Mr

First, the personal stuff. We had three daughters (the youngest was born in Blair) while we were at Decatur. All are married, and we have seven grandsons. Four of the grandsons are college grads and the other three are not yet of college age. All are responsible citizens, except I have one rouge son-in-law who is a republican. Phyllis started her work career when she was forty something. She too, has had an exciting work life, independent of my own.

I am going to write what I hope to be a brief history of I and Phyllis' adventure. As you read this, trust me, Decatur was one of the highlights of our travels. I was a young man in a hurry and left Decatur in 1962 so I could fulfill a year of residency working on my Doctorate at U. of NE. Following that year of residency, I worked for the State Education Department running a large federal statewide manpower training program for the unemployed. I set up several regional programs at Hastings, Sydney, Lincoln, Milford, Omaha, and Scottsbluff. Meanwhile, I was finishing my Ed.D. Thesis, which dealt with establishing the need for intermediate school districts in Nebraska. Here's where it gets interesting.

Because of my unique combination of experiences I was able to provide guidance for two critical pieces of legislation. Intermediate School Districts in Nebraska equals Educational Service Units. My thesis was the rationale for establishing the ESU system in Nebraska. Now ESU's are now an integral part of the Nebraska Educational structure. At the same time the Community College movement was sweeping the country and there was strong forces at work to bring the Community College system to Nebraska. Working with a distinguished group from the University, the Unicameral, and the NEA, we developed legislation enabling the establishment of not only the Educational Service Units, but also the Community College System in Nebraska. This all happened in late 1964 and 1965. We left Lincoln shortly thereafter, and I really never got to see either system up and running. I am certain that the origination of those two important pieces of legislation has been somewhat of a mystery. When I left there was no one else left that understood the complexities of both systems. The reason I and others got little credit was that the State Board of Education and Commissioner Floyd Miller were unalterably opposed to both systems. My office was on the tenth floor of the Capital Building and it was some sight to see several distinguished legislators, professors and other assorted professionals sneak up ten floors up the stairway to meet in my office and draft legislation. Once, Governor Frank Morrison showed up to lend his support.

I finished my doctorate in 1965, but meanwhile the civil rights movement, the anti-poverty movement, and the anti-war movements were dominating the country, and I wanted in on it. To that end, I took a job directing, what turned out to be, a large and very successful urban anti-poverty agency in Des Moines. The educational establishment in Nebraska was aghast because I was expected to take some cushey university job. Was that ever an exciting job, even more-so than Decatur. Basically, the anti-poverty program established a huge pot of federal money which would finance the organization of the poor and down-trodden. Once organized, the poor would then beat up on the establishment who had for so long mistreated them. It was exciting work and I was very good at it. I could have been Pres. Obama's mentor, vis a vie, community organization. I was trained in person by the gurus of the day, where Mr. Obama probably only read their books. By the time he got into it in Chicago, it was pretty tame stuff. In the 60's it was hell everyday, and I was right in the middle of it having a ball. Obviously, the federal government financing a local anti-establishment action group would not and did not last. I and my family were sort of caught in a warp speed fast forward mode. Our kids participated fully. They were virtually brought up attending head start parent meetings. We hatched many a devious plot around the dinner table. While running a four million dollar mish mash of programs for the poor, I served one other quite important function. In order to radicalize our small black population, our local Black Panther Party, used me as their foil. Their mission was to run me off because I was the de facto leader of the black community. Nearly all the Black Panthers worked for me, either as VISTA's or staff. On numerous occasions they publicly threatened my assassination. It turns out, the Panthers were right. I was standing in the way of the development of indigenous black leadership. Just as in Lincoln, I got some great stuff done, but did not stick around to see if it worked. By the way, they did not assassinate me.

Thereafter, I had a series of jobs, but all were sort of anti-climatic. Moreover, the Des Moines job bedeviled me in another way. I had the Midas touch as it related to acquiring huge amounts of grant monies. With that cross to bear, my education, and my experience, I could go just about anywhere I wished. I left Des Moines to work in an academic think tank in Cambridge, Mass. After Mr. Nixon got his bureaucracy in place hundreds of organizations such as ours were wiped out. I then took a job with the New York State Education Department as a specialist in adult and vocational education (ha). In the course of my job I did extensive work for the mayor Lindsey of New York and the State Corrections department. In New York City, I set up a Chinese Language Center, ostensibly for refugees from Mao's Red Guard who had ended up in NYC Chinatown. I quit the job in protest when Gov. Rockefeller went in an killed thirty three guards and inmates at Attica Correctional facility. I had been in Attica setting up adult literacy and vocational training programs.

I then took a job as a professor and administrator at a Community College in Georgia. I was always in love with the community college idea since my days in Lincoln. I brought in some large grants which substantially increased the black student population, and in deep south Georgia that was tricky business. Phyllis was a public social worker at the time and funneled much of her caseload to the college for training using federal grant dollars. Aside from my day job, which was substantial, I helped a dozen local community agencies obtain grant funds. Ever in the look out for clandestine, anti-establishment activities favoring the disadvantaged, I worked with a team of lawyers to draft a petition to the Federal Court for the insertion of a ward system for the local government. It worked, and Albany, GA has its first black city council persons since reconstruction.

Unheard of in academic circles, I made the jump from the community college world to a university. It was a rare feat because I had advance degrees in school administration, without an academic subject matter specialty. . It was that old Midas touch bug-a-boo that surfaced. I took a job as professor and administrator at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. It was too tame and too structured. I did what I did at other places, i.e, brought in a ton of money, set up a ton of programs, caused a lot of change and agitation, and then left. The pattern was all too familiar. As a rule, I out grew the job for which I was hired, and, in my own mind became a threat to the institution that hired me.

Mindful that any subsequent jobs might end up similarly, we semi-retired to the country, that is, the Northern Neck of Virginia. Phyllis became the general manager of a cosmetic factory, and I was a home builder and real estate broker. I limited my community involvement, and worked no harder than necessary. In 2000 we retired to Central Florida. We live in a 900 unit manufactured home (as Jess Foxworthy would say, that is a trailer park to red-necks) community. It has a nice l8 hole golf course and we use it frequently .I was a modest jock in college, earning a dozen athletic letters, but this golf business has me bamboozled. Beyond this we are political junkies. In the past we have served on dozens of local and state democratic committees. We are comfortable and in reasonably good health. I have had the usual health problems, e.g., prostate cancer, cataracts, hip replacement, glaucoma, but nothing serious. Phyllis is in good health, but has chronic arthritis. About every 3-6 months she wistfully looks at me and says, what if we had stayed in Decatur. She really enjoyed it.

In reflecting on the ranting above, it sounds like a Forest Gump tale. I was in at the ground level of all the important movements of the sixties and seventies. I was both a spectator and a participant. I have done a lot of work on my memoirs, but often get bogged down because my intellectual ability still does not understand all my experiences. As someone in our family put it, I should have been born a hundred years earlier or a hundred years later. To clear up one statement Bonnie, I did have three years experience and a near Master's degree upon coming to Decatur. Two of those as a high school principal. I was twenty six and I was the youngest superintendent in the State at the time. In other words, I was legal.

One last antidote, and this is about Decatur. The school had an incredibly small tax base, and as a result operated half the year on borrowed money. To meet payroll and pay bills we had to borrow money in the form of warrants from the local bank. I and the Board instituted a reserve fund, whereby our spending cycle caught up with our income cycle and we got our tax money in before we spent it. About ten percent of our budget was for interest on the warrants. I think Jack K. suggested that to me before he left. We actually had more money to spend while cutting the budget. The school was operating in the black when I left.