Almost
all my life, I have lived in Santa Clara Valley, long before it was
'Silicon Valley' and an Industrial heartland of California. My father
had attended school here, graduating from University of Santa Clara in
Engineering in 1929. He met my mother while attending college, she
attending San Jose State Teachers College at the same time, and working
her way through school as a waitress in the Ice Cream Parlor on South
First Street in downtown San Jose.
Their
parents came to San Jose before World War I, my grandfathers both
businessmen in the San Jose Area upon settling down here. My paternal
grandparents had met and married during the Klondike Gold rush in Nome,
Alaska, and my maternal grandparents migrated here from Kansas City.
Neither of my parents however, began their careers here in San Jose.
My father traveled back East to work for Westinghouse, and my mother
sought a teaching position in the high plains desert of Bishop,
California - near the Nevada Boarder and Death Valley. They soon
returned to San Jose, unaffected by the Great Depression, where they
worked until the coming of World War II brought them to decide to get
married.
The
first born, I was the oldest of three boys raised in a house my father
built with his own hands right after the War. I was an independent
youth, attending Los Gatos Union High during the Kennedy
Administration, and competing in Cross Country and Track events for
four years. I graduated with a PTA Scholarship awarded more because of
my mother's prominence in the Local PTA than any particular scholastic
achievements, and was named an Eagle Scout in the Boy Scout program at
17.
Declining
to enter the military, I sought admissions to San Jose State in 1963,
just a few months before John Kennedy's assassination. I joined the
Scouting Fraternity and ROTC (Reserve Officers Training Corp), and the
second year moved into the red-brick dormitories on campus - where I
stayed until 1968. During this time, I worked vacations winter and
summer in Yosemite Park, in food services, climbing the Yosemite Valley
Walls in my spare moments, and becoming a pretty expert climber with
some 'first assents' to his credit before stopping in 1970.
I had worked on a truck farm harvesting apricots along side Migrant
farm workers throughout my high school summers to amass just enough
funds for my first year in college (my father declining to assist with
any moneys the entire period of my post secondary education).
During
those later years (and I had considerable difficulty finding a subject
to study that I could pass, starting out in Engineering, than
transferring to Business Administration, and finally to Economics,
where something 'clicked' and I began to get better than passing
grades), I became a campus spokesperson for human rights, aligning
myself with the movement formed behind Tommie Smith before his
demonstration in the Mexico City Olympics, and paring off with his ally
- Harry Edwards younger brother, James.
This
was immediately after recommending myself to reorganize the Campus
government and creating at my direction an All College student /
faculty Governing Apparatus, as I had learned a good deal about
leadership while a business and engineering student. James then was
elected the first black student body president, with my leadership, in
the State College and University system, getting the largest voter turn
out in the history of the system, before or since. Where upon I
promptly had an emotional break down that handicapped me the better
part of the next decade, falling victim to campus violence and
subterfuge.
Determine
that James crowning victory, in my opinion, of the entire civil rights
movement would not be overlooked, or passed by, I began to struggle to
write my first of three accounts that eventually were drafted of those
turbulent and confusing years. All three accounts are available in the
Martin Luther King, Memorial Library in San Jose in the California
room, for reading by the public, but on reserve.
That
effort led me to return to San Jose State in 1977 to attain another
degree, this one in History, where by I hoped to change my career from
business management to teaching. I graduated in 1980, but was dissuaded
from going further by Fannelle Rinn, a senior member of the Political
Science faculty, and one Dr. James Pratt, also of the San Jose State
faculty, who both felt I would be wasting an opportunity if I did not
pursue graduate study. I did not have the grades from my undergraduate
years to get a Masters in Economics, though the Department had at one
time considered waiving the requirements to admit me, and so I worked
for the next five years on a Socio/Economic Degree in Marxian economics
in the Social Science Department planning to exit as a Corporate
planner and perhaps a return to my goal as a youth of becoming a
legislative aide.
