My Educational History

I was born in the middle of the second world war. My father was the captain of LST 889 in the pacific theater. Things were very different back then.

I went to an Episcopalian church and never had a clue what was going on there. Back then, as now, I had an extremely bad memory. My parents thought that the reason I did poorly in first grade was that I wasn’t challenged, so they had me skip second grade. That was the grade where you were taught cursive writing, So my handwriting is terrible. On the other hand at about age twelve I was sent to Miss Vanderschmidt’s typing school, where I spent time with lovely 16-year old girls training to become secretaries.

The poor performance in first grade was my bad memory, so eventually I had to drop back to my original grade. This labeled me as stupid and everyone was shocked when I got into Princeton. I Had two advantages, though. I was legacy as my father had gone to Princeton, and I applied for aeronautical engineering, and Princeton had just built an engineering campus and needed students to fill it.

I switched to Physics, which seemed much more appropriate for a person with a bad memory, and by the grace of Professor Thomas Carver made the first laser at Princeton. Our grade at Princeton was considered to be a poor one so they divided up a prize, normally given to one person, and I was one of the three recipients out of twenty in the class.

Again to the surprise of everyone I got into MIT. There I did more laser stuff and got a PhD. It was nice there, so I hung around as a post doc for a couple of years.

Love life

Ellen

I met Ellen Greene in the summer before college. She was amazingly smart and totally adorable. She went to Vassar while I went to Princeton. We saw each other every few weeks while college was in session, and during vacation times. Phone calls weren’t free back then so I spent a lot on calls. Worth every penny.

We got married after we graduated and we had two kids: Emily and Elizabeth while I was at MIT. We divorced after 28 years of marriage.

Carol

I met Carol at Ashokan Fiddle and dance camp which Ellen thought it would be fun to go to. There I learned a guitar style that is appropriate for backing up singers, but more importantly I met Carol. Carol was the center of my life for 28 years when she passed away from cancer. for more details of Carol, please look at cahz.us.

Ling

Losing Carol was devastating, and much too quickly, I married Ling Chen. Ling was 49 years old, beautiful, but had a business in Honolulu, and an aged mother in China. More about Ling here: loh3.com/ling

Hui Sun (Helena)

After Ling I had a half year interlude with Camella, who was a more reasonable age of 60. She suggested that her cousin Helena could come live with us. I said OK and she was scheduled to arrive on August tenth. When Camella and I broke up, I asked Helena if she still wanted to come here and she said yes! That was the start of our connection which has grown constantly since. For more info, please look at loh3.com/atlast. that name was chosen for the song with that name which describes how we feel about each other.