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TI: Okay, well, let's talk about this, when you're twelve, then, there was a shift in your life.

CS: Right.

TI: Why don't you talk about that and how that came about.

CS: Actually, it was when I was fourteen. I was going to a private school. I never graduated from high school, incidentally. I had completed tenth grade, and Dr. William H. Gray, Jr. was a young college president who had just gotten his doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania, and he was very heavy on, on intellectual testing. My godfather was chairman of the board of the college where Dr. Gray was president, and he got permission from my parents to administer a series of intelligence tests to me. Based upon the results of those tests, the most significant one I remember is the old Stanford-Binet test, which was then the most critical measure of intelligence. And whatever the results of those tests were -- I never actually saw them -- got him very excited, and he sent them to his professor at the University of Pennsylvania, to agree with him that he had encountered this very bright child, me, a fourteen-year-old. And so it was then that Dr. Gray got permission of my parents to allow him to take over my education. So that my starting college at age fourteen under the supervision of Dr. William H. Gray, Jr., this young new psychologist, was the beginning of that move that I made from my residential family to this family in a college context. It was later, two years later, that my parents were divorced. I was not even living at home at that time, I was away in college. But my parents did divorce, and so...

TI: But going back to the, the Grays, so this is interesting. So you're fourteen, this gentleman essentially "discovers" you, and asks permission from your parents to take over your, your sort of, your education.

CS: Right.

TI: Which, which means you actually physically move from your, your family to the Gray family. How did you feel about this?

CS: I had fun. [Laughs] The only thing is that the courses that he had me in were not fun. I had never had mathematics, and he enrolled me in a class in integral calculus. And the other students in the class were army officers -- this was during the early, early part of the second world war. And here was I, this fourteen-year-old, in a class with army officers, trying to learn integral calculus. I got through the course with a passing grade, but I still don't understand integral calculus, and I still don't understand mathematics. I can add one and one, and subtract two from four, but other than that, I, I don't have any mind for mathematics. He enrolled me as a music major. I decided I would never be a performer, and so I decided I would not major in music. But what he did was make a list of courses that I should take during the course of my undergraduate time, and he would check them off. And so I knew that I was part of an experiment, and it's fun being a part of an experiment when it's not hurting you, and when it's not something beyond your ability to deal with. The only part of it that I could not deal with was the integral calculus. Now, at the same time, Dr. Gray had decided I was going to medical school. So he had me taking courses, science courses, zoology and chemistry, and all those other courses, preparing for medical school. And it was fun for me then; I thought it would be great to go to medical school and become a doctor. Not because of the prestige of it, but because of the challenge of it. And then the mistake was made -- a mistake not on my part, but it was a blessing for me -- was that Dr. Gray arranged for me to witness surgery being performed. And I then realized that I could not stand the sight of blood. And so I decided that I would not go to medical school from there. But I had these various options, and I wanted to become a psychiatrist, and I realized that I had to go to medical school first, so I dropped the idea of becoming a psychiatrist, I decided to become a social worker instead.

And so I never thought about being a lawyer, and even though this was the early part of my life, Dr. Gray continued to, quote, "manage" me over the years as I became older. And when I told him I was going to get a degree in social work, he said that, "If you spend three years getting a degree in social work, you'll be working for somebody else for the rest of your life. You should go to law school, spend three years in law school, and become independent." So I thought to myself, "What is he talking about?" And it happened that I had taken business law courses in undergraduate school from the law school at Temple University. And I'd come out with very good grades, like "A's." So he being the psychologist that he was, and continuing to monitor and (analyze) my educational approach to things, said, "You did okay in your business courses in the law school." "Yes." "You liked it?" "Yes." "You'll go to law school." So it was his decision that I go to law school. So that, ultimately, was how I ended up going to law school. I never wanted to be a lawyer, and I never wanted to go to law school. And I got admitted to the University of Washington by walking in, in 1952.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.