My intent to go ahead with graduate work, perhaps, at MIT or Cornell involved many side issues in my life. The year 1961 rocked with our national fear and concerns over Sputnik, the Cold War crisis boiling over again in Berlin and the spread of world wide Communism in Cuba and in Vietnam. Would I be called to serve in the military?
The historical summary below highlights the politics of the era.
World Communism on the March
a) Berlin Airlift – 1948 to 1949
b) East German Workers’ Revolt, against the Volkspolizei, VoPos, – 1953
b) Hungarian Revolution – 1956
c) Fidel Castro in Cuba – 1959
d) German Democratic Republic, GDR, or die Deutsche Demokratische Republik, DDR, meant the Berlin Wall of August, 1961
My color blindness that had been discovered by an ROTC medical technician during my sophomore year at the Lowell Technological Institute, LTI, disqualified me from a potential career as a jet fighter pilot in the Air Force. Since my own interests were clearly focused on an R&D position analogous, but more rigorous than the positions that I had already held in previous summers at the Air Force Cambridge Research Labs in Bedford, MA, my acceptance of a non-qualification status as a fighter pilot candidate did not set me back emotionally.
Fortunately, my exposure to the ROTC programs at LTI only helped to confirm in me the belief that the national security of the country might best be ensured through my deep interest in physics, chemistry and mathematics. Maybe, I could make a contribution as a researcher? Of course, as a newly minted, young graduate from a yet-to-be-recognized technical institute, my national ranking as the proud holder of a Bachelor of Science, B.S., might have appeared rather modest, and truly unimpressive in the critical eyes of the admissions officers at MIT and Cornell.
My grades as a junior and a senior had gradually improved over those in my previous, two years. As a junior in the Department of Physics, I had managed a respectable GPA of 3.4 out of a top 4.0 rating, but in my senior year, that GPA count went straight up to the vaunted 4.0 that most college students dreamed of attaining. Perhaps, for the first time in my life, I felt that I had achieved something of value and importance – a medal of merit to pin onto the rather shabby garments of that scruffy kid from a poor, Franco-American neighborhood where personal aspirations were usually tainted by several parochial and ethnic limitations, plus bruising, economic failures. Often, that situation meant a job in the cotton mills with a pregnant wife at home and two young ones in diapers to nurture and raise.
At that time, in early September of 1961, my Dad had been dead for eight and one-half years. Thoughts of colorful, autumn leaves and new surroundings in central Pennsylvania assumed a nurturing allure of peace and solace. Mom and the rest of the family, Bob, Michelle and Denise, were safe at home. They would be okay or, I least, they would, somehow, manage without my modest contribution to the family budget. Fortunately, the Physics Department at Penn State would be providing me the needed financial assistance covering tuition plus room and board as payment for my accepting a teaching assistant-ship in that department. It was a deal too good to be true, but it was true and I was most receptive!
My Mom, Aunt Lida, Aunt Florence, la jeune, plus Uncle Gerry and Uncle Albert represented the local, adult family tree of common history, shared concerns and warm moments of laughter, religious celebrations and sips of brandy, and occasional beer toast plus a Sunday pot roast plus Mom’s tapioca pudding. Leaving all that congenial support behind meant a sudden rupture in my world. Not ever having experienced a true separation from this familial ambiance meant that uncertainty and, yes, a little bit of anxiety entered my sub-conscious being.
“How would I react in a world not totally permeated with a peculiar, working-class, French-Canadian, Catholic set of opinions and ideas? Was there a comfortable place in the larger world for a hesitant, but curious and willing young man with many illusions and tenuous hopes, dreams and aspirations?”
Big decisions with potential risks might define the official steps toward adulthood, but my psyche ached everywhere. I was barely adult enough to easily accept these challenges.
These were serious issues for which I had no easy answers. Except for Uncle Lucien, Colonel Lucien Bolduc of the U.S. Army and a West Point graduate, no one in my immediate family had ever dared to venture very far from Lowell’s familiar alleys, byways and neighborhoods. This, then, might be a chance for me to establish some new ground rules. Certainly, Lewis and Clark must have sensed similar uncertainties when they first ventured off through the vast, unchartered territories to the west of St-Louis, Missouri, in the early 1800s. My own tests and trials would surely be challenging but in comparison to these national heroes, there seemed to be no authentic reason for my curious questions and hesitations.