But
as things do, my path took another direction. I entered a campaign in
the first challenged race for City Councilman downtown, against Susan
Hammer and Tony Estramera, and drove myself to a second break down
requiring at least three years recovery in the mountains of my youth -
working as a laborer in resort work in Mammoth Lakes, Sequoia National
Park, and South Lake Tahoe. The faculty, who had been supportive of
sponsoring me for a Doctorate, having passed the opportunity by, and I
resigned myself to a secondary credential again (as was all academic
work) at San Jose State.
These
became my 'Green years', when, abandoning the Democratic Party of my
youth, for brighter hopes and opportunities, I held several posts for
the next decade, running at one point for State Assembly against Dave
Cortese's father, and then a disappointing effort against Jorge
Gonzalez for this seat on San Jose Unified School Board (in 1996). I
had by that time positioned myself as an appointment of Susan Hammer's
on the Disability Advisory Commission, making no small effort at
successfully defending the homes of the mentally ill near the San Jose
State Campus.
These were heady years, and I labored at menial and thankless tasks to
pay for my education, as I still did not qualify for Federal Financial
aide, and was supported by this time on a small allotment of Social
Security Disability. I had decided to try to get another degree in
History, a Masters, to give me a teaching degree in the Community
College System, I never finding disability or welfare sufficient to
make even subsistence living possible.
Driven to the
point of homelessness, at the end of 1997, when rents and costs of
living went 'through the roof' in Silicon Valley, I
migrated back to Mammoth
Lakes, where I employed myself as a part time Community College
Instructor in
the Social Sciences, and a full time Front Desk Clerk at a major hotel
in town
to cover my needs. My parents having passed on during this period, I
came a year
after my arrival into a rather substantial inheritance that I promptly
invested
in Real Estate, in Second Income Property as a shelter from the
collapse in Wall
Street.
Five years
later, and three properties bought and sold, the inheritance
had about run out due to sour market, and the necessity of constant
refinancing to meet my financial needs. A friend convinced me to move
to the
other side of the Mountains, in Sonora, where again I
went back to work as an
economics Instructor.
For reasons that are still unclear, that prospect fell apart the next
year, and
seeking Social Services, and old friends as I was now almost broke
(again), I
returned to San Jose in 2005 to
enroll in an 'Over Sixties' Program at San Jose
State and acquire a Third Masters in Philosophy (this time) with the
intent to
thereafter commute to nearby UC Santa Cruz when and if
the degree was completed,
for study toward the long withheld Doctorate.
I had
been under contract as a writer for almost 15 years with a literary
agent, producing about 10 manuscripts prepared for publication. And
with the hopes I may yet find employment with a major four year campus
if I succeed at Santa Cruz, I located a new literary agent so that my
works began to be, as I eventually hope, published and made generally
available to the public.
That new path began in 2008. And I have since published the first two
volumes of
my Memoir Trilogy, the first being a ‘coming of age’ story of growing
up in
Santa Clara (Silicon)
Valley in the 50s and 60s. The second, and more bold work,
covering my years with the working poor in San Jose, and being a kind
of ‘rags
to riches’ story, to be followed in 2012 by a Third Volume developing
events in
my years as a more mature and older adult, and thereby cover much of
the recent
success and accomplishment I have completed in the last decade or two
of my
life.
I am, now in the later half of 2011 planning to relocate back in my
beloved Sierra’s again in Sonora. I also have embarked on a new venture
as a columnist for the www.dailypost.org, and am now just
finishing the final requirement with my third Masters– an intense 'exit
exam' planned for this fall.I never married, though I became
engaged twice in the 80s. Not having the financial means to establish a
household and family that would surely, as I hoped, follow.
I attend Scott
Wagers Community Homeless Alliance Ministry at
First Christian Church, have returned to the State Democratic Party –
having
once again, at temporarily relocated much as I always did since
leaving home at
17, in downtown San Jose.
The third
volume of my memoirs is due to be published in early Spring 2012.
