WINTER 2012 - National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and ...

Gary L. Wamsley
definitely aware I had only one suit, which I had bought from J.C. Penney for
my high school graduation.
Although working at the stadium paid relatively well, it was spasmodic and
thus not enough to meet my expenses. As I discovered, however, I could get
other work through an office at UCLA that listed odd jobs available around
campus. The real estate in this area was some of the most expensive in the
country and was inhabited by movie stars, corporate executives, and bankers.
They hired UCLA students for small jobs like cleaning windows, clearing brush,
cleaning stables, painting, cleaning rugs, and the like. I did a variety of jobs
for movie stars like Dick Powell and June Allyson, Keenan Wynn, and Joan
Blondell, as well as business executives and the Bel Aire Association. They were
all nice enough people, and I cannot say they treated me unkindly. I do not
know if they viewed me and other students as merely inexpensive labor or saw
employing us as a charitable act. Regardless, their homes, cars, clothes (indeed,
their very lives) were so far from my experiences these people might as well have
been from another planet. How, I wondered, could they live like that in the same
country and city as the folks I worked with in the pickle factory or steel mills?
I knew my college education would mean my economic situation was probably
temporary. Still, I could not shake the thought that many people I had been
working with would have to spend their lives in such poor conditions, and it
disturbed me.
After graduating from UCLA and its ROTC program, I served as a
commissioned officer in the Air Force for four and a half years. Socioeconomic
class and rank structure in the military are complex issues I need not go into
here, but will simply note that I entered the service as an officer because I had a
college education.
DOCTORAL EDUCATION AND A GROWING CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS
After leaving military service, I returned to California as a budget analyst
in the governor’s Bureau of the Budget. It was a crash course in the politics
of bureaucracy and administration, one an MA in political science had failed
to provide, but after a year or so I decided I did not want to make it a career
and decided to pursue a PhD in public administration. My grades in college
had never been great, and I had considerable trouble finding a program that
would provide a fellowship. It was probably my surprisingly high GRE scores
(certainly not my grades) that helped me land a National Defense Education Act
Fellowship (something that no longer exists, unfortunately) at the University of
Pittsburgh. I was extremely grateful that such a fellowship was available because
without it, I could never have pursued a PhD.
When I arrived in Pittsburgh with a wife and three children (soon to be
four), I learned public housing was the only place we could afford to live. Our
apartment was in the somewhat infamous Hill District, and we were chosen
96 Journal of Public Affairs Education