Robert Piper:
CLASS OF 1959
Adams High SchoolClass of 1959
South bend, IN
Robert's Story
I believe that my story needs the backdrop of where I came from in my life before John Adams High School. I don't believe any of my school mates every knew that the most informative period of my life began as a very young boy in Japan in the immediate post war era of 1947 to 1951. I was being exposed to a side of life that young people at the age of seven would not even imagine. In fact, I was thrown into a devastated culture and I truly discovered how desperate a people could become to sustain those values that had been passed down to them through the ages. It definitely influenced me for the rest of my life, especially for the moral standing of tolerance and understanding the needs of others.
After I graduated from John Adams I found myself at a personal crossroad that would decide my future. I believe mostly out of frustration, I joined the United States Marine Corps. From there I can only describe my life experiences as being dictated by what could be best described as a high velocity culture change. I found myself not only highly qualified as a Marine rifleman, qualifying as an expert in all the years of my enlistment, but I also took on the duties of being a cryptographer in the field under what were sometimes very unusual circumstances. In fact, my last assignment on active duty included the most heated aspects of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
In my final days in the Marine Corps I was recruited to work with, what was then called the Atomic Energy Commission. My intense training at this point took me to a field of science that was called health physics, but at an associate level. It was really the discipline of protecting people from the biological affects of radiation. I, very ...Expand for more
quickly, found myself being assigned to the initial re-entry teams that were called upon to assess the safety of entering certain test areas (ground zero) immediately following a nuclear detonation. I can report that these experiences would not be easily explained to those without a similar background, but they did bring me to a threshold that were sometimes best described by J. Robert Oppenheimer after the first atomic detonation, called Trinity, in 1945. You may recall that he quoted the Bhegaved Gita: "If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one." and "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." Maybe a little over the top, but on some occasions these words did seem appropriate.
After spending eight years in this volatile environment, I needed a lifestyle change. Surprisingly, it was more due to the politics than the more obvious physical threat.
Through a government program I was able to further my education at what would later be known as the University of Nevada at Las Vegas. It was on that campus that I was recruited by the State Farm Insurance Companies to become one of their field agents. Even though it was a very dramatic change in my career path, I found it to be very satisfying and rewarding career choice, not to mention a much more quiet one.
I have spent the last thirty eight years of my professional life in serving a couple of generations of families that call the Las Vegas area their home.
Needless to say, I could spend a great deal of time on any one of the above areas of my life experiences, but that probably would not be very acceptable, nor appreciated, in a forum of this type.
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