We grew up believing in those statements. To some degree, my life has unfolded with some personal effort, while overcoming disasters. Recent events, though, have convinced me that I'm reaching a point of peak luck by pure chance. If I don't brag about this today, as all things have a way of balancing out, I might never again be able to say that I'm the luckiest person I know.
To begin, being born in Honolulu, Hawaii, the best place on Earth, in a period where the previous generation (World War II heroes) made it easer for me, provided the foundation for an incredible life. Those events had nothing to do with hard work on my part.
I had an uneventful youth, growing up in what was then considered to be a relatively dangerous and low class environment, Kakaako. In reality, this was a safe neighborhood, until now, when the homeless crowd has definitely made an impact. But today, I live in a Nuuanu cocoon, where we escaped COVID-19 (we all had our second Moderna shot a month ago) without even one case. I don't have all that many friends throughout the world, but I honestly don't know of one who became infected, so, obviously, no one died of this virus. Better yet, I haven't caught a cold since the beginning of last year...for the first time in my life.
About health, I do live in a seniors' residence where everyone has suffered in some serious way. I have never spent a night in a hospital, and did not take off one sick day at the University of Hawaii. When I retired, I was given a bonus of more than a year of pay for this piece of luck.
But this so-called peak I'm currently in is a mathematical miracle. We have two betting pools here at 15 Craigside.
- The football version covered the Hawaii-Houston New Mexico Bowl, NCCA Championship of Alabama vs Ohio State, and the Super Bowl of Tampa Bay beating Kansas City. I won all three. I calculated that I had less than one chance in a thousand of doing that. But that is only because for the Super Bowl, I had six numbers. Why? The people in charge somehow found out they owed me some money from a previous victory, so I told them I'll just pick more numbers. I will donate these winnings to the Photo Club.
- There is also a basketball pool of University of Hawaii men games. I won or placed in four out of five, the latest being last night.
But returning to my early life, my luck began to improve when I was a junior at McKinley High School. I think I was most influenced by my older brother who was studying at the University Michigan, or perhaps too my English/Social Studies teacher Mildred Kosaki. I suddenly determined that I would go to Cal Tech or Stanford. No one from McKinley had recently gone there.
I should have immediately given up when I took the practice Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) in my junior year, and while very good in math, scored embarrassingly poor in verbal. I recall two hundred something, placing me in the bottom tenth percentile. But this only validated a similarly low score I had when they gave us the national comprehensive aptitude test in the 8th grade.- In a stroke of luck, I broke my wrist playing basketball and therefore couldn't work in the pineapple cannery during the summer as most of us did between our junior and senior years. With nothing better to do, I essentially memorized the vocabulary words in the SAT book. Just that and the help of Mrs. Kosaki tripled my verbal score into the higher 600's.
To pad my college application, I needed some social activity, so for the first time in my life I ran for an office, vice president of the senior class. My three opponents were female and classmates felt sorry for me because of that cast on my wrist. I won. That office made me chairman of a variety of committees. One selected Mrs. Kosaki's husband, Richard, who was then a new political science professor at the University of Hawaii (they had just returned from the University of Minnesota) for our commencement speaker. He went on to become chancellor of the campus when I joined the faculty 15 years later, and he picked me to work in his office. She also zoomed up in importance as a planner and was on the board of Hawaiian Electric Company when I became director of the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute. Now is that luck or what?
Further, for that college application I needed an athletic link. My best friend was the top player on the school's tennis team. I had never played the game before. He taught me. Luckily my broken wrist was on my left hand and all you need in tennis is one good arm. The team essentially played every day except for Christmas and New Year. Punahou always beat us up, for they gave scholarships. The four best players on the team played first and second singles and first doubles, so I was the 5th best at third singles. Punahou gave four scholarships, so their fifth best was nothing special. Our team beat the other private schools and Roosevelt. I might have had an undefeated record, which looked good on the application.
One of my particularly popular postings had to do with a pumpkin pie fiasco while I was in high school. Essentially: Unique, successful, sincere, and creative philanthropy was KEY to getting in.
I should have added that my family was poor, so there was no way for me to go away unless I won a full scholarship. Both Cal Tech and Stanford accepted me, but the school I really wanted to go to, Cal Tech, only offered a pittance. Stanford provided not only a scholarship, but waived tuition fees and added full room and board, plus a part-time job working in the library. Lucky?
Upon graduating, my close classmates mostly joined the new Peace Corps. I had to do something somewhat similar, so I chose to return to Hawaii to help the ailing sugar industry. While working in Naalehu, I met my wife who was a nurse in the next town of Pahala. We were together for 47 years, and if not for her I would not have had my professional success. Luck?
The Vietnam War was heating up when I decided to join the Army Reserve. However, after a few years in sugar, I decided to go to graduate school. C. Brewer paid my salary to get a master's degree in sugar engineering, and the only such school in the world was at LSU in Baton Rouge. On my first day of school the Defense Department activated all the reservists who were not actively training (I had just joined a unit in Louisiana) and sent most of them to Vietnam. I might not be alive today if I remained in Naalehu. While there I did not have to go to weekly gatherings in Hilo because it was too far away. So I was in that fateful national control group. C. Brewer allowed me to stay on for a PhD.
That led to my joining the University of Hawaii, which could serve as a whole new posting on my luck there, for it flourished. Maybe some day in the future I'll continue this story.
Here is something someone sent me today about an event that will not occur this year, but perhaps in 2022 after the pandemic:
One final bit of info, O Sole Mio actually means My Own Sunshine. And this is a Neopolitan song, not Italian. It is generally considered, though, to be the most famous tune from that country.
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