I just saw on television the movie The Aviator with Leonardo Di Caprio as Howard Hughes. I hadn’t seen it before, but Kristina had, and since it was now available free for a limited time, we followed her recommendation and tuned it in. Good movie.

When it was over, I mentioned that I had worked for Hughes Aircraft. Didn’t take much urging for me to tell the story. Not very much to tell, but Kristina said, “Dad, you should put it on your blog.”

So I am, and here it is.

Summer, 1959. I had just graduated from High School. This was the summer before college, and because I had applied late, I wasn’t eligible for more than a State Scholarship and the anonymous $50 scholarship given by a caring teacher who wanted me to go to UCR.

I think in retrospect that there must have been a government sponsored work study program and my name was submitted. I think my teachers were still looking out for me. They knew I had been offered a free ride, four years, at UCLA and Berkeley, but I had given in to their urging toward UCR and they knew my options were limited and my family didn’t have money. Maybe it was the school counselors giving guidance even after graduation.

I was young and naïve and poor and happy to take money anybody wanted to give me. I wasn’t quite ready for the world, had no car or license to drive. My family didn’t have a television, so I was painfully out of touch. Everybody knew better than I did that I would need money to survive. I didn’t know how to apply for a job, but now I didn’t have to. It was all arranged for me.

Hughes Aircraft had an established presence just south of Los Angeles and the L. A. Airport, where aviation companies lined up to vie with each other, nearly in view of the Pacific Ocean. The freeway had a turn off, and you were there.

It may be that the government was pressuring companies to offer opportunities to the nation’s youth before college swallowed them up. It may be that Hughes offered out of a goodness of heart. In any case, everyone was polite, helpful, patient, friendly. They wanted us to feel we were all there by choice.

They even arranged transportation. They set up a car pool for me with an employee, I don’t know what department he worked in or what his job was, but lived not too much out of the way one city over, and he swung by my house where he would pick me up, waiting at the top of my driveway, and then the drive through and past L. A. to the big labelled Hughes Aircraft building. He was always on time and said it was no trouble. I believed him.

The first day we were all assembled in a meeting room, high school kids like me, and new hires there for orientation. We were welcomed with the little speech you would expect, then broke to classrooms and given questionnaires and worksheets. Apparently we were in class and being trained for something. Computers were very new at the time, and we were eased into an introduction. The Hughes people went slowly with us, partly because some of us were pretty slow, partly, as I came to discern, that they really had no expectations, no preparation for a later job with the company. They were going through the motions of a program someone else had decided to set up.

They gave us worksheets, math problems, and most of us could do the easy early ones. They gave us a little less than the rudiments of computer lore.
We’d break for lunch. I don’t remember now if we brought our own or if there was a cafeteria, and if so, whether lunch was provided or we had to buy. I’m surprised that, knowing my love affair with food because I was always hungry, I don’t remember the details. Maybe hypnosis would bring it all back.

I must have made student friends or work friends. I don’t remember. I do remember one fellow participant who was older and was being prepared for a job with the company. We would sit together at lunch, and he would tell me about his life.

He had some college, maybe a degree, was from Israel, and he and his wife were hiding out because she was AWOL from the Israeli army. I remember his name, but won’t mention it because he may still be alive, though highly unlikely, it was so long ago.

One day he came to me and asked if I knew how to change a tire. I didn’t know, but was willing to try. Later in the day he said never mind, he got the parking lot attendant to change the tire, thus keeping it on the adult level.

There was almost never any mention about Howard Hughes, where he was, what he was doing. They spoke of him with respect, sometimes token, sometimes with reverence.

When the summer and the program were drawing to a close and I banked the money, my family advised that I should get a thank you gift for the steadfast chauffeur who placidly took me to work every day. They suggested cuff links, a respectable gift for a man to give another man. I bought a pair I thought was splendid, gold-filled, about $40, for me a lot of money. I didn’t even want to think about real gold. He said, “You didn’t have to,” but I could see he was pleased.

I don’t think I learned very much from the summer program, no special skills. Maybe to be a little more comfortable being around other people. I did somehow feel peripheral to events in the big real world. I had earned a little money and was readier for college when everything would open up and I could become an adult. I thank Howard Hughes Aircraft for that.