During that first year I recall jumping confidently from vehicle to
vehicle and remembering how scared and uncertain I had been coming across the
country with Tom Harris when he made me drive.
I remember the time that I commented to a supervisor that the prospect
of backing a huge fuel tanker between the engines of a Boeing 707, in the dark
no less, was something that I was definitely afraid of. I pointed out that there were plenty of more
experienced guys around, so I should never need to do that. The terminal gates where the jets would park
for boarding had underground hookups placed directly below the space between
the engines on each side of the plane.
But if we needed to fuel a jet anywhere else, which we often did, we had
to back the tanker trucks in. The amount
of clearance between the engines was only a few inches on each side. One mistake or error in judgment could cost
hundreds of thousands of dollars, plus delay or cancel the departure.
The supervisor promptly stated that I needed to get over
that fear and had me go with him on the spot to learn how to back the truck in,
which included how to take the correct angle of approach, how to operate the
clutch and where the gears were on that monster of a truck, and how to see and
interpret the hand and wand signals. I
think my under clothes and forehead were wet with sweat by the time we were
done, but the feeling of accomplishment was very satisfying. Thereafter I would volunteer to do the task
as readily as anyone, and soon took it in stride as just another part of the
job.
I graduated with a small federal student loan balance,
with a very low interest rate and $15 per month payments due, which I
faithfully paid each month. The interest
rate was so low that I could not justify paying off the balance even when that
became possible. I used to kid that the
postage stamp and envelop cost more than the interest. The other thing that has changed is that
there was no reason that a person could not complete a four-year education in
four years. In fact, by going to summer
school I finished one quarter early, the quarter ending in March instead of
June 1971, graduating from Stanford with honors in Economics, all the while
working full-time at Pan Am. I was the
only bread-winner from the time Sandy was into her 3rd trimester
with Michelle in late 1969.
I recall how the admissions people at Stanford said there
was no way a person could successfully work full-time and attend Stanford University
full-time. Their thinking was: junior
college-maybe; Stanford-no way. My
thinking was: what choice do I have, other than to continue to load airplanes
for Pan Am at blue collar wages for the rest of my life, or until my body gave
out, whichever came first? The same
thing happened with the Cal Berkeley admissions people. They couldn’t see how I had done it at
Stanford, but were sure it would be impossible in graduate school. I almost believed them this time, but plowed
ahead anyway.
I should explain that I initially could not see beyond
taking some junior college courses. If I
recall correctly, the amount I received under the G.I. bill for attending
junior college was enough to replace most of the overtime pay I was foregoing,
so I thought, “It they are going to pay me to go to college, why not give it a
shot?” That reminds me, it all started
with an extension course I took in real estate, which in turn had started by me
reading an advertisement on the back of a book of matches. The course was through something called
LaSalle Extension University out of Chicago.
It was all done by mail, of course – no on-line stuff in those
days! The program may have been little more
than an elaborate way to get me to buy books.
I certainly did not earn a California real estate license. But I did realize that I had the ability to
learn and that I was ready and eager to learn.
That was the key for me in education: When I was finally
ready and motivated, I found I loved learning.
I still remember the smell of new and good-condition used text books and
the excited anticipation of unlocking the knowledge that was within them. I would think, “By the end of the semester, I
will know practically everything in this book!”
I took the equivalent of a ¾ load my first semester and full loads
thereafter, once I understood what was involved and found I could handle
it. I used summer semesters to satisfy
any requirements that I could not cover during the fall and spring semesters. After junior college it was the quarter
system, which was even more to my advantage.
Most teachers/professors graded on a curve, where they
fully expect to have a fairly predictable distribution of ‘A’s, ‘B’s and
‘C’s. In my experience, the
“procrastinate and cram” people had little chance of earning ‘A’s, which left
the ’A’s available to the “start early and peck away” people like me. I also found that I was more likely to
participate in class than the average student – maybe because I was more prepared,
or more interested, or was listening better.
In fact, I found that it was almost impossible for me to sit in a class
for an entire period and not say anything.
One more advantage, perhaps, is that I saw the teachers as authority
figures, and I respected them for their knowledge. I think they could feel that when I
participated in class.
In my very first semester in junior college I took a
history class, and in connection with the first test that was given, the
teacher said something to the effect, “Don’t come up to me afterwards and ask,
‘Why did you give me a C?’ Ask ‘What do
I need to do to earn an A?’” That was a
revelation to me. Sure enough, she gave
me a C on that test, and I stayed after class to ask her how I could do
better. She seemed to really appreciate
my attitude and interest (and maybe the respect I was showing) and the last
thing she said to me at the end of our talk was, “I have a feeling that you
will be doing ‘A’ work by the end of the semester.” Sure enough, I earned an ‘A’ for that
class. Actually, I earned all ‘A’s for
the three classes I took that first semester in junior college. But I attribute a lot of that success to that
conversation and early revelation. Years later I heard the saying, “When the
student is ready, the teacher will appear.”
How amazingly true in my life!
That teacher will never know what she did for me.
In the spring semester of that first year in junior
college I took a Shakespeare class, which I enjoyed very much. But the first mid-term paper I submitted
earned the margin note: “You insult your mind when you use it as a mere tape
recorder.” I had heard an interesting
idea in class and thought it would make a good term paper. Evidently, it did not contain any original
thinking that the teacher could discern, but was merely an echoing back to him
of what he had said in class. By the
time we submitted our final term papers I had picked up on how he thought and
what he looked for. I still have a copy
of that term paper from 1968-69 where he wrote on the back of the last page,
“…you should be studying at Harvard. If
I can ever write a recommendation for you, please give me the
opportunity.” You can bet I took him up
on it. In fact, that would be the second
key event in junior college that has made all the difference in my life.
Quick aside: I remember taking a literature class one
summer at College of San Mateo that started with poetry. The first class meeting the teacher handed
out two poems and asked us to indicate which one we liked better. I was with the great majority in choosing the
one that turned out to be from a Hallmark greeting card. The teacher then informed us that the one we
did not respond to very well was one of Shakespeare’s sonnets! For me, at least, this was a very effective
way to get my attention and convince me that when it came to poetry (and
perhaps literature in general) I had a lot to learn. This was not a key event in my education,
except that I was proud of my reaction: Some of my less mature classmates
insisted that the Hallmark greeting card poem was good and Shakespeare “stunk”
or words to that affect. What is that
saying…”A mind is like a parachute: it is no good unless it is open.”
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