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TI: So you're back in Seattle. Your brother, you said, was an engineer at Boeing?

HM: Yeah.

TI: And you're trying to decide what to do.

HM: Yeah. And Hammersley, Hammersley, the guy recruited from the 8th Region, was down recruiting at the University of Washington, just coincidentally. But he had sent a letter previous to that, saying that, "Well, we expect that you'll be out of the service. And hope this letter gets to you. And I'll be at the UW campus for recruiting purposes." So I went out and met him. And said, "I want you to put me on educational leave." And he says, "Well, are you going to come back to CAA?" So I says, "Yeah, I guess so." And so he gave me a two-year leave of absence-type deal. And I figured well, in two years I'll be able to make up my mind what I want to do. And then he could extend it another two years. But I decided, well, my mother wants me around, and I haven't been around Seattle for a long time. Maybe I should go back to school.

TI: What's the advantage of getting a two-year educational leave?

HM: Well, they didn't want to provide four-year, because it, it holds up one job, in the personnel.

TI: Okay. So you were guaranteed a job...

HM: Yeah.

TI: ...at the end of two years.

HM: Yeah. For any time, from the time I signed it 'til the end of two years, they can, I'm guaranteed that job that I did have previously.

TI: Got it. Okay.

HM: So, I thought that would be a good way of security, making a security function for my occupation. And I didn't know what the heck I wanted to do. When I was in LA, I took that exam for JPL, this is a...

TI: Jet propulsion lab or...

HM: Yeah, yeah. This is the jet propulsion laboratory thing because, well, they had, they had connections with different schools. And they had one of these work, work and education programs. And this is similar to the one they had at Westinghouse. And Westinghouse had made me the offer when they were interested in hiring me for the, the torpedo development program.

TI: Yeah. Let's back up. So Westinghouse figured out that you were sort of the mind behind that, the patents, so they wanted to hire you?

HM: Yeah. Because they were doing the Mark torpedo development program. And one of them was acoustically, acoustic homing oriented. And it kind of fit into the same bracket that I had.

TI: How did Westinghouse find out that you were --

HM: Well, because as things went on, it went to the Navy Department. And the navy in turn, were looking for contractors that were interested in different patents. And since Westinghouse had been doing work on torpedoes they assigned some of these patents for examination by the Westinghouse company. And there was couple other companies that were also given the right to look at the patents. And when the military takes over your patent, you lose complete control of it. You have no basis of going to the regular patent office. They, they preclude that information from going to the patent office. The military controls the darn thing. And if they classify it then it's completely out of control.

But they had a work and education program, too, but it was a five-year program, and I didn't want to stay in Baltimore. And the education facility would have been Johns Hopkins, which is a pretty good institution. But I didn't want to live on the West Coast -- East Coast, rather. It's too humid in summertime and very uncomfortable. So I wanted to go back at least to the West Coast. But the offer was still there, and they sent me a notification saying that if I changed my mind, I could get into the program. So I wasn't too worried about getting into some kind of school. But I thought I could get into U of W pretty easily because I had passed all the army tests for a second-year college. And when I was in Counterintelligence Corps my, one of the commanding officers I had says, "The fact that you didn't even finish high school is kind of a bad thing on your record. You better finish up your GED on the thing." So I finished up the high school one. And then he said, "Well, why don't you take the college one and keep going as far as you can on the GED process because we will recognize that on your records. And this can prevent you from going up in the ranks." So I took his advice and I did finish off the first and second-year college stuff. So I thought I'd be able to get into U of W very easily. But that was a big mistake. My assumptions weren't correct. And at that time there was a lot of vets coming out of the system. And they were getting discharged from the, from the armed services. So the veterans preference was given. They had a five-point preference relative to scores that they would be generating. And they had one program for both males and females. And it was an open-ended examination process, two days' worth for the U of W. They were trying to determine whether or not there are people out there that didn't have high school diplomas on their record that would be able to competitive -- competitively place themselves on the examination process. So they --

TI: Because you couldn't get through the regular way, even though you had your GED and had essentially the standing to go in...

HM: The U of W...

TI: ...third year.

HM: Wouldn't recognize G...

TI: Wouldn't recognize that.

HM: ...GED at that time. Now, they do, but at that time...

TI: Okay.

