| Chapter 3
Long Island, New York After my junior year of high school, my parents decided to join a movement in our church in which a number of families from Texas, where the church was strong, were going to move to Long Island, New York, where the church was weak. The eventual plan was, after strengthening the church in Long Island, to move into New York City and try to do something about crime, drugs, etc. So we packed up everything and moved. My older brother Mike helped us move up there, and then went back to Texas. He was grown and doing his own thing by then. My dad had no trouble find a job there, as chief engineer at a radio station. That job led to some interesting events. I finished high school at Hauppaugh High School (that's pronounced something like "hop hog"), which was somewhat smaller than my old school. There were a lot of strange kids who talked strange (they thought I talked strange), but I didn't do too badly, and graduated 7th in my class. My dad made friends with a fellow employee at the radio station who owned a small sail boat. He let Dad borrow it one weekend, so Dad, my little brother and I went sailing one Saturday. There is a chain of small islands off the southern coast of Long Island, and between these and Long Island is a great place for sailing small boats. I don't know where my dad learned sailing, but he did quite well. He knew how to tack, come about, and other sailing maneuvers. We had to tack going out (sail against the wind), but coming back we got to put up the spinnaker (an unbrella-like sail for going with the wind). Less than a year after my dad started working at the radio station, it was bought by someone who wanted to change the music played on it to country music. That meant that all of the records currently at the station had to go. My dad got a number of them, and among these was a copy of Lesley Gore's album "Boys, Boys, Boys", which she had delivered to the station herself (she didn't live too far from there), and had signed on the back. My dad gave me that record, and that's when I started listening to, and liking, Lesley's music. The cover picture and autograph on that record are on my Lesley site. After he had changed the music, the new owner of the station decided to change the chief engineer. It seems he had a relative that wanted the job. My dad found another job as media engineer for a school system. It was at that job that he discovered a large overhead projector of some kind that was in pieces and about to be thrown out. He recognized the lens on it as being of high quality, so he asked his supervisor if he could have it. He was allowed to take it, and gave it to me. I kept that lens in storage for many years trying to figure out something good to do with it. Then along came the Hale-Bopp comet, and I finally know what to do -- build a telephoto lens. (Funny how these things seem to work out.) The pictures on my Hale-Bopp page were made with that lens. One day the A Capella Chorus from what was then called Michigan Christian College came to our church and sang for us. I had a "thing" for baroque music at the time, and they sang some of Bach's music. I was quite impressed, and decided that was something I wanted to do when I went to college -- sing in the college's chorus or choir. Before I move on to the next chapter of my life, some of you are probably wondering what became of the church movement that took my family to Long Island. Unfortunately some people came into the congregation who taught certain things contrary to what we believed, drew some members after them, and the congregation broke up. But individual members continued to do the work originally envisioned by the movement, including my own father, who became an elder of another congregation on Long Island (which is the highest position one can hold in our church), and began helping small "minority" churches in areas closer to New York city. (Actually, we don't believe in racially separate churches, but in areas where most of the people are of a certain race, the church members are likely to be mostly of that race also.) Chapter 4 Michigan Christian College After I graduated from High School, I decided to go to Michigan Christian College. It was a small liberal arts junior college located in Rochester Michigan (and is now called Rochester College), which was operated by members of our church. Everybody said it was an excellent place for starting your higher education, and students had no trouble transferring from there to larger colleges and universities. Plus, there was that wonderful A Capella Chorus, which was recognized as one of the best junior college choirs anywhere at the time. My sister, who had been a couple of grades ahead of me, but who had just "hung around" after graduating from high school, decided to go to MCC also. So we packed our things, and our parents drove us out to what was to be the first time living away from home for either of us. MCC had one of the most beautiful campuses a college could possibly have. The land had been the summer hideaway of a wealthy man, who donated it for the college. The administration building was originally the man's summer home. There was a small lake on the campus, with a island in the middle of the lake, and there was a totem pole on the island. So naturally, the school's sports mascot was "warriors". Parts of the campus were wooded, and there were paths through the woods where students with a glint of spring in their eyes could take leisurely walks. I took that walk myself a few times, mostly with a girl named Anne Marie. One of the first things I did at MCC was to audition for the A Capella Chorus, and (whew!), I made it. Practice was right after lunch, and the rule was, if you were late, you were out. So I learned a trick that would serve me well later on in the US Navy, the ability to eat fast. Practice was always the highlight of the day. And I got to know the music of some of the great choral composers of all time. To prepare itself for the first big concert of the fall, the chorus would go every year to what was called chorus camp. This was done on the grounds of a nearby summer camp. We would spend a week there, practicing most of every day, and sometimes just listening to the director play the piano. He was an accomplished pianist, and could play anything from the classics to boogie woogie. To be continued... |