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

Class Rooms
although I did, but not knowingly. I discovered comic books. Several kids
from the neighborhood and I bought and shared these learned masterpieces.
Someone told me I could find equally exciting reading at the local library,
where everything was free to loan. I borrowed books and started learning about
interesting people and things, such as Al Capone, Clara Barton, Davy Crocket,
Daniel Boone, the FBI, and sports stories, mostly subjects I had heard of on TV.
The people I was reading about were far more interesting than the Jim and Jane
See Spot Run tripe we endured in school.
I eventually realized formal learning is a maze to decode. This epiphany helped
me survive my later grade school and middle school years with A’s, B’s, and a
declining number of C’s. By junior high, I was cranking, even sometimes making
the honor roll. I still hated all that structure; but, again, the authorities required
you to find your way through this labyrinth, so I succumbed, at least outwardly.
My high school years were a paradigm of misspent youth. Most boys at my
working-class high school put a premium on bad grades. It was OK if the girls
got A’s and B’s, but not the guys. The boys equated this with “acting smart,” a
big no-no. In responding to these pressures, I spent my high school years looking
for dates, shooting pool, playing euchre, listening to rock and roll and rhythm
and blues, playing basketball, and engaging in other action-oriented activities. I
was a slouch, doing everything but studying. I read many sports magazines, but
that was about it. In 1965, I learned that despite flunking one or two courses I
had enough credits to graduate, even if it was on Double Secret Probation, as
Dean Wormer said in the classic film Animal House.
1965–1966: SURGERY AND A LONG RECOVERY
I had not thought much about life after high school. Nobody in my family
ever mentioned my attending college, which is not surprising given my parents
and grandparents never completed high school, and they all held blue-collar
jobs. They rarely interacted with people who had gone to college, other than the
doctors, pharmacists, and other “professionals” they encountered sometimes.
I attended college for medical reasons. In 1964, during fall semester of my
senior year in high school, an orthopedic surgeon diagnosed me with scoliosis
(spinal curvature) and recommended surgery. Shortly after finishing high
school in 1965, I began wearing a back brace that rested on my hips with steel
rods extending to my chin and behind my head. Five months later, the doctor
operated. I went home from the medical center on a stretcher in an ambulance
to spend the next 5 months lying on my back in a rented hospital bed while my
spinal fusion healed. It was a long winter.
Sometime during those 5 months, a representative from the West Virginia
State Rehabilitation Department contacted my mother and scheduled a
conference with her. When they met, he explained that because of my back
Journal of Public Affairs Education 31