Mr. Ernest Hooks Jr., Architect/ MBA (Part III)

(Continued from Part II…)

What are some of your philosophical beliefs about life that you’ve learned from all of your travels, careers, and paths?

Well, we need thinkers. They’re what we have a shortage of: thinkers and people who move to do action. There’s no shortage of the need to promote change. The only shortage is commitment and action. I think that too often people will say, “I’m going to… I’m going to…” and then they never end up doing it.

Here’s an example. History is one of my passions, and this is something I wrote:

“Because I see the condition of the nation is at a crossroads,

The one word that I see is actually lacking is not just a deficit in the economy;

It is a Deficit of Character.”

That is from a poem I had written, and I had requested to be the student speaker at the commencement exercises coming from the University of Phoenix in September. I wanted to share that with the graduates to get them to buy in to that model. If they are willing to go out from Phoenix to become the models, they can make a difference, but right now, the line that is blurred is what the expectations are from the university and what their personal aspirations are. I’m saying if you can make that line bolder and make the character expression the model for the class, you can make a difference. That’s my platform that I’m offering.

The other part is that as adults living in a community, we see that we’ve got family disintegrations and all that. I’m a big brother for William, who is eleven years old. He’s not my natural child, but he’s in my community, so I’ve must take some responsibility for him simply because if I don’t invest the time to show him the right road to travel, I could become his victim. If he goes down the wrong road, I could become his victim, so the responsibility is there. As long as we are here in the community, one has to have the responsibility to be able to make an influence for that child in the next generation coming along. We need more adults to do that!

If the Class of 2013 can entrust that same value to the Class of 2014 and 2015, it becomes a chain. That’s the difference between that and a commencement speech where one week afterward, no one remembers exactly what was said. But if you have a chain and each class buys into that chain, then you have something that can be sustained. That’s what I’m trying to convince the operations of the University of Phoenix to do. So you’re the commencement speaker this September? Not exactly; well, there is going to be a speaker for commencement, and then they’re going to have a student speaker. I requested to be the student speaker. I submitted that poem to the committee requesting that consideration.

That’s wonderful. I love hearing that because when I’ve been interviewing so many people who have grown up during the Great Depression and World War II, they’ve told me how the communities have grown so close together in the war effort and everything. Even with the people who lived out in the country, their values were just really different from ours today, and it’s a problem. I usually ask another question, but you’ve pretty much answered it: what problems in the world today are you most concerned about, and what can be done? People have said technology can be a problem because it can take away children’s morals and can distract them from what’s important in life.

Yes, I heard about a bust by the FBI just recently about kids that were being used for prostitution. The FBI arrested about one-hundred-and-fifty right here in this area. These were the pimps who were pimping the kids from age nine up to sixteen. That’s awful! Yeah, Atlanta is one of the largest areas of human trafficking right now. Wow…

Now, you have more cases of runaways, cases where parents are giving kids away because they don’t want the stress anymore. There are kids out there from nine to sixteen who need some parenting. I said to myself, “Really and truly, what I would love to be able to do is have an orphanage.” Have you ever heard of Josephine Baker? She went to France and adopted numerous kids from different cultures, and she was an entertainer. She would teach them and maintain. I think that she had ten or twelve kids from other cultures, and she was black. I’ve heard her music, but I haven’t heard that about her.

I always wonder about where those kids are going to go and who’s going to be able to parent them. I would love to have a farm and be able to have proper chaperones for kids and be able to be that support because that’s an issue right there: where are they going to go? You can have foster parenting, but if you have a farm area, you can teach them some basic things about farming, and they will be able to grow up with food. You can’t do that very well in the city. I think that would be wonderful. Yeah, it was just a thought.

If I had the resources (or at least some of the resources), really and truly, I would go out and start it and request some of the foundations. I would go to other nonprofits and say, “Here’s a project that we can work together on.” With your love for education and creativity, it would be so wonderful. It really would.

In addition to that, I went back and did some studying myself and started connecting some dots of history that I had never been exposed to, and I made some discoveries. Then, I wrote one piece for Tuskegee. Have you heard about George Washington Carver and Booker T. Washington? Mm-hmm. We were talking about character before… What’s missing big-time right now is character. When you look back over the landscape—this is what I made plain to some people that I wrote in response to this Zimmerman-Martin case, and I think clearly in my heart that Travon, at seventeen, had not had the proper parenting in order to be able to reflect character. I think he had problems at school; he was going to stay with his dad; his mom had problems with giving up. He was going back to his dad’s home when he had the encounter.

