Be practical as well as generous in your ideals. Keep your eyes on the stars, but remember to keep your feet on the ground. – Theodore Roosevelt, 26th US president. 

I had not intended to fail out of college, but when Dean Gann called me into his office in June 1972, I realized I was at a major decision point in my young life. I had been a student at Harvey Mudd College for two years, just completing my sophomore year. The first year had gone well, with all courses pass/fail, meaning there were no grades, just the judgment of pass or fail. Sophomore year was different, and grades were given for all courses. Fall semester I squeaked by with a 2.1 grade point average, but the spring was a disaster, having failed my applied probability and stochastic processes course. I had never received an F in any course, and the closest I got to it was a D in four grade handwriting. My GPA that semester was 1.8. “I don’t think that Harvey Mudd is the right place for you, I heard him say. Yet, I knew it was right for me, I had known since early in high school. Now I just needed to figure how to show the school this. “Let me think about it this summer, and I’ll let you know before the fall semester,” I told him. I hadn’t wasted my time that year, but I knew I didn’t have my priorities right. I didn’t drink. I didn’t party, so those were not the issues. But I did get involved and I spent more time on other extracurricular activities, whether it was school organizations or my church activities. So I resolved to make the needed adjustments and stay at Mudd. It apparently worked, because the next two semesters I made the Dean’s list with GPA’s of 3.13 and 3.48. Another lesson learned. I was on my way. Now let’s go back to where it all began. 

I grew up in a Navy family. My father, Lefteris Lavrakas, was born in 1919 in Watertown, Massachusetts, one of four sons of Greek immigrants, Apostle and Fotini Lavrakas. My mother, Billye Jayne Charleville, was born in 1924 in Glendale, California, also from a family of four. Her father. John Willam Charleville, for whom I was named, was a city manager in Southern California in many of the large communities, including Pasadena and Long Beach. 

My mother was a creative, loving person, the youngest child of four, born in Glendale, California. Academics were not a strength of hers, but art was, and problem solving. She was fearless in the face of challenge, and always seem to proceed as if she knew exactly what she was doing, although I know she did not. Mom went to Poly High School in Long Beach, one of the largest high schools west of the Mississippi River. After high school she studied art at Art Center in Pasadena, California. She painted throughout much of her life, first in oils and later in watercolors, and exhibited throughout Orange County California, including the Laguna Arts Festival. She had a sharp eye and steady hands, and in her seventies, she began to paint and sell miniature water colors of scenes from life, with 50 original designs. I can still remember an experience I had as a teenager in Collodi Italy when a contact fell out of my eye. “There it is!” Mom yelled as she ran down the street chasing it. She had a sharp eye. 

My father grew up in a small apartment on the second floor of a house on Alton Avenue in Watertown, Massachusetts. For most of his life, he shared his bed with his brother, Vasilis, whom everyone called Babe. His other brothers were John (eldest) and Alexander. When he was of age to go to school, he was taken by his brother John and enrolled, since his mother did not speak English. John introduced him to the teacher as Eleutherios Lavrakas, the name that had been used in the family since he was a tyke. The teacher said she would record his name as Lefteris, and that was how he was known for the rest of his life, although his friends called him Lefty, even though he was right handed. This simple incident came back to bite him years later when in the 1950’s, the federal government was clamping down on national security. He received a visit at the house from two men in black suits asking to speak to Lefteris Lavrakas. When he replied that he was Lefteris, they asked why he had been lying about his name. They explained that the name on his birth certificate was Leonides Lavrakas, not Lefteris. He explained that Leonides was indeed his given name, but the family had called him Eleutherios since he could remember. They told him that he needed to get this corrected immediately, which he promised to do. The next day my Dad called the town clerk in Watertown. “Hi, this is Lefty.” “Hi, Lefty, how are you doing? What can I do for you?” “Well, I need to get the name on my birth certificate changed. Is this something you can do?” “Sure, Lefty, we can do it. We just need $1 to make the change.” So Dad sent him the dollar, and got the revised birth certificate, which I still have in my files, dated in the mid 1950’s. By the way, Dad went by the nickname Lefty even though he was right handed. Mom was the one who was left-handed.

