DEDICATION

 

With that most important information taken care of, I will move on to what prompted me to go into Physics, then medicine and surgery.

All through childhood and as a young adult, I wanted to design aircraft. Fate stepped in after I completed the second year of a five-year engineering physics program. At the time, I thought that I had made the choice. In retrospect, I had no choice . . . it was part of the plan unfolding. The next thing I knew, all thoughts of aeronautical engineering were out the window and my life as a physicist took shape.

 

 

 

"You want spiritual knowledge, huh? You cannot get it from reading books or hearing stories of others' experiences, although this can point you in the right direction and help prepare you. Before the spirits reveal themselves to you and allow you to acquire mana and knowledge, they will watch you to see what type of person you are. They will test you and the test is always arduous."

-Spirit Walker, Dr. Hank Wesselman

 

 

There comes a time, when one must see the world as it is, not as one would want it to be. There comes a time when a person must come to grips with his ubiquitous fear of death. How would you react, if you discovered that life is but a series of lessons that cannot be avoided and that your days were planned in advance? In addition, what if you realized that you possess a soul that survives beyond death to continue with its education? If you knew these things to be true, you could achieve a state awakened consciousness in which you discover that things are as they are, because the universe is as it is. There are answers to the questions that all of us ask: "Why do these things happen to me?" and "What will happen when I die?" What follows, will answer both.

My first clear memory was the first day of Kindergarten. The other boys and I were eagerly arranging wooden boxes to form an airplane of some sort. Those rectangular boxes were lightweight, constructed of simple varnished wood and could be stacked quite easily by children as young as ourselves. After fashioning what I considered to be a cockpit, I jumped inside to man an imaginary steering yoke.

"Hey!" shouted one of the boys. "Get out of there! (N-word here) can't be pilots! You have to be a grease monkey!"

The laughing boys pulled me out and clamored aboard in my place. I stood there, not crying but silent. I had not been taught to react with violence at such taunts. However, I have often wondered why I did not pummel the living daylights out of that kid. Was it my upbringing? Was it the fact that I was the solitary black child in the entire school and outnumbered? Would I reflect upon this and other similar episodes and be grateful that I handled the situation with brain instead of brawn? The answers turn out to be a resounding yes! Had it not been for this restraint, I may have never set foot upon the path, the path that I want to share with you now. Let me explain:

I attended a private school in Columbus, Ohio starting with pre-kindergarten at age four, and ending after the ninth grade. When my family moved to another part of the city, my parents enrolled me in a public school. Again, there was this "first-day episode" of hearing the word nigger. I could expound further upon the complex social and psychological aspects of growing up in a multiracial family in the Midwestern United States, attending predominately white schools, but I do not feel it will be important for you to know these details beyond that of the racial slurs and taunts heretofore mentioned. What matters is the fact that I was enamored with airplanes and rockets and I had developed great dreams of becoming an aeronautical engineer. A good percentage of my free time was spent building and flying model planes. This was how it really started, my interest in science.

After graduation from Eastmoor Jr.-Sr. high school, I enrolled in the College of Engineering at Ohio State University. My mother and sister both graduated from O.S.U. and I was expected to continue the family tradition. I do not recall much about that early first year except the wine and the women. I do remember being in the first-year calculus class with my friend Philip. We both laughed quietly as the professor, author of the text that was used in the course, wrote his cryptic teachings on the chalkboard. That is one example of my being "asleep" in life, which I will never forget. I got a C minus in that course as payment for my laughter.

My performance was average in everything and you might say I wasted most of that year. I was not concentrating at all on the math and physics; but a short skirt and pretty legs would catch my eye easily. In addition, I remember the headaches. They began that year and were relentless until I joined the military. I never thought about leaving the security of home until one day, after buying a pair of slacks downtown, I noticed my friend Geoffrey a block away waving frantically to me. I met him in the middle of the next block where he informed me that he had just joined the Navy. Geoff and I were great pool-shooting buddies, sometimes cutting a class to continue playing and to recoup our losses at the game. We had more losses than wins, but we had a good time.

"Man," said Geoffrey, "I've had enough of hard times, being broke and school books. I'm going into the nuclear subs."

I was amazed. A few days ago, Geoff Tyus and I were marching to the cadence of the Air Force ROTC drill instructor, and carrying stacks of heavy books from class-to- class. Now he had a new plan?

"What about the subs?" I asked.

Geoff explained that he had signed up for a six-year program that would include two years of intense scientific training and the remainder, serving on nuclear-powered submarines. He was going to a nuclear power training school for two years after basic training. He was very excited and said I should talk to the recruiter and see for myself. Two hours later, I was in the U.S. Navy. Off we went to boot camp leaving that first completed year of college behind and off our minds. We thought we would see the world.

