<Begin Segment 34>

TI: So what happened in 1967?

FH: Well, there's a lot of advantage in merging YMCAs, 'cause you could do a lot of stuff at former Ys that you can't do just one little Y. And together you could do a lot of good stuff. Now, after I got fired...

TI: Oh, but why were you fired?

FH: Well, I think I was maybe a threat. I used to tell Paul, my CEO, I said, "Come on, Paul, smile a bit. Life is not that grim. Hey, we're all supporting you, let's go. Let's do something." He was paralyzed. Why? He took over Roy Sorenson's job, who was on the, eighteen years on the national staff. And Roy was such a giant, he wrote a book, and he was like John R. Mott, another giant. And Paul would just, froze. He just froze. He was such a great personality before. All of a sudden, he don't smile, and he used to be a personality. Any time he walks in the room, he lits it up. Now, it's glum. So we said, "Come on, Paul, relax." Well, he called me in one day and he says, "Fred, I have to get a new team and I don't see you part of that, so I have to let you go." So I said, "I'm sorry you feel that way, 'cause you know that my program has one of the best in the nation," and he knew that. He also fired Robby and Martha at San Mateo, that's another, our branch, had the largest high school program in the nation. We were second. That's how we were so good at working with young kids, Hi-Y and Tri-Hi-Y clubs at the time. Well, anyhow, he fired me. But the board told my wife, the chairman of the board called my wife -- I'm out looking for a job. He says, "Tell Fred to hang on, don't do anything, because there's something fishy about all this." He didn't do a paper trail, he didn't say, "Dissatisfied with your work, you got to change," or something, he just, "Goodbye." He panicked, I guess, and that's why I got fired. I don't know. You ask me why, I was doing good work, I know results and volume of kids, they were doing some great programming, we had great conferences, we had good board, good support, raised good money. He had no reason to fire me except that he has a right to his own team. But I felt that he probably felt threatened, and decided to get rid of Robby and Fred and Martha, the two strongest or three strongest Y people. Then he'd feel comfortable. I don't know.

TI: So then what happened next after...

FH: And so I got a job offer when this, after all this got squared away, and he was asked by the board to take me back. So I said, "Well, Paul, at least we could be friends." Then he called me up one time and he says, "Fred, you said we could be friends. I need your friendship now. I was told by the board to take you back." I said, "Well, thank you. I enjoy working here, and I enjoy working with you, and let's build it together." Robby, he never, he said... he never showed up to a single staff meeting that Paul called after this happened. I'm a team player, but Robby says, "I'll just do my thing," and he did until retirement. But Paul had to leave, and he took early retirement, and he went back to Sacramento. But he was a nice guy, but he just... that's the first time I got fired. Anyhow, that's beside the point. And so, when I got a job offer from the national structure, here no one knew who Fred Hoshiyama was until I got fired. All of a sudden, like a thumbnail, "You hear Fred got fired?" "What'd he do?" So my name came up, and I'm getting job offers. National staff says, "We've been thinking about you, but this happened, so we couldn't do it 'til after everything got cleared up." So I said, "Yeah, Paul doesn't want me, I might as well go." So I took the job, it's headquartered here in Los Angeles, it's a regional job. So I started from the local to the region. And then, couple years later, I got onto the national structure. So twelve years, '68 to '80, I worked for the national structure. That's when I got into these other stuff.

<End Segment 34> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.