Dad was really born October 18, 1919. A decade later his family was hit by the effects of the great Depression and he was fortunate to receive an appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy in 1939, where he graduated in 1942, one year early due to the War. He was first assigned to the USS Eberle (DD430), escorting convoys in North the Atlantic and patrolling in Caribbean and south Atlantic hunting U-Boats.   He participated in the North African invasion and later, the invasion at Anzio Beach.  

In 1944, he received orders to the Pacific, traveling to Long Beach, California for the commissioning of the ship, the USS Aaron Ward (DM-34). While on leave in Long Beach, he hopped on a hotel elevator with his friend, and met the strikingly beautiful Billye Charleville. With little time to think, he blurted out an invitation to come to the ship’s christening later that week. Thus began a wartime courtship that resulted in exchange of addresses. Within several months, he was off to the Pacific where the Aaron Ward came under attack in May 1945, being hit by a half dozen kamikazes while on picket duty. Even though the ship stayed afloat, there was tremendous loss of life. When he made it to Pearl Harbor, Lefteris was able to make a long distance call to Billye, asking for her hand in marriage. 

And the family career in the Navy began. My sisters were born in Charleston, South Carolina, Annapolis Maryland, and Chelsea, Massachusetts. I was born in San Diego, during the height of the Korean War.

The life of a Navy family was one of constant relocation, and with dad at sea for half the time, the responsibilities of raising the children fell largely to my mother. She had to get us enrolled at school, and pick us up if we were sick. She got us to the hospital and dealt with the shopping, cleaning, and teaching us to make our beds and not to swear. The month I was born, Dad was at sea, and Mom had no one to get her to the hospital. She coaxed a neighbor to drive her to Balboa Naval Hospital, who dropped her at the front door and drove off. 

With Dad in the Navy, we did not stay long in any one place. My childhood towns up through high school included Coronado California, Hingham Massachusetts, Newport Rhode Island, Springfield Virginia, Hingham Massachusetts (again!), Falls Church Virginia, Long Beach California, Vienna Virginia, and The Hague The Netherlands. My sister Char-lee ended up going to four different schools for her high school years. I only went to two, so I guess I was lucky. We were one of those families that traveled in a station wagon, the original minivan. “See the USA in your Chevrolet” was the slogan and we crossed the country six times by car. Also while we lived in The Netherlands, we explored much of Europe in our Bel Air station wagon called Dinah (for Dinah Shore, its previous owner), traveling through Germany, France, Switzerland, Italy, and even to Greece. The station wagon did not do well on Italian streets. And the brakes gave out coming out of the Swiss Alps. 

In our younger years, our family was especially close. On the long trips, we sang lots of songs. For us, it shortened the trip. For our parents, I’m sure it was the opposite. “Erie Canal”, “I’ve been working on the railroad”, and “She’ll be coming ‘round the mountain” were some of our favorite songs. When at home, my sisters and I would come up with kooky skits and present them to our parents, complete with costuming, when appropriate. We loved playing games, lots of games, board games and card games, and those helped us pass the time both at home and on the road. We could make one Monopoly game last the whole two weeks over Christmas break, although we did it by constantly borrowing money from the bank. Dad taught me cribbage, a card game he often played aboard ship, and that is a game Melody and I play to this day the last thing before turning in for the night. 

With all the traveling we did, we got to see most of the country, across the upper midwest through to Washington state, and across the south, driving through Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and Louisiana. We camped by the Grand Coulee dam and witnessed the splendors of the Grand Canyon. We visited civil war battlefields in Gettysburg, Manassas, and Vicksburg. Countless times dad would have us sit up on a civil war cannon while he took our pictures. We ate beignets in New Orleans and Coney Island hot dogs in New York City. Dad’s last tour in Europe allowed us to see the Eiffel Tower, the alps, the Coliseum in Rome, and the Parthenon in Athens. 

As I mentioned Dad was at sea when I was born, serving on the USS Horace A. Bass (APD-124 ) off the coast of Korea. Dad often told the story of how he first learned of my birth. He was walking by the radio shack when a hand of the radioman grabbed his pant leg and pulled him inside. The operator receiving the message in Morse code pointed to the message unfolding on his typewriter, announcing my birth in San Diego.

