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	Biography This is the page where one traditionally talks about where he was born and where he grew up, where he went to school, what degrees he earned and what honors won, where he worked and what books he had published, what financial successes accrued. But these things are really not important in my life. What is important are the people who were and are in my life. In that, I have been incredibly lucky. Marilyn Ediss was by far the most important person in my life. Marilyn was the smartest woman I ever knew, and the wisest. Those two qualities are not the same, and she possessed them both. It was her influence that smoothed off my rough edges and took my anger at the world away. She managed to find good in everyone and gave freely of herself to anyone she thought needed help. She knew that people and sharing with people were life's top priorities--not wealth, not fame, not accomplishment, not possessions. That was the wisdom that it took her a long time to instill in me, but I still don't have it to the degree that she did. I loved her above all others for thirty-five years and basked in the love that she returned. In all that time, we never had an argument or uttered a cross word. When we disagreed on anything, it was time to reconsider your own opinion rather than solidify it. Our relationship was as close to ideal as any two people can have. I am still angry at how unfair it was for cancer to take her away so early, to steal all the plans we had for our next years together, and to put her through such agony. The anger remains, but there is no target for me to aim my anger at. She deserved much better. My family was the perfect family for me even though I didn't recognize it as I was growing up. My father was stoic, hard-working, demanding. He was also totally devoted to his family and saw his purpose in life as providing for that family. I resented his insistence that I accept his virtues of hard-work and perseverence. It was only much later that I recognized that he was trying to instill in me the values which in his experience had been crucial to succeeding. It was the best that he could have done, and to the degree that I did learn them, he was right. My mother devoted her life to her children. She provided absolute stability in the home, and we enjoyed a sense of security that few enjoy. We get our values from her and our sense of humor. She supported us in whatever we attempted, encouraged us to do our best, welcomed our friends into the house. The family was financially poor, but we were never poor in the things that mattered. My sisters went unappreciated until I was grown. Now I recognize how lucky I am to have a family that is both caring and supportive. There is never bickering or selfishness among them, and the sense of family devotion is deep. Very few families are as lucky. Friends. Although I have never had a wide circle of friends, the quality of the friends I have had and still have more than makes up for the lack of quantity. Even today, I number among my friends some from grammar school, high school, college, college roommates, and colleagues from over thirty-five years ago. Over the years, a number of students have become friends after our classes were over, and more recent acquaintances have proved to be good friends as well. But I have lost very good friends from each category. Each loss serves to remind me of the quality of all those I can still number among my friends and how lucky I have been in having known them all. Students have determined the quality of my working life. The quality of students that I had in my classes from the very start has been phenomenal. My first five years were spent teaching at Temple City High School. Those kids were amazing. Because I didn't know better, I asked them to do work that should have been beyond high school. They not only did it, but they did it well. The brightest students way went beyond even what was asked of them. The average students accomplished everything that was asked of them. The students who found the work beyond what they were ready to do, managed to do more than they thought they could do. That was the atmosphere in those five years. In their free time, they were creative, funny, mischievous. No teacher could have gotten off to a better start. The amazing thing is that it never quit. For almost thirty years afterward at Fullerton College, I enjoyed a parade of students year after year who made my job both easy and demanding at the same time. They worked so hard it required me to work just as hard. My father would have approved.