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FS: But then after PV, as you may or may not... I think you knew, I got into Head Start because that's where it took me. And that I have to thank my family, too. Well, Marian, of course, helped me all the way as I started. But she, the kids are small, and I started to get interested in children. I learned that Pacific Oaks, that they don't, at that time, especially, they don't really teach A, B, C, D, they teach it for the, you observe. And so that's what I did, and that took me somehow into the world of Head Start because when I was, became good friends with the president of the school and one of the founders who was a Quaker, he introduced me to these guys that were educators on the East Coast that got a big grant from Johnson's Head Start program. And they were connected with the big leagues back east, Harvard, MIT, was sort of a... there was a big component, big organization, I think, that did publishing research, called EDC. Our group was called ECES, more specialized to respond to any Head Start group or early education group that wanted help from this organization that this guy set up. So the upside of that experience was that I got a salary, so I didn't have to worry about hustling. See, that made it a lot different. And the salary was a basic low beginning teacher's salary, but it was a cashflow. And so I could... and it was enough to supplement that need, so I was allowed to, thanks to Marian, and we had a place in East Orange Grove and so forth.

BT: So what kind of work did you do while you were at Head Start?

FS: Well, whatever... well, see, they had mostly to do with play areas. But then a lot of the workshops, we were teaching teachers how to do things... you know, the whole world of education was trying to, how would you call it? There were many possibilities. There were ideas from Europe, British teaching, lot of different theories, and UCLA had a lot of things. But we were only supportive of going in and helping teachers if they wanted to look for different ways to manage their classroom. At the time, there was a product that everybody, it was reasonable, it was called Triwall, cardboard that was maybe a half-inch thick. And we just taught them how to drill holes through it and make shoji screen kind of components and create different kind of spaces. So in that sense it was sort of architecture, but not architectural, you know what I mean? It was educational and it was an attempt to look at ways that you can motivate children, young children to learn by creating this one school, Black guy that was superintendent, or principal, he was trying to do a new school in Roxbury, and his idea was to create sort of a little home, I guess, home units where maybe six, seven kids of different age, group, not just children, but older, too, could have a home base. So that's kind of architectural, if you will. All they had in those days were big buildings that were burnt out many times. Boston was having a turmoil all over the country. We were having a lot of issues, and cities were burning, Harlem, all these things. And so it was a lot of interest to, in the educational community, to look for solutions that would try to bring society to another order. I mean, we were kind of going through that again.

[Interruption]

BT: So you were doing this type of work...

FS: Yeah, there was nothing structured.

BT: Yeah.

FS: We were trying to teach... most teachers at that time were women, too, young women. And so it was sort of, even teaching teachers not to be afraid of using a drill or whatever. There was a lot of components to this whole thing. And the rest of the team that I was, you know, on this group that he assembled there, were all educators. I'm the only so-called architect type. I just happened to have the license already, but it wasn't, I wasn't creating the beautiful thing, Noguchi garden or place base that you could take photos in there. It was sort of a reaction to that because about that time, all the AIA, there were honorary awards for all these beautiful playground kind of stuff in New York, and they weren't working. They were all based on how well it photographed, shades and shadows, architects could put it in a magazine and you can get an award. So this was sort of down and dirty, let kids behave the way they are. It's okay to get dirty if you're learning something. That was kind of the theory behind the motivation. It's so different, the coasts, east and west. I'm meeting the hierarchy back there and, again, I have to make special permission to go to Cal Tech and meet a few people there. My first trip back there was, my friend and acquaintance said, "Let's have breakfast with the science advisor for the president." I forgot who, the president then, but probably after, maybe the Johnson administration.

BT: So it was more access.

FS: Hmm?

BT: It was more accessible than on the East Coast?

FS: Well, no. But I was more, how would you call it? You don't feel intimidated, you feel like a normal person, like we're talking. But you could be the president of MIT and we're talking like that. You know what I mean? Here's the National Science Advisor, he and his wife. The wife, they're all raised on all the elite East Coast. She gets somebody over here at, yeah, I don't know. It didn't feel the same. I mean, it's just a dinky, if you can imagine, like in San Francisco, there's still a few of those small mom and pop restaurant kind of thing, like New York has them. Yeah, meeting them, and my acquaintance, he's a new acquaintance, right, that I met through PO. "Oh, this, by the way, he's the National Science Advisor." [Laughs] I mean, no big deal.

BT: Interesting.

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