DelBloggolo: BACK IN THE DAY

Monday, February 09, 2015

BACK IN THE DAY

Soderling, the star college halfback, was taking a math exam. The coach desperately needed him to play in the big football game on Saturday, so the professor agreed to give him an oral exam. "All right," said the professor: "How many degrees are there in a circle?" "Uh, depends," said Soderling. "How big is that there circle?"

Growing up in Brooklyn, the idea of a college education was a lofty ambition. Coming from a blue-collar family, no one had gone to college, maybe night school, but never college. My dad had a high school education and didn’t finish it, worked in factories all his adult life but mom did and went on to secretarial work for a short while before marriage.

As I grew up, they stressed the concept of how someone was educated and they respected that. They never pushed college on us because they couldn’t afford it, so as a high school student, I looked around me and saw everyone else in high school wanting to go to college and preparing, and so I decided somehow I would try to do the same.

Although dad didn’t have any money to send me, he was enthusiastic about my going, but I would have to provide for myself. So what did I do? I picked one of the most expensive colleges around and set off on a time of hardship and hard work, long days and sleepless nights and a constant battle against the odds.

Joe College

To make matters worse, in my junior year, I was a passenger in a automobile accident that cost me a year and a half of time leaving me laid up with a cast and anxious. I had to put my dream on hold.

Working all summer, foregoing any pleasures a young man craved, I saved all my money to afford tuition and carfare, and the endless cost of art and photography supplies, breaking me constantly to the point that I would hide in the toilet on the train so I didn’t have to pay the carfare. I had no money for food since it went all to books and tuition and supplies. I hitchhiked from the train station to the campus, but in my heart and soul I knew that the only help I would get in this world was coming from me. Then a turn in my luck occurred, when my last year at school, my aunt and uncle offered me their residence for free, even giving me food so I could finish with the hardship. Their gift to me was my own life and future, something to this day I will never forget. I vowed that I would not let my kids go through that if possible, and so stayed the course. Yes, I thought about my kids before I even had any!

Uncle Frank

Aunt Marie

I am grateful not only to my aunt and uncle, but the encouragement of my parents and the college itself, for giving me the hope and tools to have a decent life, one filled with hope and dreams.

My parents saw me graduate college with a 4-year degree, my grandmother saw her only grandson with a college 4-year degree and I saw the end of a nightmare and the beginning of a life’s journey.