I spent four years in the Navy. Geoff changed his mind about subs and decided not to stick to our original six-year plan. Instead, he would serve the required four years and get out. He had a good reason as he was offered training in Jazz piano and would then work in Navy bands. He was a supremely gifted guy on the ivories so I completely understood. I had developed a fear of the "tank," the tall water-filled device that you must enter at the bottom after expelling all of the air from your lungs. You would then have to ascend the 100 or so feet to the top. I guess I did not trust the physics of it and I decided that in no way was I going to blow all of the air from my lungs and enter the bottom of a giant tank of water. Therefore, I planned on something different also.

I spent one of my four service years in Navy technical schools for training in electronic theory and the other three years working in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The technical training had been in radar repair but strangely enough, I was assigned to a shore base far from any radar. I would work with cryptographic (message scrambling) equipment. The three years on the island were great fun and very little hard work was required. In a way, it was a heaven of sorts with wonderful weather, a brown-skinned population full of the choicest pulchritude in women and I was close to the relaxing qualities of the ocean.

After four years in the Navy, I was eager to complete my college education. It had been a four-year holiday for me, but now the fun and games were over. I was back in college and it was time to cultivate a serious academic mindset. At that age, I thought I knew it all and, in my blissful ignorance, I felt prepared to tackle any academic hurdle. I had grown emotionally in the past few years and I believed that I could concentrate effectively on scholarly endeavors. I would later find out that I still had a great deal of growing up to do. As so eloquently stated by John Simon, I began the next phase of my life with "a smidgen of genius, a sliver of cutting truth."

I settled in quite easily to the second year of the five-year engineering program at Ohio State University with a plan to major in aeronautics. I had no inkling of the extraordinary journey that I was about to embark upon. It would be twenty more years before I would be cognizant of the true nature of my spirit and my eyes would first begin to open. However, the meaning of this awareness would remain a mystery for a few more years, only to be revealed to me when the time was right. After two years of pre-engineering courses, it was time for me to declare a major field of study.

"Are you all right?" said the person in line behind me. I turned to look at him and assured him that I was fine. As I stood in a long line of second-year engineering students, a strange sight had distracted my attention. The large gymnasium had several long lines in front of numerous booths where advisors sat in readiness to check student fee cards and answer questions about particular branches of engineering. Each one had a large overhead banner indicating a certain branch of engineering such as Welding Engineering, Chemical Engineering, and the other specialties of engineering, including my group, one of the largest, which was neatly lined up single file in front of the Aeronautical Engineering booth. What had distracted me was the partition with the sign, which read Engineering Physics. I thought it quite odd that of all the many lines formed to sign up for specialty training, there was absolutely no one in the line for engineering physics.

"Excuse me," I said to the fellow behind me and I walked over to the lady sitting behind the counter at the physics booth. There was a clipboard on her table with an attached pencil and only a few names had been entered on the signup sheet. The academic advisor was a corpulent lady of about fifty years of age. Her tawny hair was tied in a ponytail. She was busy reading a newspaper.

"Hello," I said. "Can you tell me exactly what engineering physics is? I wasn't aware of this branch of the college."

Being somewhat startled by my intrusion, she put her paper down and reached up to lower her glasses. Peering at me above the rims of her spectacles and without so much as a smile she said, "I think that physics would be too difficult for you."

She got a reaction from me by this remark. Why would she speak to me in such a condescending manner? It was because of my skin color. I knew the feeling from countless previous encounters that now occurred on a daily basis.

"Here are my fee card and my identification," I said, pulling both from my front shirt pocket. With a brisk motion, I deposited the items on her tabletop. "Sign me up lady. Then," and looking at her squarely in the eyes, "I will see if you are right."

"Are you certain that you know what you are doing young man?" she said, as she examined my student identification and fee-payment verification cards. I did not answer but motioned toward her clipboard and made a writing movement with my hand, indicating that I wanted her to write my name. After officially signing up for engineering physics, I collected the information sheets and my cards, turned and left the building.

Outside, it was a warm August day on campus. I took a seat on a wooden bench beneath a large oak tree and began to read the pamphlets. The math requirements were tough, up to and including tensor analysis. Other than a sixty quarter-hour stretch of another branch of engineering, the remainder of the course work would be strictly mathematics and physics courses. The final year would be graduate-level physics.

It was very strange as one moment I had been prepared to be an aircraft designer, and now I was headed for a field that was devoted to the study of how things work, and how to put that knowledge into practical use. Using the mind alone to solve problems would be the ultimate challenge. This knowledge would ultimately provide the foundation by which I would later build my theories of how this particular universe operates.