Originally, I'm from New York, having been born in Brooklyn on March 4, 1955, the eldest of three children. I have two sisters, Amy (who lives in Simi Valley, California) Ruth (who lives in Flowery Branch, Georgia); however, I'm the only one with a net presence. In early 1958, the family moved to Franklin Square, part of the town of Hempstead, where we lived for the next 14 years.
My childhood was not a good one - I was the kid who everyone made fun of, constantly. It made for a lot of good money being shelled out on psychiatrists and psychologists to try to figure out why I was how I was. The greatest part of the problem is that kids are cruel - plain and simple. If you were different in any way, youngster pick up on it and turn it against you. For a little mistake I made in kindergarten, I was branded for the next 11 years. As far as my peers were concerned, I was worse than nothing, an object for their disdain and scorn. A couple times during school, when it built to a head, I did lash out, and those upon whom I lashed out learned the hard way. The people involved were Charles Farruggia (sp?), Martin Nachison and Mark Kopel.
I discovered Star Trek in September 1967. The first episode I watched was "Amok Time." At that time, I was a Boy Scout. That didn't last much longer, as I turned to "Trek" and away from the Scouts, even though my dad was the scoutmaster.
Nineteen seventy-two was probably the most tumultuous year of my then-young life. I was a junior at Sewanhaka High School (Floral Park, NY), a member of the marching band, was not teased as much as I had been (though it never let up), and even had a friend at school. First, I tried out to be drum major for the marching band - had the stuff down technically, but I didn't get it, a young lady named Joanna Marciano did. That summer, I got to go to Israel for the first time. Was that a trip! However, when I got home, my parents told me we were leaving New York and moving to California, the main reason being the fact my dad and my uncle, who were partners in their own accounting firm, were not getting along (they never did, as far as I could tell) and decided to sell the business. It was up to me to decide where I'd finish out my high school years. Looking back, I made the wrong decision - I should've stayed in New York, as it turns out the only friend I had in high school died four months before graduation, and I didn't find out about it until almost 4 years later.
I was the first in my family to move to California on August 31, 1972 (my dad came 6 weeks later, the rest of my family, right before Thanksgiving 1972). For the first 3 months of my life there, I lived with my mother's older brother's family in Beverly Hills. Now, before you say anything nasty, we lived south of Santa Monica Boulevard, in the "poorer" part of the city. The fancy houses people know of are just about entirely above Santa Monica Boulevard. Because I was living with family, I completed school where my cousin Hank was attending (Linda had graduated the year before), Beverly Hills High School. I was literally the poor man in a rich kid's school. At 17, I was the only one who couldn't drive in the senior class (I didn't get my license until after my dad brought out one of the family cars - he drove the family across in the other), who didn't have well-to-do parents, who didn't flaunt mom and dad's money on a day-to-day basis. I mean, I remember seeing a (1972$) $100,000 Stutz reproduction being driven to school one day by a 16-year-old! GIVE ME A BREAK!
However, I did sorta get back at people by causing one small scandal - there was this national math contest whereby people from schools around the nation would compete at the local level, then the state, region and finally national level. I was able to garner second place (ahead of the smartest [GPA-wise] student in my grade) until this was discovered, only to have my test re-scored to put me into third place. It would have been unseemly to have a transfer student outscore the #1 senior in the school, wouldn't it?
Upon graduating high school, I then went on to college - first at UCLA, then at CSU Northridge. It was during this time I discovered activism. 1975 was the year of the anti-Zionism resolution at the United Nations, wherein Zionism was equated with racism. As a result of trying to educate people about this, I had a gun pointed at me on the CSUN campus in 1976. People didn't like having their bigoted points of view shown as being nothing but the unwillingness to understand another's point of view. It's easier to say something nasty about someone than to learn the truth about that person (or people). Of the 19 campuses in the California State University system back in 1976, only one did not pass a resolution which said that the UN resolution was wrong: CSU Northridge, although I did try my dangest to convince the student government this was the right thing to do. Ah well.
I graduated in January 1979 with a Bachelor's of Science degree in Business Administration, accounting suboption. There was no ceremony (there never is one for midyear graduates).
As a "gift" to myself for my graduation, I took a two-month trip to Germany and Israel, where I basically bummed around. It was probably the best time I had in my life. I met friends in Germany with whom I had corresponded by mail (this was before the Internet was known as it is now), and then returned to Israel to re-live my vacation there back in 1972. It was more than worth it. Granted, there were good points and bad points, but it was definitely worth it.
To back up for a minute, I had decided to join the Navy (and see the world? NOT!) back in early 1979. I'd run into a walking recruiting poster at CSU Northridge when Universal was filming an episode of "Battlestar Galactica" at the Oviatt Library. I took the tests between the time I completed my education and I left on my vacation. I did my time in, serving from right before the hostage crisis in Iran in 1979 until about 6 months before the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. I was stationed at, in chronological order, NETC Newport (Officer Candidate School), NSCS Athens, Georgia (student until disenrolled, then *6* months of waiting to be reassigned). I was finally reassigned to Training Squadron 19 at NAS Meridian, Mississippi, where I was the only Jew in a squadron of over 200 people. You'd think there'd've been more of us there or something, huh? I served as the public affairs officer mostly, and was in all likelihood the first (and possibly only) Jewish lay leader the base ever had. I even had to fight to get the base commander and base chaplain (neither of whom really wanted a Jewish lay leader) to OK my appointment. Seems they didn't want the Jewish presence to be known on the base. To this say, save their hatred of Jews, I can't imagine why.
After 27 months there, I was transferred to the Naval/Marine Corps Reserve Center at Fort Schuyler, the Bronx, New York, where I was the training/executive officer for the Navy side of the facility. When the Navy realized I was too humane for its purposes, I was sent home in February, 1984.
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