As a kid growing up I was enamored with the space race. Sputnik was launched in October 1957, and then the United States took steps to put Americans in orbit. I desperately wanted to be an astronaut and go into space when I grew up. Math and science were very enticing to me, and came easily. I was one of those kids who did like to add columns of figures. In 6^th grade I built a matchbox computer, literally from matches placed into boxes. I don’t remember today how it worked, but it was kind of a version of an abacus, in which each box had a value associated with matches in the box. 

In 1964, we moved once again to Dad’s new duty station, Long Beach Naval Shipyard. We lived in Belmont Shore, a quiet beachside community, and there I attended Will Rogers Junior High School. I learned a lot at Will Rogers, including his famous saying “I never met a man I didn’t like”. That appealed to me, although then I wasn’t sure how I could apply it. I held onto the idea, and over time, it became part of my way of viewing others.

Mr. Smith was my shop teacher, and he taught us how to draft shapes and structures with a pencil and square on a drafting table. In the next year, in metal shop, he taught us how to turn a block of metal on a lathe, twist wrought iron to make fireplace tongs, bend sheet metal to make a tool tray, heat and sand metal to make an offset screwdriver, melt aluminum to cast ashtrays, and weld steel with an oxyacetylene torch. Looking back, I’ve been amazed at the dangerous things we were allowed to do in school at 13 years old. But the lessons I’ve learned in safety have served me well over the years. 

In junior high, I had experiences that formulated how I would treat others, important life lessons. Mr. Horn was our math teacher, and he didn’t know how to control middle schoolers. I guess he thought we would just do what he asked, but as it turned out, middle schoolers had other ideas. Looking back, I could see that the kids were terrible in how they treated him. Although I didn’t participate in their bullying, I allowed it to happen, and felt ashamed for it. 

While I was at Will Rogers, I got into a fist fight with another boy. There were no winners declared, but some of the kids said I was winning the fight. We both were taken to the principal’s office, and reprimanded. I knew what I did was wrong, and I didn’t want it to happen again. In Sunday School, I discussed it with the class. There we learned that if someone treated you roughly, you were to turn the other cheek, meaning not to fight back, and to follow the Golden Rule, that is, to treat others the way you would want to be treated. I thought about these principles, and in my 13-year-old mind decided that next time I would heed them. 

Several months later, another boy came up to me, and started punching me in the stomach. I remembered the decision I had made, and decided I would not fight back. I just turned and walked away. We both were taken to the principal’s office, but this time I didn’t get in trouble. I felt good about my decision, and that was the last time I ever got into a fight. 

Junior high years were active years for me intellectually. My mom gifted me a membership in a “Science Kit of the Month” club, which delivered a package in the mail each month with supplies and instructions for doing a science project. I built both a refracting and a reflecting telescope, a crystal radio, and a cloud chamber (with a live radioactive source!). Since I was living in the smog filled Southern California of the 1960’s, the telescope was not much use in gazing at the heavens, but the crystal radio was very cool. I was able to tune into local radio stations and listen to songs and stories.

As a suburban boy in a family of loving parents, I did not lack for basic needs, but I did have experiences that taught me valuable lessons. I joined the basketball and baseball teams, even without much experience. Baseball came naturally because dad would play catch and hit pepper (a batting and fielding skill game) with me. Basketball was more of a challenge. I learned it like many on the school grounds by shooting hoops and playing horse with friends. When I later went out for junior varsity basketball, I didn’t make the cut. Dad gave me practical guidance, suggesting I offer to be the equipment manager, taking care of the balls and other gear, and while at the practices, work my way into the team and show my ability. So I attended all the practices, and sure enough, eventually was asked to be on the team. That was an important lesson in “being there”, being present and demonstrating commitment by positive action. Eventually I was to receive the boy’s sportsmanship award in my senior year, which affirmed my commitment to participation and fair play. 

In 1966, my dad received an appointment to the American Embassy in The Hague, The Netherlands to fill the post of Naval and Defense attaché. We moved to Vienna, Virginia for a year where he received training from the State Department on being a diplomat. This included learning to operate a Leica camera and the very cool Minox subminiature camera, used for taking photos of documents. I learned a lot of Dutch words while helping Dad learn pages of vocabulary lists. 

