Clay B:
CLASS OF 1969
Coon Rapids High SchoolClass of 1969
Coon rapids, MN
University of Minnesota - EducationClass of 1998
Minneapolis, MN
Northwestern Electronics InstituteClass of 1983
Columbia heights, MN
Clay's Story
"...and everything is going to the beat - It's the beat generation, it be-at, it's the beat to keep, it's the beat of the heart, it's being beat and down in the world and like oldtime lowdown and like in ancient civilizations the slave boatmen rowing galleys to a beat and servants spinning pottery to a beat..." -- Jack Kerouac (American poet and novelist. 1922-1969)
I've been married for thirty-four years to my 'kindred spirit' Kathy. She's the one stable element in my life. Without her I suspect I'd have been long since dead. She's from upstate New York (Corning, NY specifically -- home of Corning Glass Works -- home of Pyrex) near the Finger Lakes region. Cayuga, one of the Finger Lakes, was the summer residence of Rod Serling (check out Twilight Zone next time you get a chance -- his production company was called Cayuga Productions) and home to Cornell University. Keuka Lake (Hammondsport, NY) is the birthplace of Glenn Curtiss -- the "Fastest Man in the World" in 1907, setting a record 136.36 mph on a V8-powered motorcycle -- and the site of the first flight of the world's first flying boat in 1912, designed, built, and flown by Glenn Curtiss. (Oddly, Curtiss gets little notice in US history even though he was one of the great industrial giants of the Twentieth Century. Curtiss invented the hand throttle control for motorcycles in 1904, he's considered to be the model for the original Tom Swift character in the wildly popular series of novels by the same name, he invented the dual control system and the retractable landing gear for aircraft, in 1919 he developed the NC-4 flying boat -- the first airplane to cross the Atlantic. Dude!) Kathy is a technical writer/editor and has a small antiques business. -------------------- "What is the feeling when you're driving away from people, and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? -it's the too huge world vaulting us, and it's good-bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies." -- Jack Kerouac
By junior year life in general, including school, sucked. I suspect that if I had come along a couple years later I'd have been a dropout statistic. As it was though, I was on some sort...Expand for more
of trajectory -- a ballistic projectile headed somewhere -- unsure of the point of impact. Velocity carried me through senior year despite having essentially given up on school -- school failure, as it were. Everyone I knew figured I was college-bound. I was sick of school. If it weren't for teachers like Ms. Rither and Mr. Peterson, the Ds I was earning could have easily been Fs. I limped along through my other classes just kinda hoping it would soon be over. Graduation couldn't come soon enough. When it did, my dad didn't show as usual. -------------------- "...colleges being nothing but grooming schools for the middleclass non-identity which usually finds its perfect expression on the outskirts of the campus in rows of well-to-do houses with lawns and television sets in each living room with everybody looking at the same thing and thinking the same thing at the same time..." -- Jack Kerouac
I started college in fall '69. By the end of winter quarter '70 my GPA was 0.8 and I was on academic probation. Under the newly-reinstated draft lottery I was ineligible for another year. I dropped out. My life got better and worse. Working in surveying was good for me. Working period was good for me. I had some sense of purpose, some sense of personal worth. My depression came and went. If it hadn't been for the discipline of getting up to go to work I don't think I'd be here now. Some days I couldn't go to work or face anybody. Absenteeism was (still is) a problem I've had to struggle with. It threatened my employment at more than a couple jobs. Others would joke about taking a 'mental health day' -- for me it was no joke (except in some sort of odd, ironic way -- like some morbid inside joke). Yet through it all I managed to make progress. Over the intervening years I've taken a night class here and there, and once, when laid off, I went back to day classes for a couple quarters. My grades were better. I finally got serious in about 1994 and decided to finish a degree in Voc-Ed. In March, 1998, I earned a BS in Industrial Education (GPA=3.2). In March, 2003, I was diagnosed with recurrent major depression. A year later that diagnosis was refined to bipolar disorder - type II.
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