William Foster:  

NEW NAME: I picked Foster as my new name because I’d often get mistaken for Foster when trying to tell anyone my last name. I very much detested my birth-certificate last name ever since I first learned it at a very early age, so much that I very willingly went to court for a legal name change as soon as possible after I turned 21. Here's an example of how I knew at an early age that I hated my last name: In first grade I had a classmate with no middle name. When he told me he had no middle name, I told him I had no last name. I have real good reason to believe that my paternal grandfather by birth deserved not to have his name carried on, for he became an alcoholic and deserted his family when my father was just two years old. At that time my father had a sister who was four years of age. Not too long thereafter my father and aunt ended up getting raised by a stepfather named Edmund Schafer, and I remember him very well as Grandpa Eddie. If I can name one person that my aunt really despised, it’s the birth father of her and my father. I am not the only family member who hated that name. Dad’s sister had a brief childless marriage during her young-woman years. When that marriage ended my aunt chose to keep her ex-husband’s name. I also have three younger sisters and the third one is still single in her early 50’s. She too went for a legal name change shortly after becoming a legal adult. My father and I were as different as night and day regarding the opinion of our last name, for he loved it and I hated it. He even threatened to disinherit and disown me if I were to proceed with the name change. However I never let such warnings stop me, for I felt that it was much more important to be true to myself than to please my father. Fortunately in the end Dad did no such thing. I can think of two reasons why my father didn’t take his stepfather’s name sometime during the period of nearly 11 years after becoming a legal adult and before marrying my mother. First, he was 14 and a half years of age at the time of the October 1929 Stock Market crash and ended up spending his teen and young-adult years living through the Great Depression. Such an experience made him very unwilling to spend money on a name change. Second, he struck me as the type of person who enjoyed having a seemingly weird name, even if it was the name of the deserting birth father. At one point when my deceased wife Jane was in my life, she and I had a friend who was into numerology. It is like a first cousin of astrology and it involves deriving numbers from the letters within a person’s name to determine how that person would do in life. The numerologist friend thought my name change was a real good move on my part. So for two reasons I believe numerology is very accurate in my case: (1) I changed my name toward the end of my junior year in college and I actually found myself getting along much better with my dorm mates after the name change, and (2) I've found that 'Foster' flows much more harmoniously with the 'William L.' than my birth-certificate name, given how I sign my name on such documents as checks, income tax returns, and employment applications. Before the change I had a hard time getting beyond the ‘F’ in my signature. On the subject of college, right after graduating from good old RHS in June 1967 I spent my four undergrad years at the University of California in Berkeley, where Oakland is the county seat. I have one reason to be real glad that Oakland is the place where I changed my name. At that time the one football team that my father really hated was the Oakland Raiders. The name change took place on 28 April 1970 at Alameda County Superior Court, case number 398672. According to the RHS Class of 1967 Senior Banquet Booklet, my pet peeve is listed as "The World". A much more accurate pet-peeve listing would have been "His last name". I had been very outspoken since eighth grade about my intense dislike for that name. Further, I hate the name so much that I actually feel a lot more comfortable uttering any one of those well-known four-letter vulgarities. Finally there’s something that an English-speaking man can find sexually demeaning about my birth-certificate last name. One informal term for the male genital organ is ‘dick’ and one name I’ve been called during my school years was “false dick”. I positively didn’t want to spend my life with a name that inspires such sexual harassment from lots of people, and I often wonder how my father could stand to wear that name, especially if he was ever called “false dick”... FAMILY: I have three younger sisters, Kathy, Kris, and Karen, RHS 1971, 1973, and 1984. The first two are married and have young-adult children. Kathy and Kris are also grandmothers of some small children. Karen is still single. Dad got into a one-car accident in a heavy rainstorm in June 1972 at age 57, and died a week later of complications from injuries. I'm not the only family member who hated that last name. One of my three sisters (Karen, RHS 1984) is still single at age 50 and she too went for a name change a couple of years after becoming a legal adult. An aunt (Dad's sister) had a brief childless marriage in her young-woman days and she opted to keep her ex-husband's last name when her marriage ended, even though she could have easily reverted to her maiden name. According to the RHS Class of 1967 Senior Banquet Booklet, my pet peeve is listed as "The World". A much more accurate pet-peeve listing would have been "His last name". I had been very outspoken since eighth grade about my intense dislike for that name. Here's an example of how I knew at an early age that I hated my last name. In first grade I had a classmate with no middle name. When he told me he had no middle name, I told him I had no last name. Jane and I once had a friend who was into numerology. It's like a first cousin of astrology and it involves applying numbers to the letters within someone's name to figure out how that person would do in life. The numerologist friend thought I made a real good move in changing my last name. Ever since I changed my name, I've found that my new and current last name 'Foster' flows much more harmoniously with the 'William L.' than my birth-certificate name, given how I sign my name on such documents as checks, income tax returns, and employment applications. Finally, there's even something about my birth-certificate name that an English-speaking man can find sexually demeaning. One informal term for the male genital organ is 'dick' and one name I've been called back in my school days was False Dick. I positively didn't want to spend my life with a name that inspires such sexual harassment from lots of people. I often wonder how my father could stand wearing such a weird name, especially if he was ever called False Dickweek later from injury complications. Mom remained a widow and died in June 2011 at age 86 in Albuquerque, NM. She could no longer afford to live in Ridgewood after Karen graduated from RHS. Kathy went to the University of New Mexico after graduating from RHS and has lived in the Albuquerque area ever since. When Mom and Karen moved to NM to join Kathy, Kris and her husband bought the Ridgewood Lawns house where I grew up and they still live there. I had been married to Jane for just over 25 years when I lost her to cancer in July 2011. Through this marriage, I got two stepchildren and two step-grandchildren. In my Q&A, I state that I have no children because the question sounds like it asks only about biological products... CURRENT LIFE: I am spending my retirement years in a senior apartment Virginia Beach. I had lived in the Virginia suburbs of the Nation's capital for nearly 29 years, from January 1987 to December 2015. In February 2016 I sold the house that I had owned for 18 years and I was real lucky to get good appreciation on it. The house is about 25 miles south of DC along Interstate 95... CAREER: I retired at the end of September 2014 with over 40 years of experience as an information technology professional, most of it under Department of Defense contracts... PET: One Krazy Kat... MOTOR VEHICLE: A 2014 Toyota Corolla LE four-door sedan, my transportation vehicle in retirement... UNDERGRADUATE: I attended the University of California at Berkeley from September 1967 to June 1971 and received a Bachelor of Arts in Computer Science... SINCE COLLEGE: After leaving...Expand for more