I have said many times that I knew from the age of seven, that I wanted to be an engineer.  What I don't often say is that originally, I wanted to be a pilot in the Marine Corp.  As part of that, my college choice was the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.  However, I found out that I was partially color blind,  I sent away (there was no Google then) for the medical regulations for entering the service academies.  I took that to my eye doctor and he administered the tests.  Fail!  So that was the end of my desire to be a Marine pilot.  The next best thing would be an aeronautical engineer.  If you can't fly them, then design them.  I scouted the country for colleges with that program.  There were very few.  Embry-Riddle and Parks College at Saint Louis University were the two standouts.  Eventually, I decided that I wanted to attend Embry-Riddle.  While in high school, the Guidance Department advised us to apply to at least three colleges, your first choice, a second choice, and a fall-back school that you knew you could go to.  My choices were Embry-Riddle, University of Connecticut, and New Haven College.  I did just that, with an unexpected result.   I was flatly rejected by my fall-back school, wait listed by UConn, and accepted by Embry-Riddle.

At the age of eighteen, I was off to college in Daytona Beach, Florida.  What could go wrong?  My best friend had offered to drive the 1,100 miles, figuring it would be a great adventure.  In those days, I95 ended in Richmond, VA and we would take US 15 and US 301 through most of the South.   These two sheltered white kids from the North, were appalled at what they saw.  White only and Black only rest rooms, despite the 1964 Civil Rights Act.  The poverty was nothing like what we saw in Connecticut  The fact that we managed to make the trip without getting stopped was a miracle.  After a couple of days hanging on the beach, John headed home and I was off to registration.  

Embry-Riddle Aeronautical Institute as it was known at the time, had just moved from Miami to Daytona.  They occupied many of the World War II buildings left at the airport.  The dorm was a large, three-story building shaped like a U  which had served as the Bachelors Officers Quarters when it was a military airbase.  Registration was done at a series of tables set up around the perimeter of the cafeteria in that building.  It was an all-day process for the almost 1,000 new students registering.   Once the preliminary paperwork was done, some headed for the dorm table, while others registered for specific classes.  Needless to say, that by the time I got to the dorm table, the dorm was full.  Now what?  I had registered for classes with room and board.  The college quickly negotiated with a local motel to serve as a temporary dorm for the first trimester.  My dorm room was assigned to the Silver Sands Motel..... ON THE BEACH!   What could go wrong?   After registration was complete, I loaded my bags on the school shuttle van for the five-mile ride to my dorm.  The Silver Sands had two buildings.  One was regular motel rooms and lobby and the other was a two-story building with efficiency apartments.  I was assigned to an efficiency apartment on the second floor, at the end of the building by the beach.  The apartments had a large bedroom, bathroom, kitchen and a combined dining/living area.  The school had two beds in the bedroom and two more in the living area.

Once settled into my bedroom space, I joined several other guys on a trip to the 7-11 for some adult beverages.  After several hours roaming the beach and consuming beverages, I returned to my dorm room.    I was in the kitchen preparing something to eat when one of the students sleeping in the living room space began yelling about being disturbed.  Being tired and a little inebriated, we had a verbal jousting match until he threatened to become physical.  At that point, I encouraged him to try.  He came at me in a threatening way.  I swung and hit him in the face.  He fell to the floor unconscious.   The next morning, I found myself in the Dean's office being assigned to a new dorm room in the same building.  An auspicious start to my college career.

Living in the motel on the beach was a problem in one way.  I had paid for room and board, meaning that my meals were paid for.  The school had a shuttle bus that ran between the motel and the campus, but the schedule was built around class schedules.  So much of that meal ticket went unused.  I was often left to scrounge whatever I could from the 7-11 down the street.  The rest of my first trimester is a blur.    During that trimester, the school purchased an apartment complex about a mile or two from the school to be used as dorms.  The Nova Road complex was being built by a church but they had run out of money to finish it.  Embry-Riddle bought it and rushed to get it finished in time to begin the next trimester in January,

