As I examine my own recognizable traits that presumably have been bequeathed to me by my lineage, the first is wonderful
health and the possibility of a long and useful life as suggested by the 91 year lifetimes of both parents. Thus there is
likely to be time enough to get things done. Little items such as a complete absence of allergies or familial maladies
such as diabetes seem unimportant, but I have a different view of this. I believe that whoever surmounts a lifetime
problem such as this must be among the strongest and most deserving. And then there are those with family tendencies
to heart disease seeming to limit a productive future, but cardiovascular advances such as that with ByPass open up
frontiers that can level the paying field. And this holds for all but a few problems, and must not limit a our
perspectives for what life can be.
The second important inherited characteristic is that of how the mind raises questions and then recognizes and
solves problems. I know this seems too simple. but I see no reason to make it complicated. On the surface, the
artist and musician seem as different as night and day from the engineer and businessman, yet underlying these
surface differences of the “accomplished” in any of these fields, there seems to be to be a basic pattern of
thinking making for contributions by each. The artist or musician has his or her priorities always in a dominate
place, and hopefully this will be discovered.
The person I am and wish to define and thus encourage is, in the simplest form not the artist or the musician.
It is he or she who is primarily, a “tinkerer”. As a child they love to find out how things work. They would
take them apart, and not always bother to get them back together, while siblings would have no interest in
the “how” but just accept the fact that the object worked.
This tinkerer with a parent who had a wood working shop or was happiest absorbed in making his Model T a
little faster was doubly blessed because his tinkering tendencies were fulfilled from the start. Those in
affluent homes where car parts littering the garage floor were not acceptable had to be satisfied just
pulling apart a light switch, or building a photo printer and enlarger as was my good fortune.
It is in high school that the DISCOVERER may first appear, as his or her mind is challenged by mathematics.
The subjects will hopefully be algebra, geometry, and trigonometry, in that order.
So, if I am to encourage others, what was my experience? Algebra was a breeze. Geometry was fun though
nowhere as easily understood. But it challenged my view of the world as a three dimensional “something”
in space. Also, perhaps it expressed a bit of the artist potential. Yes I had to learn about sines and
cosines and tangents, but I could immediately see them, almost feel them.
So now we come to “trig” . To say I feared it is an understatement, because for the first time I was being
made aware of my inability to memorize”. The various “"functions" of trig with their odd symbols that I had
handled well in geometry, were suddenly just numbers and designs on a page, and my visual ability failed
because I could not photograph them into my mental bank.
And this limitation became almost disastrous when I started my engineering education at Stanford in Analytic
Geometry, necessary to pass before going on to calculus,. It was so different and so unlike the algebra that
I had loved. “Analyt” was really just a “rut in the road”. The need to again memorize the functions brought
me down, and I dropped out of engineering. I believed I couldn’t make the grade.
The professor of mathematics saw something in me that I had missed for sure, How did he know? He was the
scorer at our basketball games and apparently took great pride that an athlete could also be a student,
and only with his urging and support did I return to engineering,. I was still willing to work much harder
than the others but it seemed to me that “the price was right”.
Next page: Gifts from Inheritance, page 2
Introduction
Gifts from Inheritance
Gifts from Inheritance, page 2
Gifts from Inheritance, page 3
The Open Mind
The Transition..? Metamorphosis.
The Process of Getting There
1947....Discovery #1....A Beginning
Discovery #2 (1947): Thrombophlebitis and Pulmonary Embolism Prevention