Seeking Education

Seeking Education

In 1946 I was held back in the third-grade in the orphanage because I couldn’t spell, and I was accused of plagiarizing a poem I wrote called, “Oh Father if I Were a King”. I loved reading books such as: “Tom Sawyer”, “Huckleberry Finn”, and, “The Boxcar Children”. I still remember that I had to wait over a month for the book: “Snow Treasure” by Marie McSwigan.

At age twelve, my younger brother, sister and I were accepted into a foster home by the family of Stan and Fran Ulis. The three of us Skinkis children were taken for a physical exam after our entrance into the Ulis home. I was diagnosed as being malnourished. I always thought I was fat because of my bulging stomach.



Spelling again raised its ugly head. I would study for hours my spelling words for the weekly test and was lucky if my grade was D or better. After a while, I just gave up on school. The teachers also gave up on me. I just sat in the back of the class and read stories and comic books. Since I didn’t give the teachers a hard time, they left me alone and simply passed me on to the next grade.

By the time I got to high school, I was sick of school and as soon as I reached 17 years of age, I joined the army. I tried to get into the navy but one had to have at least a high school education. The first thing that the army did was to give us a physical exam and an IQ test. Mrs. Ulis was given the test results. She told me that I passed the tests and that I had an IQ of 119. That surprised the hell out of me, because I always thought I was retarded.



After basic training, I did some studying and took the GED (General Educational Development) test to get a high school diploma. I passed but later, after I was out of the army, I discovered that most businesses wouldn’t accept a GED.

I was sent to Korea in 1957 and became an alcoholic. It started innocent enough by going to the bar every night and drinking until the bar closed or I had to go on the switchboard that evening (my job). The duty was from 10 pm to 6 am. Since I was already high from my bar trip and was a little bored, I started to bring a bottle of whiskey to work. After a while, I bought whiskey by the case and I began drinking a bottle a night. Several times an officer would come into the communications hut to check on the status of my post and find me very drunk. My company commander wanted to send me home on a medical discharge, but told me he would suspend the order if I would stop drinking. I didn’t drink alcohol for six months, while I was on duty, until I was discharge in 1958. I used the money that I saved in the army to go to school for wiring programs into computers. By the time I graduated, IBM’s use of the punch-card came into common practice, and my training was obsolete.



One of my first jobs in 1959 as a civilian was working as a mail clerk for Crum & Forster Insurance Co. After 2 years I was promoted to fire claims examiner and had to write professional business letters. This was no problem for a non-educated person as I had form letters that covered 90% of my correspondence. I would simply dictate my letters into a Dictaphone and the typing pool would render the document back to me with perfect grammar and error free spelling. My coming to work drunk was met with several warnings from the boss. One day it happened…I was called into the boss’s office and was informed that I was to be fired. My boss said I could work out the month so that I would get full pay and use this time to find another job. A few days later, another officer from the auto claims department told me to come to his home for dinner on Sunday. This guy had befriended me about a year ago and protected me from my abusive spending of money by taking my pay and allotting a portion of my salary every day when I came to work. I wonder if I never missed a day of work, because I wouldn’t get my allowance?

The dinner engagement on Sunday came as a great surprise, because as I entered the house, I was met with a huge crowd of fellow employees shouting, “Yea, Skinkis”. My friend called me into the kitchen and told me that he had a proposition to offer me. He said that the company took up a collection of enough money to get me to California and he had a friend in Los Angeles that would put me up for free for one month so I could find a job and a place to stay. He stated that the money would be returned to the employees if I didn’t accept his three point offer. His three points were: (1) I would not have more than two drinks a day (his friend in LA always drank wine with his evening meal and would like to share with me). (2) I would enroll at Los Angeles City College within the month of arriving in LA. He said that he knew that I always wanted to further my education but he understood that no college in Pittsburgh would accept a high school dropout. (3) He told me that I must write to him once a month and let him know how I was doing. He also said that he would share this information with the people who contributed to my trip. He continued with, “In LA they will accept anyone into the junior college system who is over twenty-one years of age and is a California resident, but you will have to maintain a grade C average or above to stay within the system.”



My first class at LACC was Health and I got an A. What a piece of cake, I thought. It wasn’t until I tried to take other classes that I found in order to take most classes one had to have the prerequisite of English 1. So I took English 1 and before I failed it, I dropped it. My English professor suggested that I take remedial English (called dumbbell English by the students) so that I could keep moving on at the college. Remedial English was a nightmare. Not only was spelling required but vocabulary at the college level, grammar, and the writing of a high level college essay. I was about to fail Dumbbell English but a friend of mine told me to drop it before I failed so it won’t go on my transcript as an F. I took his advice three times before I finally passed. I dog-eared a dictionary to death before I was able to achieve a college level vocabulary and write a comprehensive essay. When I took English 1, I was already in LACC for four years. Oh, about my spelling, one of my teachers in remedial English suggested that I should be tested for my inability to spell and sure enough the test revealed that I was dyslectic.



After I had got all the skills under my belt, I was asked by the Dean if I would tutor some students who were having a difficult time with their academic work. I agreed and found that the other members of the tutoring team were among the top students at LACC. My ego soared as well as my confidence! School was so exciting and I wanted to learn everything. I loved science but realized that I needed an extensive background in math. My math skills were non-existent and I wasn’t going to go through the same demanding gauntlet I went through with English.



When I got to California State University at Los Angeles, I majored in Social Science with emphasis in geography. In a history class, we had to read three different books on Lincoln. Two of the books were the pros and cons of Lincoln and the third was neutral. From that class I learned a great lesson that stays with me today: Most points of view are made by omitting facts that are contrary to one’s point of view. Also one of my naïve ideas was that I hoped to learn if there was a God and other puzzles that still are not found by the keenest minds. When I entered California State University at Los Angeles, I breezed through the classes to get my BA degree in 1969. I received my Master’s degree from Missouri State University at Springfield in special education so that I could assist students like me who needed a helping hand and to provide these students with a platform they needed to achieve a better life.



I wish to thank all the people who helped me through the hard times (You know who you are). I especially wish to thank my first wife, an executive secretary, and who typed out my messy papers and made them look like what the professors were looking for.



Today at age 76, I do English editing for people who are writing their Ph.D dissertations and college professors writing articles within their professions.