Before I Met Sandy

High School, College & Army - 17 and 18

I was fortunate to have some outstanding teachers in high school, Mr. Barrett in math, Miss Simmons in English and Mr. Power in chemistry and physics. Miss Simmons believed in reincarnation, and she further believed that she was Cleopatra reincarnated. This was not a secret, as she would proclaim it from time to time. She didn't use a text book for grammar. She developed her own mimeographed course, which she called, "Grammar with a Hammer". A little strange, but an excellent teacher. Mr. Power was also an excellent teacher, but was on a temporary teaching permit because he couldn't pass the licensing exams. He was a very nice guy, and could explain what he knew, but had difficulty learning new stuff. This was particularly noticeable after the atom bombs were dropped on Japan in 1945. I was in his chemistry class and he and the class had to learn about atomic energy at the same time. In one assembly program during my junior year, teachers decided to have a quiz program of juniors against senior. I think Miss Simmons was the instigator because she did not teach seniors, and would talk on and on about her "brain trust". There were 8 juniors on a team against the team of 8 seniors. Pete Poletti  asked the questions. About halfway through the match, he turned to the juniors and said, "I'll give you 5 seconds to divide 75 by a half." I raised my hand and shouted 150. Pete said that I was wrong. I sat there trying to figure out what he meant when I noticed Mr. Barrett, all 6'6" of him, unfolding himself from his seat and saying, "Pete, he's right." Each correct answer was worth 5 points. I scored 95 out of the 190 the juniors' total. The seniors had 225.		1947	Weldon E. Howitt was the principal of the high school for as long as anyone could remember, but had retired about 1944. At graduation, he gave a $25 prize for "Advanced Physical Science". Until my senior year, it had been given to the senior who received the highest mark on the physics regents exam. I got 100% on my physics regents. That year, the prize was given to the senior who had the highest regents average in chemistry and physics. I scored only a 96 on the chemistry regents, but Kuno Schwartz had a 98 in chemistry and a 99 in physics, so he won the prize. Two years later, when Lee had the highest average, and the highest physics regents mark, the prize was given to a girl who took chemistry in her senior year, instead of physics, and scored higher on that regents than Lee did on physics. When the district built a new school, it was named after Mr. Howitt.
June 1947	I graduated. It was assumed that I would go to college - I was a great student with wonderful marks, my overall high school regents average was above 95%, so how could I not go to college? But I did not want to go. I didn't know what I wanted to do, but I did know that I didn't want college. The idea of going to college wasn't scary, it was repellent, and I don't know why. I was never able to even broach the subject with my parents, so I went to the University of Michigan engineering school. I was not interested in engineering, but it was felt that that was where I belonged and I could not refuse. For whatever reason, I was not housed on campus with the freshman. I was 7 miles away in Ypsilanti in old army barracks with upper classmen, with a U of M bus as the only transportation between the two. It was a very unhappy situation and I did badly. In the second semester, I moved on campus, but I had no interest in the work and I did poorly. I never went back and I have never regretted not having a college degree, but I'm sure that my parents were greatly disappointed.		1947
November 1948 Ah! The warrior and the movie star. After my one disastrous year at the University of Michigan, I enlisted in the army because, for one year only, the army allowed 18 year-olds to enlist for one year and were then exempted from the draft.	Congress liked the one-year enlistment idea, it was theirs, but the army hated it. They had no programs for us and didn't know what to do with us. The army wasn't permitted to send us overseas, and there was nothing for us to do in peacetime in the U.S. The result was that in my 52 weeks in the army, I went through the 8 week basic training course 5 times. I also had 4 weeks of leadership school, a month's worth of furloughs, and the rest of the time was just wasted. Towards the end of my enlistment, I was assigned to the Engineering Corps, where I learned how to use a gin pole, with and without a dead man. I also learned how to put together a ponton bridge, but we 18 year olds were not allowed to touch the equipment. We did learn how to chop grass with sharpened sticks because we engineers didn't have lawnmowers. It wasn't a bad way to spend a year, and I did enjoy the close order drills, especially when I was the acting drill sergeant. There were some fun times. One of the first things that happened after induction into the army was the taking of the Army General Classification Test (AGCT). This was 2 three hour sessions of multiple choice tests. Dad had a friend who was a research psychologist at NYU. He had needed volunteers to take tests he was devising, so dad volunteered Lee and me. From about 1944 to 46, we would go to NYU to take tests, so I learned how to take them and how they were scored. The AGCT was just another test to me. I listened very carefully to the directions, and when the emphasis was on answering every question, whether you knew the answer or not, I knew how the test would be scored. The machine would record only incorrect answers. So, I answered only questions when I was reasonably sure that I knew the answer. My score was 796 out of a possible 800, which actually meant that, of the questions I answered, I got 4 wrong.
The AGCT score was part of my permanent record and got me some respect from the non-commissioned and commissioned officers, who kept trying to get me to sign up for officer's candidate school. I think it was also responsible for the 3 promotions that I got in the one year. Every soldier gets a copy of the army field manual, which is an instruction book on how to be a soldier and the rules and regulation. I actually read it, so I knew, at least in theory, how things were supposed to work. So, for instance, when the platoon is standing at attention, rifles on shoulders, and the drill sergeant orders, "Right Face", I knew that was an illegal command, because the field manual says that you cannot give a facing command when rifles are on shoulders, and would therefore holler, "As you were." thereby countermanding the order. This happened so frequently with one drill sergeant that he started asking me which commands he could give.		I had received a furlough in April 1949 to go home for Easter/Passover. The train left Columbus, Georgia very late at night, and by the time I got there, it was crowded. I got onto the first car of the 3 car train and started pushing my way back. The second car seemed just as crowded. I kept pushing, and miraculously, the back of the car was fairly empty. I walked into the last car and found lots of empty seats, so I laid down in one and went to sleep. I was awakened some time later by 2 conductors. The white one shook me awake, while the black one just stood there. The white one told me that I would have to move to the front of the train since the back was reserved for blacks. Came the dawn! It was then I realized why there were so many empty seats. He pointed to a sign which said that rule 48 of the Georgia Public Service Commission reserves the back for blacks. I told him that since we were going to Washington, that made it an interstate trip, the Interstate Commerce Commission had no such stupid rule, and I refused to move. They went away and I went back to sleep. We were near Washington when I woke, the car was full of white people and the train was 8 cars long. Apparently, when they added cars, they made the blacks move back. One summer day, at Fort Benning, Georgia, our platoon was out in the field using sharpened sticks to cut grass, when a runner arrived with orders for me to get into my Class A uniform and report to a lieutenant in a company classroom. I rushed back to the company area, showered, changed and reported to the lieutenant. He asked me the speed of light, I told him, he thanked me and told me to go back to whatever I was doing before. In late September, 1949, about three weeks before I was to be discharged, I was put up for promotion and was told to report to the battalion commander, a major I didn't know. This was to be my interview for the promotion. He started by questioning me on engineering topics - gin poles, trenching equipment, bridges, etc. I wasn't able to answer all of his questions. Then he asked if I knew the binomial expansion theorem and the quadratic formula. I told him I did. He asked me to explain them since he was going to take a test for a promotion and he just couldn't understand them. We worked on them for a while until he got them. He then told me that he was going to approve my promotion, not because I knew anything of benefit to the army, but because I was a good boy.