HM: ...they said it's not recognized because we don't think that that's full accreditation. So I had different options at that point. Should I go back to Baltimore --

TI: Johns Hopkins or --

HM: Or should I go down to California? Because a couple of the schools were kind of interested.

TI: Right.

HM: And the money part of it was the thing that held me back for the California schools. So I took the exam, that two-day exam. And it was a pretty tough set of problems they gave. They gave us math, English, the whole bit.

TI: And how many people would take this?

HM: Hundred and thirty people were in there.

TI: Okay.

HM: And so they didn't tell us who scored what on, on the test. But then they asked us to come for interview, and that's, I think about sixty-eight people were there for the interview sessions. And that was the first interview. Second interview, we went back again, and they were asking us what areas of interest you have. And they were looking at our past records. And so I told them I wanted to go into engineering, in electrical and mechanical, both. So they said, well, okay, we're putting -- I think they had about thirty some-odd individuals that they said did well enough to be placed on probation in the university. So we all signed up for the regular curriculum.

I took engineering curriculum. And I had not realized that having that long span of not having formal education would present a huge problem to me, sitting down in the classroom every day -- outside of the fact that we did this in the counterintelligence corps school, but it was for like a ten, eleven-week period. That was, and that was -- but it was under army regimentation, so you're pretty well disciplined, having to study, you have to do your homework. I mean, they really put the regimen in the process. But here you're more free to do these things. That first exam scared the living daylights out of me because I scored with a D grade. And I thought to myself, what is happening here? And so I really had to get on my toes to get, get through that first year.

Then they brought us in again after the first year, they had the -- by that time the number started dwindling down. They started getting eliminated because they couldn't hack the, hack the course level, I guess. And anyway, they had a special session for us. And they said, "All you guys that's in the sciences area, engineering and otherwise, we're going to have to screen you once more because the number of applicants for the, the sophomore and junior years are too high, and we have to eliminate the excess individuals." [Laughs] Oh, God. Anyway, by the end of this process there were seventeen of us left. And I thought, man, it's, it's not looking too good. So I figured, well, maybe I better start looking at some of these other options. And my brother kept on saying, he couldn't do it. He told me it'd been -- what was it? -- it was about eight years or nine years from the time that I had a real formal education. So anyway, I did pursue it, kept on going. But at the -- I got to the senior-year level, and I was taking dual paths, electrical and mechanical engineering, both.

TI: Was that common? That's pretty unusual...

HM: No.

TI: Pretty unusual.

HM: It wasn't common then. And...

TI: They're both very different.

HM: This guy who was my student -- he was my advisor, I guess. He says, "You got to make up your own mind, which way are you going? Are you going to go electrical or you're going mechanical? Because you're going to take these specialized courses in these areas. You cannot go through both curricula." And I says, "Why not?" Anyway, he -- I got him pretty perturbed. And he was an electrical guy. So I says, "Okay, then I'll switch to mechanical." Because I, he got me ticked-off a little bit.

And then when I went to the mechanical side the, the guy says to me, "Well, you've never even finished high school on your record. We're going to have to have you make up all the deficient credits that you didn't have in high school, and you're going to have make it up with college credits." So I says -- that was fifty-some odd credits. I had to go another year. So I said, "Gee, that's not right." Then I tried to get back into electrical, and they wouldn't let me go back in there because they were a little bit more lenient. And so they said, "Well, you elected mechanical and you stay there." So here I'm faced with this decision. Fifty-three credits, how the heck am I going to make this up?

TI: And these would be like basic stuff, like mathematics, English or --

HM: No, no. It's not, he says, "You got to take 'em in the 300, 400-hundred level courses." That was the criteria they had. And so I went to the, that, that, the -- they had another counsel group there. And this, this was for general, all general students there. And I told them what my plight was with the dean of electrical engineering. And she was very kind to me. She said, "Well, why don't you take some of these courses that you could just sleep halfway through the course and still get away with it." She was very frank with me. So I said, "Okay." Then she asked me what I liked. So I took a lot of economics courses. I took the full spectrum of economics courses, 300, 400 series. Then I took, I even took some art courses, I guess and stuff like that. And that's what I filled in my whole stuff with.

IT: So did you end up going an extra year just to take all those courses?

HM: No. I went through summer school. I was going all through the total process. But at the same time I was working, junior year, I worked in the wind tunnel there in the summertime.

TI: Oh, right.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 1999 Densho. All Rights Reserved.