COLLEGE

My high school record was straight “A” and I obviously had some interest in radio and science, so some of my uncles encouraged me to try to get into Cal Tech. Since my mother was a widow and didn’t have resources to send me to college, they encouraged me to seek a scholarship.  At their urging, I met with Heber J. Grant, president of our church, and Governor Blood, governor or our state, and asked them for letters of recommendation.  Neither of them knew me, but both knew my family and sent glowing letters of recommendation.

I was pleased to be notified that Cal Tech was admitting me and granting me a one year scholarship. My experience at Cal Tech was very interesting. Out of the total undergraduate student body of 600, the dozen or so scholarship holders had special classes. One semester was taught by Robert A Millikan, President of Cal Tech, a noble prize winner, and considered the foremost physicist of his day. That was a wonderful experience to have a full semester with a small group of other scholarship students taught by such a great physicist. He invited the whole class to dinner at his home and we had an enjoyable time visiting with him and hearing experiences and advice.  The subject of religion came up and he expressed strong belief in a supreme being.

The next semester I had Carl Anderson as a teacher. He had received a Nobel Prize for discovering the positron. Therefore, early in my schooling I had a close association with two Nobel Prize winners in physics. Later on I became well acquainted with two more. That first semester Professor Potapenko took me under his personal wing and arranged for me to have a private laboratory office in Bridge Physics building and I was the only freshman that year to be granted academic credit for research. Just before I arrived at Cal Tech all the workers in Bridge Building met in front of the building to have their picture taken with Albert Einstein in the middle of their group. If I had been just a little earlier in getting there I could have been in that picture.

Elsewhere I’ve posted about the broadcast I arranged with CBS. After my scholarship ran out I was faced with a problem of financing my education. I got well acquainted with Mr. and Mrs. Crellin, who lived in a mansion very close to the campus. He had been a close associate of Carnegie and became very wealthy with him. He donated the funds to Cal Tech to build the Crellin chemistry building. He got me interested in amateur telescope making, in which he was actively engaged and was kind enough to give me a bridge loan.

After two years at Cal Tech I took a leave of absence to replenish funds and attended technical school in Kansas City to increase my code speed and earn commercial radio-telephone and radio-telegraph licenses. I had a job for a year with United Air Lines as a field keeper and weather reporter at Akron, Colorado. I returned to Cal Tech for my junior year and then took another year’s leave to go out to sea as a radio operator, during which time the war broke out.  In July of 1942, after a return from a long cruise, the draft board summoned me and chided me for running off to sea and ordered me to return to Cal tech to do research work. The understanding was that I could take classes for my senior year but I was only able to complete one class when the pressure of the war effort required my full time. The faculty advised me that since Cal Tech was not very well equipped to handle part time students that I should complete my degree elsewhere.

As time permitted I’d take various classes in nearby universities where ever I was living. As a result, I accumulated an excess number of units before graduation. I ended up at Los Angeles state college with only one class needed to graduate. I needed a fine arts class. They wouldn’t accept the credit I received for an art class at Cal Tech since they assumed it was mechanical drawing. Actually, we had been out sketching buildings and other things, but they wouldn’t believe me.  The only class I could find open that would complete the requirement in time was “Art and Crafts for the Elementary Schools”, so I spent an interesting but wasted semester doing finger painting and making Paper Mache dragons.

All in all, it took me 20 years to get my bachelor’s degree.