Description
This thesis is the story of the son of Italian immigrants to the United States. It tracks the significant aspects of his life beginning during the Great Depression. He lived the first part of his life being part of one of the poorest families in the wealthiest town in the United States. He began working outside the home, caddying at a country club, when he was nine years old. He quit school at fifteen, hitchhiked to parts of New England and then to the Southern part of the United States before joining the U.S. Air Force when he was seventeen years old. He was honorably discharged four years later and worked at various jobs, including short order cook, bartender, drill press operator and then became a semi-pro boxer. He eventually found his way to the university on the Korean Veterans GI Bill. While at the university he took part in the anti-McCarthy movement in the early 1950s. Later he moved to San Francisco where he met some interesting people, including Kenneth Rexroth, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and other poets, writers, and painters during the so-called "Beatnik" era. In 1963 he went to live in Europe for two years. When he returned to the states he got married and lived in Joplin, Missouri and in New York City. In New York he joined the newly organized National Teacher Corps and taught in Harlem for two years. When Martin Luther King was assassinated he was one of the representatives of the New York City Teachers Association selected to fly to Memphis, Tenn. for the Memorial March. He went to graduate school in Santa Barbara during the time the bank was burned to the ground; when military helicopters were flying overhead and National Guard soldiers were on the streets. The story also tells of his running a floating poker game, one step ahead of the police in Detroit. He also was a partner in a nightclub venture. He served in the U.S. Peace Corps, published a few poems, as well as an account of self-deception in a philosophy journal. He lived in England, Germany, Italy, Finland and Ukraine and has visited every continent except one. He was elected to his local school board and ran, unsuccessfully, for California State Assembly. This thesis will be for his fourth Masters Degree