LTI, with its many students coming from nearby Massachusetts and New Hampshire townships, had offered me an opportunity to better see and accept the outside world through the broader vision of non-local eyeballs. The day-to-day reactions of fellow students expressed at convocations and in the various classrooms clearly were not simply carbon copies of viewpoints heard in the Acre, Pawtucketville, Little Canada or in the Centralville neighborhoods. Other people held onto strange beliefs and convictions. I needed, somehow, to challenge myself to become more open to a broader Weltanschauung (world view) than I had developed to date.
Students coming from New York City and others from Brazil and India appeared even more unique and unusual to my naive, parochial eyes. Clearly, we don’t all see the world with the same set of values, behaviors and aspirations. Yet, it seemed quite exciting to enjoy these cultural differences that shape and mold our individual personalities. Everyone at Lowell Tech (now, U-Mass-Lowell) seemed to be a unique product, an amalgam of his or her combined, early influences. Such a curious world that we were asked to inhabit!
As I prepared for this new adventure, the accumulated impressions of 22 years of life experience along the Merrimack River in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, seemed projected as onto a movie screen for me to review.
Some Left Behind
“Who would I be leaving behind as central Pennsylvania engulfed me with its verdant woods, fields, farmers’ pastures and craggy valleys?” My immediate family, for sure.
My friend Fred Kennedy, a fellow student in the Physics and Math Program at LTI, and I had discussed our plans (hopes, really) for graduate studies at various universities. These talks were quite informal since neither he nor I had received an invitation to undertake advanced studies at any American academic center. The other students in my graduating class seemed more interested in immediately seeking technical employment with R&D firms in the area and, then, pursuing more advanced studies. All situations were unique, but I knew from personal interchanges with a few that their immediate plans focused on finding a job ASAP since their G.I. Bill benefits only modestly covered their family responsibilities as fathers and husbands.
But, my high school friends, George, Roger, Herbert, Norbert (Herb’s brother), and Richard, all had girls and romance in their inspirational futures. They would probably get hitched up in the coming years and start little families of their own. Soon, they would face apartment rents, baby bottles, crying youngsters in wet diapers, and all the usual daily rewards and troubles of being responsible new adults.
Romantic Connections
In contrast, I, myself, did not aspire for such a potential socioeconomic disaster! For me, an attractive young lady, a pretty smile, an intelligent face with sensitive insights, a frilly blouse and a dance in her step were all flashing, warning signs of possible, emotional commitments and a dire entanglement in the eternal, Lowell dilemma, which had engulfed all my relatives.
“Caution! Danger ahead! “
“Beware of losing yourself in Nature’s lovely snares all leading to financial despair and that sucking sound of a quiet, empty desperation!”
H.D. Thoreau’s comment came to mind:
“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”
Of course, I exaggerated, but my concerns did run very deep. Most working men living on Dana and Ludlam Streets did not have the buying power to comfortably support and enjoy a family, even a small family of wife and child. Beautiful girls and women will always need a healthy bankroll of bucks to feel safe and secure in Lowell’s rough, industrial, gritty and sooty reality, the true, grinding machinery of America, the Beautiful.
A solid job and a healthy bankroll certainly did not seem to be even a remote possibility for me at the time. Such was life in the Big City, or so it seemed to this naive, young man filled with fuzzy dreams of eventually not always being scared of life’s constant, unpredictable misfortunes that giggled inside my stomach like tiny shards of broken glass.
A Brief Review of those LTI Years – 1957 to 1961
My four years spent as an undergraduate at LTI had taken me away from Polish picnics, local dances, Canobie Lake Park carnival rides, summer downtown festivals, historical events and more. My four years at this technical institute were regularly marked by a self-imposed, austere approach of intense efforts and concentration. Only in my senior year, did I lighten up and, occasionally, partake of the wine, women and song offered to many students at the German Club parties, which Professor Henry Myers of the German Department regularly offered for our pleasure and enlightenment.
For me, those years were mostly “all work and no play” with a personal “do or die” grim determination and unswerving commitment to succeed.
My four years of technical training at LTI had prepared me for many, subsequent years of technological jujitsu in academic institutions and in government-funded R&D at two National Labs, the Air Force Cambridge Research Lab, several NASA projects plus defense establishments at Physics International, Mission Research, Honeywell Inc. and elsewhere. (continued in next chapter)