School Days

We attended Washington Elementary school which was about one mile from our house, all down hill going and all up hill coming home. Most mornings my mom took us and most afternoons we had to walk home. This school probably had about 400 students and was a typical elementary school. Joanne and I for the first time didn’t share a teacher. One day when walking home we stopped at the liquor store and bought ice cream bars and wouldn’t you know it who should drive by to give us a ride home but our mom. We tried to ditch the evidence but we were caught. Our punishment was that my mother kept our money in the cupboard and we had to ask for it instead of having free control of it.

La Cumbre Junior High was much further away and most of the time we road a bus to get there. This school was 7th, 8th and 9th grade. Mr. Bennett was my favorite math teacher. To teach us about percentages we played a game called Stocks and Bonds where we “bought and sold” stocks and bonds.

For high school we all went to Santa Barbara High. It too wasn’t close, most of the time we drove ourselves. I was in an independent math study class, where we messed around most of the time. About every two weeks the teacher would ask us where we were in our studies and we would claim to be just about to the end of a chapter. Then we would study for a night and take the test, then go back to messing around for another couple of weeks. Since this was California in the mid 70’s I don’t think I got a very good education. For instance I took current events for both years of high school, so I never studied WWI or WWII. In English I never read a classic, but because I loved science I took biology and chemistry. I was a very good student. Since we were so involved in Amigos we didn’t participate in very many activities in high school.

I left high school a year early to attend University of Southern California (USC) on an early acceptance program. Roy was already attending USC and I couldn’t see the point of staying for my last year in high school since I was going to be taking a lot of advance placement classes. My roommate for the first two years was Patricia Kelly (later to become Maas), she was a transfer junior. She was from Los Angeles and very active in the band, so for the second year of college I joined the USC Trojan Marching Band. I wasn’t coordinated enough to twirl a flag nor did I play an instrument so instead I got the perfect job, I held the ladder for Art Bartner, the band director. So every time he was out on the field I stood under the ladder and held it so it was stable. It was very easy and I got to travel with the band, going to all the football games for free. As a junior I pledged Kappa Kappa Gamma Sorority. The Greek system was very big at USC and I had a wonderful time being a Kappa. I had many different roommates in the Kappa House, my favorite was Jody Levy. I received a BS in Biology, applied to medical school and didn’t get in. In college I met and dated Tom Thomas for eventually seven years.

Since I didn’t get into medical school I went to UCLA and got a Masters in Public Health with an emphasis in Health Education. I shared an apartment in Santa Monica with a law student (Laural Terry) and a kinesiology major (Julie Ronan). During the summer I had Carolyn Hanes another public health student for a roommate.
Upon finishing UCLA I realized that I didn’t really have anything to teach people so I decided to go to optometry school, but it was too late to apply so I spent a year living with Joanne while she was attending Pacific University’s School of Optometry. We had so much fun living back together. The town was so small that it was a big event when they opened a MacDonald’s. We used to go most Sundays for a treat.

I really liked the LA area so I came back there to attend the Southern California College of Optometry. My first two years I lived with Amy Longacre, who was a junior. We had a small little apartment about three blocks from the school. The classes were tough but since I loved math it was right up my alley. For my third and fourth year I shared a house with Joanne Hanes, the sister of one of my roommates from UCLA. Joanne and Carolyn came from a large, fun family that lived close by. I spent many days at their parent’s pool. I even went to Australia and New Zealand with the family. I got both a BS in Visual Science and a Doctor of Optometry, graduating in 1984.