The apartment complex consisted of eight 2-story buildings arranged in a rectangle.  There were three buildings down each side of an open grass plaza and one building across the front and one across the back.  The front building had an open central hallway down the middle.  On the front side of that hall were 2-person efficiency apartments.  The consisted of one large bedroom, a bathroom, large living room and efficiency kitchen.  The back side of that hallway had 3-person apartments similar to the front apartments except it had a larger bedroom and full-sized kitchen.  For my second trimester, I was assigned one of the efficiency apartments with a guy named Derrick.  We got along just fine.  However, I spent most of that semester completely inebriated.  There was an orange grove within walking distance.  Every Saturday, I walked down and bought several bottles of fresh orange juice.  I came back to the dorm and poured half of the juice into a spare bottle and filled them all with vodka.  I drank myself into oblivion that trimester.  I don't know why, other than I could.

I have one other memory about that trimester.  If you remember, I wanted to go to the Naval Academy, but couldn't because of my color blindness.  A Navy recruiter visited the campus and talked about the Navy AVROC or Aviation Reserve Officer Candidate program.  That program could provide another opportunity to fly.  But there was a difficult test that had to be passed in order to get in.  Both Derrick and I signed up for the test and we both passed.  We were told that we were the only two out of twenty that took the test.  However, in 1967, you needed parental signatures to actually sign into the military.  Because of the ongoing conflict in Viet Nam, my mother would not sign.  So that opportunity passed by.  The trimester ended in late April without incident.  I survived my alcoholism and went home for the summer.

Academically, I was not a great student.  But given my alcoholism, I am not surprised.  Two of my professors stand out.  Physics I & II were taught by William Traut.  He was an escapee from Nazi Germany and was an interesting character.  He referred to us as "Gentlemen".  He would say "Gentlemen, you can bring anything you want to my tests, but if you don't know Physics, you will not pass".  I remember that he drove a small car, maybe a Dotson, and he was very big on efficiency.  He would not roar up on a Stop sign and put on the brakes because that was a waste of energy.  He would take his foot off the gas and coast into the stop sign.    I remember one class session when we were discussing friction.   The classroom was an amphitheater type room with seats rising on a slope from the blackboards.  There was a platform in front that he lectured from.  In this particular class, there was a lab cart on wheels sitting on the platform.  Mr Traut is talking about the importance of friction.  He stood there pretending to push the lab cart but sliding his feet.  He explained "Gentlemen, without friction, you can not move the cart.  Ah, but Gentlemen, with friction"... and he proceeded to push the cart right off the platform.  Mr Traut was correct, if you did not know Physics, you did not pass his tests.  I learned a lot of Physics from Mr. Traut.

Roger Campbell was a Humanities professor.  I took several classes with him, including Religions of Man and Philosophy.   He used to sit cross-legged,on a table in the front of the classroom  and speak to his class.  He would often reach over his head with his left arm to scratch his right ear.  He was an unassuming bald man who did not tolerate lack of interest in his classes.  If you did not want to participate or pay attention, then he would ask you to leave.  

I want to back-track a little.  The summer after I graduated from high school, in 1966, I left home and spent the summer living at my girlfriends parents home in West Haven.  Actually, Sheran and I were engaged by that time.  We spent a great summer together.  A typical weekend was movie night on Friday night, stock car races at West Haven Speedway on Saturday night, and Sunday was smooching up on West Rock.  Our favorite movie venue was the Milford Drive-in.  It was located on US 1, less than two miles from my parent home.  Opening in 1939 as Connecticut's first drive-in, it had a snack bar, playground for kids and a capacity of 500 cars.  It was a great date night spot.  Sadly, it was torn down in 1978 and replaced by a modern in-door theater.