In the fall of 1967, we moved to The Netherlands, opting to travel to Europe by sea on the SS United States, at the time the fastest ocean liner in the world. We departed New York City, passed by the Statue of Liberty, and crossed the Atlantic in five days, sailing to Le Havre, France. There we were met by my dad’s new driver, Arnold Stromrood, who drove us back to The Hague in a black American station wagon. We moved to a house in Scheveningen for a year, and then spent the next two years in a large house in Wassenaar, an upscale tree-lined neighborhood outside of The Hague. While in The Hague, my mom studied art at the Vrije Academie in The Hague, while Dad was busy with his diplomatic life. Dad loved baseball, and since the Dutch loved baseball, arranged for the Dodgers to come over and conduct baseball clinics. 

One of our family’s intersections with history occurred in 1969. As did most of the world, our family was glued to our black and white television set on July 20 as Neil Armstrong became the first person to walk on the moon. For us in Europe it was pretty much the middle of the night, around 3-4 am. After returning to earth, the astronauts toured parts of the world, which included a stop in The Netherlands, where they were greeted by Queen Juliana. Members of the diplomatic corps were invited to the reception line, and Dad and Mom were there to greet them. My dad, who was never, ever at a loss for words, was speechless when Armstrong and the others reached them in the line to greet them. At this point, Janet Armstrong leaned over to my mom and whispered, “That’s ok. This happens all the time.” 

Living in The Hague, I was able to immerse myself in the culture, — making friends, playing sports, and participating in all the regular things of life, like taking the tram and riding my bicycle everywhere. I played outfield on the baseball team and a forward on the basketball team. I eventually got a license to ride a bromfiets (the name for a Dutch 50cc moped). When I was 17, my parents let me spend spring break traveling with a couple of friends on our bromfiets through Germany, Luxembourg, Belgium, and France. It was marvelous spending time with my friends in foreign countries at the leisurely pace of a 20 mph motorbike. My bike was plagued with flat tires, and with the help of American army soldiers in Euskirchen, Germany managed to get on our way. 

As a family, we traveled throughout central Europe, driving as far as Italy and Greece (by the ferry at Piraeus). We toured Paris and Normandy, camped in the hills above Rome, visited relatives in Athens, and went skiing in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany and Innsbruck, Austria. We drove our Belair station wagon and took trains everywhere. And with all this traveling, from the United States to Europe and throughout Europe, I had never been on an airplane. Not until we moved back to the States in June 1970, when we boarded one of the newest planes in the fleet, the Boeing 747. 

In planning for life after high school, I had my hopes set on attending Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California. My grandfather, John W. Charleville, had worked for the College in the fundraising department, and we had visited the school when we lived in Long Beach, California. There were two intersection points with the college while I was in The Hague. The first was our college chemistry course, based on a book by J. Arthur Campbell, a professor at HMC. Every time we watched a chemistry film strip, at the end his name appeared in the credits, followed by Harvey Mudd College. When I saw it, I would think to myself, I’m going to go there someday. The second intersection point came in my senior year. While I had applied to Harvey Mudd, I was unable to visit the college for interviews because we were living in Europe. As it turns out, the baseball coach from the Claremont-Mudd baseball team, Dr. Bill Arce, had brought members of the team over to The Netherlands to conduct a clinic with Dutch baseball players. While he was there, I was able to interview with him for admissions at Harvey Mudd. The college had placed me on the wait list, however, and I was forced to make a decision as to which school I would attend. Since I had been accepted to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, I notified them of my plans to attend. Even though my family knew my heart was set on HMC, they received this news well, because my father was planning to take an assignment with the Navy on the East Coast, and my sister planned to transfer to the University of Maryland in College Park. I had applied for and received a full tuition scholarship from the State of California to attend a college in California, but having no word from Harvey Mudd, I had to decline the scholarship. 

Then to my surprise, I received word that Harvey Mudd had pulled me off the wait list and granted me admission. I learned that Coach Arce had been in the admissions office when they were considering who to take next from the waiting list, and having interviewed me, put in a good word for me. Now, I had the daunting task of reversing everything I had done, and began to take steps to attend HMC. It was a big topic of discussion at the dinner table, and when all was said and done, my sister switched to Whittier College in Southern California, Dad made the decision to retire from the Navy and settle with Mom in Southern California, and Dad agreed to write a letter to get my California state scholarship reinstated. 

In 1970, the Vietnam War was raging, with 18 year olds getting called up with the draft to serve in the Army. I was not politically minded, but I remember thinking that I did not want to serve in this war, carrying a gun and killing others whom I did not consider my enemy. The selective service department offered a deferment for students at colleges and universities until they graduated, and I chose it, pushing off this matter for another four years. As it turned out, the war ended in 1973 and the military draft was halted.

