"Every man's life is a fairy tale..." (Hans Christian Andersen)

.....So to continue: I usually refer to my life from birth to age 21 as Life #1.  You can read all about it in yesterday's blog posting.  My Life #2 began after I was discharged from Naval Air November 19, 1945.  After high school, I worked for awhile in the Public National Bank as a "pageboy"; when  I went back there, they made me a teller.  I learned to count money faster than a speeding bullet, and little did I realize that paper money is like mining coal--your hands become black.  Believe it.  However, I found it impossible to adjust once again to civilian life.  I felt guilty that I survived, and my friends did not. I could not work in a cage, so I became depressed...and even suicidal.  This was not the life that I envisioned for myself.  My mother noted my mood and behavior and insisted that I present myself to the Kingsbridge VA hospital in the Bronx.  It seemed to be the right move to get out of the banking business.  I spent the next six months in that hospital with what my shrink there told me was "battle fatigue"...now known by the fancy name of PTSD--"Post traumatic stress disorder".  


.....While I was serving my time at the VA hospital, I began to write some poetry and shortly a social worker named Lucille Cusick came to see me and began to read my work.  She was impressed by it and demanded that I go to college.  I told her that in high school I did not take any college prep courses--only secretarial stuff.  She said, that it won't matter and that after I was discharged she would accompany me down (or up?) to Columbia University's Admission Office.  I thought she was out of her mind, but I thought, "Why not?"  Actually, Lucille put me on the road to the rest of my life.  At Columbia I was asked to take the admission's test--and I did--and a week or so later I got a letter from Columbia suggesting that the result of the test indicated that I could not do college level work.  This really pissed me off and I vowed that I would get a degree or two there---somehow.


.....But Lady Luck was on my side--Lucille had sent one of my poems to "The Saturday Review of Literature" a very prestigious magazine edited by William Rose Benet.  The poem was published in a section called "The Best Poetry of WWII".  On the cover was a picture of Lenore Speyer, a poet and teacher at Columbia.  Lucille Cusick dragged me and the magazine back to Columbia and on the basis of that publication I was admitted conditionally by taking a few makeup courses and getting no less than a B average before they would allow me to matriculate for a degree.  I spent the next five years there--from 1947 to 1952 for my B.S and Masters degrees.  I graduated "Magna Cum Laude".  So much for their letter saying I could not do college level work.
.....And so ends Life #2   #3 tomorrow if I'm up to it.