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BN: And then what high school did you go to?

LH: I went to George Washington High School. That was when they... yeah, they moved to, that was from the Cherry Street house.

BN: This was another public high school?

LH: It's public, yeah.

BN: Public, but a good...

LH: I was so lucky, it was a brand new high school. They just built this high school with, like, a new pool, had a new indoor pool. They had a computer, they had, like, tennis courts, they had everything. Because it was one of the richest areas, but I was on the other side of the tracks. Again, it was a mile and a half, but on the other side of the tracks. So all of my high school friends were quite a bit wealthier than I was then. Because all through this time I'm getting a great education, really great education. So I was in the AP classes, so I didn't quite understand. Then, I don't know, I don't think my parents did either, because all of these eastern schools would come. Like the elite schools came to our high school to recruit. Had really high SAT scores, they were, like, in my classes. I always felt like I was relatively, I was not smart because I was mediocre (among) all these kids. I had five friends, fellow students who scored perfect scores on their SATs. And there were two of them who scored two perfect scores on their SATs, and that was my competition in class, right? It's not fair. [Laughs] But we got all the best teachers, we got all the, just really... these really wonderful teachers, they were really great. And so I got interested in history then. I liked history, literature. Of course, I couldn't compete with these people in chemistry or math or any of that stuff. I was pretty good at math, but I just couldn't compete.

BN: This is the early '60s, right?

LH: Yeah. So '63 was when I graduated high school, yeah.

BN: Did you feel any sense of discrimination or limitation or anything, as this Asian kid in this largely white school?

LH: Well, what changed, and it's interesting to look back at it now, is like when I got of dating age, and then I got really self-conscious, right? But I was never confident, I was never, I never felt I looked great or like I was, I was not the most popular kid in school. And like Laura Matsunaga was the cheerleader, I was kind of the like the rebellious intellectual. I just didn't fit in exactly. In fact, I couldn't remember, when I went to go back to my high school reunion, what I did in high school, I couldn't remember. And I also, at this point, I'd sort of socially cast myself aside. Because I'd had this rebellion in the sorority I was supposed to pledge in. I was pledging, actually, and I got so upset with their blackballing, my big sister and I threw our pens down in a dramatic way and walked out to protest their blackballing of people. Sort of like snippiness, like maybe you don't know, but women can really get at it. It's a women thing, gong after other women. And so that really set me aside socially for the rest of my high school. So I dated mostly my mountain climbing friends. So I went mountain climbing when I was... Kurt Beam was actually part of my Cherry Street life. He eventually got a car, he had one of those bathtub Hudsons, you know, eventually got. And he would drive us back and forth to school, so I'd get a ride to school and back sometimes. And he got me into mountain climbing which I loved, I really loved it. So I was mountain climbing on the weekends from the time I was thirteen on. And then we ski in Colorado, right? We ski, did skiing, too. But I didn't have a lot of money because my parents never supported any supported any of this, so I'd have to figure out ways to do it, but I did. I'd pack snow in order to get a ski ticket. I bussed tables in the cafeteria at the ski lodge, and then get a ticket to go, free ticket. But climbing, mountain climbing was the best, really the best.

BN: And this is climbing with gear and ropes kind of climbing?

LH: Yeah, yeah. It's like... we were, what were they called? The Juniors, the Colorado Mountain Club Juniors. And so it was just all the younger people.

BN: So you're scaling all of these local peaks and so on?

LH: Yeah, yeah.

BN: Of which there are many.

LH: Yeah, exactly. Like we have, there's like fifty fourteen thousand (foot high) mountains in Colorado. There were forty-eight at the time I was climbing. And so that was like, we had crazy things like how many fourteen thousand foot mountains can we climb in one day? Only we started at midnight without having slept. And I remember on my fourth peak I was like, all I wanted to do was crawl on the side of the trail and go to sleep. [Laughs] But then nobody would find me, right? So I had to keep going. That was the kind of nutty thing we would do. We would pack typewriters up to the top of a peak so we could type in the register, our names. We did all kinds of things like that.

BN: Was that...

LH: We had a lot of fun. We got to name some peaks in the Gore range.

BN: And then at that time, did you have a sense of what you wanted to do in your life?

LH: I had no sense. [Laughs] I was kind of a clueless kid in a lot of ways, for many, many years, clueless. And that's sort of how I approached a lot of things, kind of clueless. And then I figure it out, that's basically what I do.

BN: It's a useful skill, being able to figure things out.

LH: Well, I think that's part of the parenting thing that happened, is that my parents were so loose about the parenting. I really remember, I mean, my mother would probably... she's probably groaning and moaning at this point. But at one point, I remember, I was looking at them and I thought, "These parents are not going to... they're just not going to do it for me." So I kind of figured this out for myself. And at that point, I basically set my own program. I was eleven, I remember that really clearly, I was eleven. Okay, so now we're just going to set our program. [Laughs] And it worked. Because I learned a lot of... it's kind of like growing up fast, so you learn a lot of skills. And I remember thinking, well, I get all these skills. I got a job, I figured out money, I had to pay my taxes, and I got all those skills out of the way by the time I hit college. And the weird thing was is that I never realized that I sort of had these capabilities until I went back to my high school reunion. I only went to one, which was our fiftieth high school reunion. And I was asking people, "What did I do?" I don't remember what I did, what did I do? And they said, "You were the one that we asked to do things. We wanted to get things done, we gave it to you," which was something I never knew when I was in high school. I was the, sort of...

BN: The competent one.

LH: I could get things done. So that was really interesting, it's like, wow. Yeah, that was really interesting.

BN: Yeah, that's something useful, as opposed to the people who were only book smart, often don't know how to do stuff in life.

LH: I think also, it's really different from this generation. Like I just started teaching when "helicopter parents" appeared, and I just actually think it's more fun to be independent and have that freedom to explore and to learn that way. So it's kind of the way I teach, too, like, do whatever you're going to do, but just jump really high. It has to be this level. Which is kind of what our parents did, the Niseis did, right? That's what they did.

BN: Well, they had no choice in many cases. They had to be on their own.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.