And so, my new life in Southern California began. Back in those days, all communications were by letter. While still in Europe, I learned that my friend from junior high school. Rich Zucker, was also attending Harvey Mudd. An aunt who lived in Southern California also shared with us that a young man in her church, Doug Burum, was also was attending HMC, and we made arrangements to room together. As it turned out Doug and I roomed together for the next four years in North Dorm. Doug studied physics, and after graduation went on to Cal Tech to receive his PhD in Physics. 

Harvey Mudd College was chartered in 1955, and opened its doors in 1957, with its first full graduating class in 1961. During orientation week in 1970, they had the usual set of facts and figures to impart to us. Two statements stood out to me. The first was, “Did you know that no graduate of Harvey Mudd has ever lived past the age of 35?”  This was a bit jarring until we realized that the school graduated its first students 9 years prior, so we quickly calculated this was reasonable, and should cause no alarm. The second statement was, “Did you know that half of you are below average?” This was much more unsettling as most of came from schools where we were in the top 10% of our class. But I understood the statistic and was ready to accept it. I had been a big fish in a small pond, graduating from a class of about 60 students. Harvey Mudd College I knew would test me in ways I had never before experienced. 

HMC was one of five undergraduate colleges that made up the Claremont Colleges, along with the Claremont Graduate School (now Claremont Graduate University). The others were Pomona College, Claremont Men’s College (Now Claremont McKenna College), Scripps College, and Pitzer College. Students could take classes at any of the other colleges as easily as signing up for classes at their own campus. As a result, I took advanced French classes and Economics at CMC, German at Pomona, and Politics of Education at Pitzer College. Life at the Claremont Colleges was both fun and demanding. I got very active in several organizations, including serving as chairman on the HMC Judiciary Board and being an active member in the Christian Science Organization. 

Harvey Mudd’s workload requires one-third of courses be in the humanities and social sciences. This grew from the college’s origins, founded ten years after World War II. Since the war ended with use of the atomic bomb, those planning the college wanted engineers and scientists to have a basic understanding of the lives and societies of the people they serve, and thus HMC required a strong curriculum in the humanities and social sciences. As a result I took many classes not related to science or engineering, allowing me to get outside the STEM box. 

Life at Mudd was comfortable (academics aside). I had only a bicycle and used it to get everywhere on campus and around town. I had a work study job at the campus center in the cafeteria dish room. My main job was washing the dishes that came in on the trays, rinsing them with a high powered sprayer, then stuffing them into the Hobart dishwasher that washed and dried them in a heat chamber. When they came out, I was supposed to put them away, but they were so hot, I could hardly touch them. For this, I received $1.60 an hour. Later I had a work-study job in the new Sprague library at the front desk. There I could actually use some of my work time to study, as I waited for visitors to come to the desk. This job did not last however. As it turns out, I also volunteered time as a campus tour guide. When prospective students or others came to campus, I would take them around showing them the dorms, classrooms and labs. Occasionally, the tour would last longer than expected, and I would be late for my job at the library. I was reprimanded multiple times by the head librarian for not arriving on time, and eventually fired, after arriving yet late yet again on account of another tour. This was the second time I was fired, and was learning that I needed to see things from my employer’s perspective. The funny thing was, when I graduated several years later,  the head librarian came up to congratulate me, and told me that if I ever needed a reference, he would be happy to provide one. Clearly he had forgotten that he had fired me. At least his heart was in the right place. 

In my junior year at HMC, I signed up for a new program between HMC and Claremont Graduate School, a five year Masters program in mathematics with a concentration in two-year-college training, which allowed me to take graduate courses during my senior year. My included student teaching at nearby Citrus and Mount San Antonio community colleges. After five years, I completed both bachelors and masters requirements at the same time, in June 1975. Well, not actually at the same time. In an act of irony, the graduation ceremony for Claremont Graduate School was on Saturday June 7 and for Harvey Mudd College was on Sunday June 8, so I received my Master of Arts the day before I was awarded my Bachelor of Science. Oh, well, whatever… Now armed with my Masters I was ready to embark on my career as a community college teacher. Or so I thought.