Saturday found us at West Haven Speedway for the stock car races.  West Haven was site of one of the largest amusement parks on the East Coast.  Known as Savin Rock, the park was well known all over the country especially for the Thunderbolt roller coaster.  Sadly, the hurricane of 1938 did very serious damage to Savin Rock from which it never recovered.  But after WWII, auto racing became a big sport and the West Haven Speedway was home track for many of the well known drivers.  We spent many Saturdays watching the races.  After a busy Friday and Saturday night, Sundays were spent smooching it up on West Rock.  West Rock is a 700 foot tall mountain ridge just west of New Haven.  We typically  were double  dating with Sheran's best friend.  We would find a quiet parking space and just spend the time hugging and kissing.  But the end of the summer came and I was off to college.  When I came home for summer break in April 1967, I returned to my parents house in Milford.  Sheran and I were due to get married at the end of the summer.  But I called her and suggested that I wanted to delay the wedding.  To Sheran, that mean a few months, but to me it meant four years.  I wanted to experience college without being married.  Obviously, that did not go over well and it was the end of the engagement.

For the most part, my summers were spent working and saving money to go back to school.  Each summer, my father arranged a job because of his connections.  I think the first summer it was with the sprinkler fitter.   The company installed fire sprinklers in industrial and commercial buildings.  I was assigned to the BF Goodrich factory construction site in Shelton, CT.  This building was being built to make sponge rubber for mattresses and pillows.  I  was assigned to assit an old-time sprinkler fitter that did not think much of smart-ass college kids.  He really worked  me that summer.  The day before my last day on the job, he asked if I thought I worked hard this summer and I replied in the affirmative.  He laughed and said just wait until tomorrow.  I didn't bother showing up the next day.

My sophomore year found me back at the Nova Road dorm.  But rather than a two-person efficiency, I was assigned to a three-person apartment still located in the front building.   

My sophomore year is when I became fully engaged in the college experience.  I ran for and was elected to the Student Government Association (SGA) and eventually became the Secretary in the fall of 1968.  The school was continuing it's rapid expansion.  Part of that expansion was the addition of two very large portable buildings, one for the Student Center and the other for the library.  The Student center included the Mail Room.  The walls around the mail room were covered in old post office boxes.  Each student was assigned a box for their incoming mail.  I actually had a work-study job in the mail room.  Jim, the mail supervisor picked up the college mail at the post office every morning.  Part of my job was to sort the mail into the correct student box.  I also spent a lot of time repairing the locks on the old mail boxes.  It helped pay the bills and I enjoyed working there.

When the school had the Student Center put in students complained that there was no fast food available there.  You could not grab a coffee or soft drink or get a sandwich there.  You had to go down the street to the cafeteria for that.  In response to the student complaints, the school announced that they would explore a fast food bar in the building.  Seeing an interesting opportunity and having a little experience with commercial food prep, my room mate from the Spring 67 semester and I decided to put in a proposal.  We set out to discover all of the food wholesalers in the area and get pricing and other info from them.  We created a simple menu of sandwiches and drinks and then found equipment suppliers.  In the end, we submitted a proposal with menu and costs.  There were many things that we never gave thought to like insurance and issues with being an employer.  In the end, the school chose the large provider, known as Canteen Corp.  We were obviously disappointed but it probably worked out for the best.  We both learned a lot from the experience.

At the beginning of the second half of my Sophomore year I attended a pledge party for Engineering Fraternity on campus.  I knew several guys that had pledged during the fall and decided that I wanted to join.   That was arguably THE BEST decision I made during my entire college experience.   Sigma Phi Delta is an International Professional Fraternity.  I was fortunate that they had a few beds available in the off-campus frat house and I moved out of the dorm into the house with another pledge.  There are just so many stories about the pledging experience.  But that experience is what led to some very tight friendships lasting almost fifty years.    There are three or four Fraternity Brothers that I consider to be very close friends and talk to on a regular basis.  The culmination of the pledge period was Hell Night.  I am not going to go into any detail, just understand that the night was named appropriately.  That said, I believe that that night is what cemented the bond that I have with that handful of brothers.  I would do it again in a heart beat!

The summer of 1969 was a pivotal year for me.  I was working first shift as a material handler in the manufacturing company that my father worked at.  I worked in the heat treating department.  The company made industrial pressure and temperature gauges.  Pressure gauges consisted of a metal tube which is sealed and curved.  As the pressure increases, the tube tries to straighten out.  The amount of movement causes the needle to move.