Theodore
a job with the Federal Power Commission down there, but I never got to the
point of really applying. I was at the Seattle District Office in connection with
the flood control on the project I was working on and asked them if they
needed anybody. I didn't really want to get into specifications, but they
transferred me up there under the wartime rules that gave priority for
related work.
So I guess I've just gone the way the wind has blown me, but I've had a lot of
fun. When you ask if there are anything that I have regrets about, I guess I
have to go back to my love of the outdoors. I tried to put it first, but not
always successfully. I went every year for 25 years to climb in the West or in
Switzerland or in Scotland or Canada. That has been a very important part of
my life. I got obsessed with the idea of climbing mountains. I guess it really
is an obsession, and so my greatest regret is that I wished I had climbed more
mountains when I was still able to.
There were not many times that I missed an opportunity to go climbing but
there were some. Climbing was probably more of a challenge for me because
of having had polio, which left me with a weak leg, but it was something I
could do. I sometimes feel if I had worked more diligently and organized my
life better around my work, that I could probably have achieved a lot more.
Yet, I think have put the important things in my life first, which were family
relationships and my love of the outdoors and music.
We haven't even discussed my love of opera, and that goes back to high school
days when I was naughty and threw some spitballs or something in a music
class. My music teacher, Murial
as penance for whatever I had done,
made me give a report on the radio production of an opera. This must have
been on a Saturday, long before Texaco took over the Metropolitan Opera
broadcasts. The opera was
The assignment just turned something
on inside me. My family was not really very musical. My mother wanted me
to take piano lessons, but I never would. I wanted to spend my spare time
outdoors. But when I listened to
I was just thrilled by it, and
particularly by Wagner. Later when I heard Die
with Hans Sachs
hammering his shoes, I identified it with my grandfather.
I love symphonic music also, particularly the French romantic music. was
first introduced to that by Kay before she became my wife. In the first or
second letter she wrote me, she told about how she loved the
Symphony
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