As state leaders, I think its important for us to provide our perspectives on issues we face every day - like access to school spending, access to health care and governing in a global economy.
Being a teenager, I would think they were real strict, and I would get upset, but I'm glad they were like that. They didn't let us do whatever we wanted. We weren't allowed to date until we were, like, juniors in high school.
Now almost every artist outside of New York is connected with some school or some museum school, and even in New York the majority are. That's an interesting fact when you take the idea of making money, making a living selling paintings. Only a dozen or two painters do that.
However, I had a chance encounter with an admissions officer of Stevens Institute of Technology, who so impressed me by his erudition and enthusiasm for the school that I changed course and entered Stevens Institute.
This line of research continued when I went, and brought my research group with me, to the new University of California, Irvine campus in 1966 to become the founding Dean of the School of Physical Sciences.
I went from elementary school to proper training, operatic training, and I went on to the Motown University and learned a lot of things from some wonderful people.
I had only played five games in my senior year in high school. I was not large enough. Hell, when I graduated, I was about five foot four and weighed 120 pounds. I didn't go with the Dodgers until spring training of 1940 and I weighed all of 155 pounds soaking wet.
To this day I get mail from women who say, I went to law school because of your song. But I would hate to think out of the wide spectrum of things I have done in my career, that's all I would be remembered for.
I think the Civil Rights Movement changed that trajectory for me. The first thing I did was leave school. I was suspended for my participation in Movement demonstrations in my hometown, December, 1961.
