[An undated document]

HOW ONE HIGH SCHOOL COURSE
AFFECTED MY PROFESSIONAL LIFE.
by Woody Baldwin

When I finished high school it was during the depression. In those days we didn't have scholarships and government loans, etc. You either had money or you worked. We did not have the money so I stayed in high school an extra year to get some skills to work my way through college. I took typing, shorthand and bookkeeping.

My shorthand teacher was the dean of women and the class was at 1 p.m. In those days returning late from lunch was a worse sin than having a baby out of wedlock is today. Each guilty gal had to see the dean, so my teacher was frequently called out of class. She had the class elect a substitute teacher on those occasions when she had to perform as dean of women.

For no reason I can think of, the class elected me. To that point I had been struggling to just get by in the shorthand class; I was not doing well in the subject at all. But with this new responsibility, I spent every spare minute I could find working on my shorthand with the result that I became very good at it. (Spare minutes were not easy to find because I worked in a drug store 8 hours a day all through high school).

When I graduated and was going to Amarillo Junior College , she wrote an unsolicited letter in my behalf to the chairman of the secretarial studies department about this "shorthand whiz” who was going to be attending. I took another course in shorthand there and became the "teacher’s pet" and when I decided to go to the University of Oklahoma, she wrote an unsolicited letter to the department chairman there about this "shorthand whiz" who would be attending O.U.

The chairman at O.U. was working on his doctorate and had a graduate course conflict with a shorthand course he was to teach.  He hired me to teach the course; I even had the responsibility of supervising 6 practice teachers. I was only a junior in college myself. He and I became good friends and kept in touch while we were in the service, writing occasionally and I even spent a weekend with him and his wife when we were both stationed in New jersey.  He was an officer in the Navy; and I was a non-com in the Army.

A very real part of my planning was to live in California. As I neared discharge, he was stationed in California, I wrote and told him I wanted to get my masters degree; should I go to UCLA, Southern Cal, Cal Berkeley or Stanford? He asked for a month and he'd write back. When he wrote he said in our field it was UCLA head and shoulders. So, off I went to UCLA.

He wrote an unsolicited letter to the head of the Business Education department about this "shorthand whiz" who was coming there to do graduate study. When I had been there less than a semester, my new department chairman hired me as a teaching assistant in shorthand. I had not finished my first semester in that position when the regular shorthand teacher retired; the chairman asked if I would like a permanent position on the faculty. What a break for a guy who had not even finished his masters degree to be hired onto the faculty of such an esteemed university! I was then obligated to get a doctorate if I were to teach on the college level.

It was inevitable that the Gregg Publishing Company would hear of this "shorthand whiz" at UCLA and hired me for a summer as a ghost writer on a textbook that was being revised. That led to an offer to author a text. (The royalties from that book paid for the house I later bought in Boston.)

How did the "whiz" get to Boston? The president of the Gregg company, gave a speech at UCLA and invited me for a drink after his performance. By this time I had taught at UCLA for ten years. He asked if I would consider leaving there for a very good job on the East coast. I was extremely happy where I was, but he went on to tell me of a deanship in a fine women's college in Boston. He elaborated by telling me that both his wife and secretary were graduates of Simmons College.

He asked if I would be willing to visit the college, so I said I would; but even though I had no thought of leaving UCLA, my connection with Gregg Publishing Company was something I valued also. He immediately in my presence called the president of Simmons and said, "I've found the ideal person to head your School of Business". All my degrees in business gave me the depth, he thought, to chair a school of management.

I went, liked what I saw and spent 26 years until retirement in 1982. My entire professional life had been influenced by my election as substitute teacher in my high school shorthand class. Talk about luck!!