Mark Karpel:  

'71 classes. Roomed with a dude that served 2 terms in 'Nam on a river boat. College was provide by the GI bill. Crazy guy, hell I'd be crazy if I cruised on a river boat for 2 years! He introduced me to the evil weed ... something I think he had daily in S.E. Asia. Again, after a month of so, while on Sco-Pro, left the college scene to open my own auto repair shop over in Dillion Plaza near the old Mercantile Bank. Discovered, in the summer of '71, an opportunity to attend Del Mar Tech .. I guess what they call the West Campus now. I had worked on a residential framing crew for a couple of previous summers and construction alway appealed to me. Well, I took a 2 year program they called Architectural Technology. Similar to drafting but with more emphasis on home and commercial construction materials and techniques. Continued to run "Mark's Auto Service" and did repair work from around 3pm (after school) 'till 10pm or midnight. I was living in an apartment at the time and began losing weight. (Couldn't afford to eat out much!) Although the course study concentrated on the construction fields, I was making good bucks working on vehicles and did not really apply my construction education and prior experience until September of '80, following hurricane Allen's route through Kingsville where I was at that time the Service Manager for K.A. Childs Ford. Further education was pretty much self-taught depending upon what skills I needed to make more money.