My Memoirs - Citizen of the World

The salaries in Portugal at the time were very low. For example,
my wife’s starting salary as an elementary school teacher was
1,500 escudos per month. At the exchange rate of 28 escudos per
dollar, this was the equivalent of roughly 50 dollars per month.
My salary - because I was Portuguese - was one-fifth of what my
American subordinates received. I had, indeed, a very good salary
compared to most Portuguese people living outside the base, but I
still found it to be unfair. I remember that my salary, at the GS-11
rate, was 6000 escudos a month. This was the equivalent of 200
US dollars. My responsibilities were substantial, and, because of
this terrible disparity in compensation, I had always dreamed of
coming to the United States. I would become an American citizen,
return to Portugal, and continue working on the base where I
would finally be compensated fairly for my job classification.
English Conversation Course on the Radio
I was always thinking of something else to do, and I created a
project called, The People to People Program of the United States.
It was an incentive program for an employee to create and improve
- in any way possible - the best education and life for the
community at large. My project was to write and prepare an
English Language Conversational Course, free of charge, to be
broadcast over the nine Azores Islands. I invested many hours of
my time preparing the cassettes to be presented and donated to the
Radio Club of Angra (RCA), one the most powerful Portuguese
Radio Stations in the Azores. There was no television in those
days, so radio was the only medium besides newspapers.
The program was very successful and I was very proud of it
because it was the first of its kind. For my volunteer work, without
monetary compensation, I received an award for Outstanding
Services from the US Government.
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