Stan Croydon:
CLASS OF 1962
Long Branch High SchoolClass of 1962
Long branch, NJ
Stan's Story
Stan is from Kensington, Maryland. Stan is married. Stan's schools include Long Branch High School. Stan later attended Case Institute of Technology (Math and Physics, Astronomy), Catholic University, J.D., 1969 to 1973. Stan works(ed) at U.S. Department of Labor, office of administrative law judges department of labor, Federal Labor Relations Authority.
Stan's interests include Glen Miller, Folk music, Jesse Owens. Music Stan likes includes The Beatles, Glen Miller, Elevator Music.
One of Stan's favorite quotes is:""Keep your knees loose and give ‘em a low silhouette; that way there's less to shoot at!"
Often said by Jean Shepherd, my favorite humorist and author of the movie “A Christmas Story,” on his WOR radio show broadcast from New York City in the Fifties.
"If God meant for me to be an auto mechanic He would have made oil water soluble; since He didn't, I'm not!"
That was said by me in 1966 after I changed the oil on my new 1966 Pontiac GTO for the first and only time. After that I got the oil changed at my local gas station.
"If you grab them by their shorthairs their hearts and minds will surely follow!"
Said by many attorneys when they were about to question a key but hostile witness in their case.
"The appearance of motion is better than no motion at all."
I take full credit for this quote. I came up with it in a carpool in 1974 when traffic was really bad and hardly moving. My passengers criticized me for getting off the main road to look for side streets with less traffic that would get us to work, quicker. They contended the side streets wouldn't get us where we were going any faster and what I was doing was useless.
That's when I pointed out to them that by taking the side streets it at least looked like we were getting to work or home, faster. The key word in my quote, “appearance,” summed up what I came to call Croydon's Corollary. Mathematical corollaries are situations that allow the mathematician to move various parts of an equation from one place to another and the resulting equation is still accurate.
The beauty of the quote and the concept of a corollary is that the word motion can be switched to any number of other words and the statement still makes sense. For example, I once had a manager who at least held meetings with our staff from time to time; that was something very few bosses had done in the past. The manager I’m thinking of didn't manage any better with his meetings but at least he looked like he was trying to improve communications with the staff!
By switching the word motion to the word management creates another quote that makes sense, i.e., "The appearance of management is better than no management at all!"
When I realized how many words could be interchanged with the word motion the whole thing reminded me of what I learned in my high school geometry class. When certain parts of equations were moved around and the final equation still made sense, the change was called a "corollary." When I remembered that mathematical principle I began to cite "Croydon's Corollary" whenever I used the technique to make a point about something.".
More about Stan:"I retired after spending over 3 decades teaching other government lawyers how to use computers to do their work more efficiently. It may have seemed like a thankless job but I do have 5 awards from 4 different Secretaries of Labor to show some people knew how difficult it was to educate attorneys!
When I first worked at the Department of Justice after passing the Bar in 1973, I got in on the ground floor of law office automation and helped set up DOJ's text retrieval system that was similar to LEXIS. The videotape I proposed to help my small staff of 3 to start training the department's lawyers that numbered over 10,000, let us train over 1,500 lawyers in just 18 months.
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The last assignment I had at Justice was to head a staff of ten lawyers and programmers that provided litigation support services to two dozen cases with mountains of evidence that needed to be on mainframe computers for easier access and analysis. In the 18 months I was the section chief of that unit, those cases netted the government over $100 million in fines, nolo pleas and more favorable settlements and verdicts. My work also got me a meritorious award from the Attorney General.
The assignment I was proudest of was never in my job description and I took it on to help a friend who was one of DOJ's 3 or 4 blind attorneys in the 1970s. My friend became aware of a device called the Kurtzweil Reading machine and told me he wanted one so he could do his own legal research without the assistance of a reader. The device cost $50,000 in 1978 but when I leraned it first scanned printed text and then converted it into phonems that could be spoken by the computer, I explained to my friend that we were already half way to meeting his request; I pointed out that since Justice already had all the caselaw information he wanted to search on our databases, we wouldn't have to scan any of the information he wanted to search; the hardest and most expensive part of his request was already done. All I needed to do was find a way to have one of our text retrieval system's terminals speak the text of the cases!
My friend was probably the first blind attorney to ever do his own legal research but once DOJ's sighted attorneys found out what my friend was able to do, they took an interest in our talking terminal and wanted to be able to record cases their research turned up and then listen to the tapes at other times and places when it was more convenient to so so; that might be when they were commuting to and from work on a bus or train.
In my first career a decade earlier I used my BS degree in astronomy working for the likes of IBM and McDonnell Aircraft on aerospace contracts. Because I was given credit by NASA for coming up with the rescue plan for a $20 million satellite in 1969, I was able to talk my employer at the time into paying for all of my law school tuition, 4 years in the Evening Division of the Columbus School of law at Catholic University.
NASA told me I had to reposition a newly launched satellite so its solar panels could be charged, but that I only had 12 hours to do it since the battery it was launched with would only last that long. The unorthodox approach I proposed to fix the problem took just nine hours and the satellite produced lots of useful data for 3 or 4 more years on things like Quasars and X-Ray sources!
A significant thing a person should know about me is that I've had symptoms of multiple sclerosis since 1967. I’m not asking for sympathy but It's important to understand how I operate. MS is unpredictable and things like stress and high temperatures can bring on exacerbations of the illness; once you’re aware of that you have to carefully consider what things like taking on a new job or adding another child to your family can do to your medical condition. When I took my job with FLRA the real or imagined stress of being in almost constant contact with the head of the entire agency brought on a case of double vision that lasted for over 6 months!
It took 8 years before any of my doctors realized what was wrong with me! Once during those years I was rushed to the hospital with my whole left side paralyzed; the ER doctor thought it was "a possible brain tumor" and my regular doctor, when he released me from the hospital 3 days later and after lots of tests, simp0ly said he thought I had an inner ear infection!
I've had symptoms of my illness for 46 years but I think the accomplishments I've had show it hasn't kept me from being a productive employee.".
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