Jeff Silverman:
CLASS OF 1967
Scottsdale High SchoolClass of 1967
Scottsdale, AZ
Jeff's Story
It's NOT true that I was kidnapped by aliens shortly after the end of my second year at good old SHS.
Yes, I was shipped off to the cold, challenging monde of a prep school in New Hampshire. Actually the very school that served as the impetus and backdrop for John Knowles' first published novel, A Separate Peace. It was an amazing experience but was socially isolative at best. It took me at least two and a half to three years to re-integrate into the real world.
And how did I survive Phillips Exter's rigors and isolation? With the aid of Aliens AND my Zenith Transoceanic radio so as to listen to Radio Free Cuba, French-speaking radio stations from all over the globe, and other offbeat radio classics from that era including but not limited to channels from Phoenix, L.A., Rio, London, Rome, Moscow, and Stockholm.
After Exeter, I returned to the West to recharge my diminished Mexican food jones and attend college at Occidental in Eagle Rock betwixt and between Pasadena and Glendale.
Majored in Political Science/Soviet Studies. Discovered [in no particular order or priority] dating via being appointed a resident advisor in a co-ed dorm my Junior year, Dimsum at the Golden Dragon in China Town, L.A., that I was not "fit" to be a math major after all [my calculas professor was the author of Mr. Mike!], mixing my own curry powders, the beauty and magic of Russian icons, that I love to cook, that golf is not forgiving, that my Arizona roots served me better on the West coast than in New England, that I'm not a joiner of groups, that irreverence is its own reward, that field research is fantastic, both the Byzantine interstices of human relationships and the continued company of challenging books and offbeat magazine articles, that jumping 21 ft., 5 in. was going to be the max for this body, that most of my friends were from the East coast, that I loved to awaken early in the a.m. when most of the world is asleep, that I was a schmoozer with strangers, that I valued the unique and eschewed the pedestrian, that I loved language, that I ...Expand for more
was career challenged, that self-censorship is the wrong route always and in all ways, and other unprintable things.
I left the halls of Academia to go work in a cabinet factory, Silvey Products, in the poor and industrial area just off Indian School Road west of Black Canyon Highway. I commuted from home be it Scottsadale or Tempe to work and back in a fog.
I survived the heat of AZ, my love affair with the Grand Canyon, my continued long distance relationship w. BB, and other desert moments.
I left the Valley of the Sun and went to live in the D.C. area studying for my comprehensive exams at good ole Oxy. I traveled to Europe, met BB in Germany, and explored the wonders of Norway and the hospitality of Germany and Spain, an amazing place during the Franco era.
Returning to the States, I passed my comps and, in the process, managed to write an interesting paper on the presidential impoundment of appropriated funds. Toward that end, I interviewed some noteworthy gentleman, including, a former Director of the OMB and the then Counsel to the Senate Judicial Committee. Of more moment, I learned how to BEAT the system at the Library of Congress where you were only allowed to obtain books off the shelf for a day at a time.
My LOC mentor had been a scholar in residence since 1935. He was incredibly patient, had an excellent sense of humor, and knew where all the skeletons were ebtimbed in the amazing miles of mazes in the book stacks behind the ornate facades of the main reading room. From time to time he would let me go with him to the sanctum sanctorum of books including the law library stacks. This experience should have turned me into the consummate budding librarian. Being my career challenged self, I heard only the siren songs of other more alluring interests. Fortunately, I would avail myself of my research skills two more times in my continued academic endeavors, namely, The Unequal Treaty of Aigun, and the U.S.S.R.'s Accession to the UCC at the LOC and at Harvard's Widner Library.
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