A Brief Review of those LTI Years 1957 to 1961 (continued)
Some fellow students arrived with a solid year of prep school training while others attended as GI Bill veterans with several years of practical electronics experience, which was so essential in the military. These fortunate few represented my direct competition against which my efforts were to be measured.
“Would I be good enough to make the grade? My continued,
scholarship funding depended on very good grades.”
Fortunately, my previous four years of high school at the College Saint-Joseph on Merrimack Street held me in good stead, but it would be way off the mark to think of that training as technically thorough as that offered, for instance, at Brooklyn Polytechnical High School. Frankly, I felt under the gun and outclassed when Dean Ivers welcomed us, the 500 new freshmen, to our initial convocation in Cumnock Hall in the autumn of 1957.
Although I had achieved excellent grades in math and science in high school, perhaps, I was more suited for an advanced education in foreign languages – Latin, German, French, etc. – and the humanities? But in 1961, the trend in education as promoted by theater news-reels and television news programs was in math and science. Everything denoting a technical specialty was highly valued and vaunted. They promised a great future for those students ready for the rigors of chemistry, physics, mathematics, electrical engineering, electronics and, of course, plastics !
Cold War Reality
At that time, the Russians threatened to “bury us” with their advances in space science and rocketry. The U.S. was, perhaps, also under the gun, so educational funding at the Congressional level for a local lad like myself opened up new vistas that I might never have been available, otherwise.
“The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming!”
That oft-repeated phrase sent shivers of fear down the spines of all listeners. Then, there were other tidbits of apprehension added to the stew. Cold War, deeply buried bunkers were advertised on TV as an essential, underground, backyard shelter for every well-prepared, loving family that hoped to avoid nuclear annihilation. Fear of the Soviet Union’s military capabilities was quite palpable.
That affable, turtle character, a TV cartoon figure, succeeded in capturing our national attention. How did a reptilian character do this magic? He enjoined all Americans to take heed by simply screaming:
“Duck and cover. Duck and cover.”
This piece of Madison Avenue propaganda greatly heightened the public’s awareness of imminent danger from a potential nuclear holocaust on a national scale. Even before the advent of deliverable thermonuclear weapons, H-bombs, the destructive power of a single, garden-variety A-bomb (a fission device) with the explosive power of 20 thousand tons, 20,000 tons, of high explosives was enough to worry our government officials in Washington.
Nikita Khrushchev’s warlike demeanor and thunderous antics at the United Nations helped solidify my choice of a career along the lines of science and R&D. One might even conclude, rather ironically, that this Russian Communist boss made my career in science possible. At least, I tip my hat to him.
One ought to give credit where credit is due. That man scared the living bejeebers out of us, and made possible unique, technical careers for a sizable number of people at the time.
Welcome to Penn State, AKA, Happy Valley, PA
I still felt hesitant and scared wondering whether my new adventures in graduate physics studies at Penn State would provide me with that elemental sense of being all right in a world that I barely understood. But the gracious and warm encouragements offered to me by Uncle Lucien and Aunt Antoinette in State College, Pennsylvania certainly did bring some calm to my choice of graduate work.