BERKELEY Inspire

It’s funny to be born in Berkeley after WWII.  We first lived on Grove Street, just across from Berkeley High School. Some of my first memories are of seeing Oski in an annual parade down Shattuck Ave. in early September, just after school started. I grew up, literally, in the shade of campus.

At age 6 we moved 2.5 miles north to the Colusa Circle area where Berkeley, Kensington, Albany, and El Cerrito converge, but I still went to school at Bentley in Berkeley.  I always wanted to go to UC Berkeley, meet Oski, and become a teacher. And learn something new. Mirabile dictu, I did.  I ended up studying French, did graduate work, taught for five years as a teaching assistant in the French department, left the university after learning a new skill (using computers to type my not-yet-turned-in thesis), and changed careers. I became a computer whiz — then six years ago returned to finish my working career at the Berkeley Wireless Research Center.

All the while one thing was constant: I learned to read and write at several schools, but Berkeley’s influence was the strongest. And at the end of my career I had returned back home. Just goes to show you can see the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right. I came home and am happy: I saw the light, and it lit my way.