When I look at that and look at the association he had with this young lady who was on the stand—I didn’t hear the testimony, but I read the commentary. In high school, she could barely communicate. She was not able to communicate very well. I think it was beyond having fear of being on the witness stand. I think that was part of her makeup; she had not moved forward enough to be able to master communication very well. Then, I put all those things together, and thought that character was lacking in both cases. Therefore, you had the conflict that came about and caused somebody’s death. If character had been there, there could have been communication and a conversation that could have avoided that. But everybody wanted to blame somebody else… Well, there’s enough on both sides. Both sides were lacking proper character.

How do we know that? Go back and look at history. Booker T. Washington started Tuskegee in 1881—July 4^th, in fact, of 1881. He was a graduate of Hampton. He was so hungry to go to school that he walked most of the way from West Virginia to Hampton to get education. The lady that he had worked for in West Virginia had taught him how to clean so that he could get a job and go to school. So he went there, did that, and came back.

Then, the request came from two citizens in Tuskegee to send someone to start a school for that in Tuskegee, and he went there, found some land, borrowed two hundred dollars, and got the land. Then, in 1896, he learned about Dr. Carver, who was at Howard at that time and had just finished the Master’s program in agriculture. He requested him to come, and Dr. Carver came and stayed there from 1896 to 1943 upon his death.

There was character involved in both of those cases because Booker T. Washington had to stay on the road for six months out of the year to raise funds to sustain Tuskegee. He had eighteen hundred students. He wrote the book Up from Slavery. Have you read that? It’s a great book to read. Every student in Tuskegee has to read that before they’re admitted. It tells about his challenge to come from slavery and to establish Tuskegee. That book fell into the hands of Andrew Carnegie, and he was so favorably impressed that not only did he give him a library for Tuskegee, but he also gave him 600,000 dollars. Oh my goodness!

You don’t give that kind of money to anybody who has bad character. He had confidence in Booker T. Washington that he was going to do what was right. When Booker T. Washington came back, his response was— There was a stipend in the agreement that this amount would go to him Booker T. Washington and his family because he knew he had to live, so Booker T. Washington came back and said, “Hey, can you make one change please in this gift that your giving? Could you reduce the amount in the stipend for me and my family, so the people don’t think I’m in it for the money.”

Not only did Andrew Carnegie look favorable upon his efforts there to help that school… (It had been less than forty years since the Emancipation Proclamation!) But… what he recognized was that this was a launching pad. The people who had been in slavery for all this time had had no access to education, any of the skills or training—none of that! Tuskegee was a launching pad. With him being a former slave, he had it firsthand; he knew. This is what made it so powerful.

Andrew Carnegie gave him 600,000 dollars to use for the endowment, and in 1901, they had a fundraiser in Carnegie Hall to raise one million and eight hundred dollars. Then, they were going to take that train down from New York down to Tuskegee to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary.

All I’m saying is that men of character can really be able to attract more value and assets than men without it. That’s one of the things that’s missing in the education of our kids. They need to understand the value of having character. Although you get angry and upset, you’ve just got to stay calm and recognize that hey—violence is only going to get violence, so let’s have some wisdom here and try to work through it.

Even Dr. King made it plain and clear when he was talking about his four children during his speech in August of 1963. He said, “I hope they will be judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin.” He was talking about black versus white, but when you look at the word “character,” you can talk about it with any culture or any person.

History is so important, and I don’t think our kids get enough exposure to history and the value of those historical experiences. It can give you a better viewpoint of where we are now.

For instance, I went back and did a data study to find out what happened at Yorktown [during the American Revolution] and who were the players. I heard of this man, James Armistead; I was unfamiliar with his name. Also, Prince Estabrook was a Revolutionary Minuteman. A man of color was a minuteman along with Paul Revere. Everyone knew about Crispus Attucks [another man of color] and the Boston Massacre in 1770.

Then, I found James Armistead Lafayette. He was a spy. He was the one who got the intelligence and brought it to General Lafayette, so they could defeat Cornwallis. His gratitude was expressed to Lafayette by adopting the surname of his partner. Wow.

That has never been shared before, and it gives you a whole different perception about how the U.S. Constitutional Convention came about in 1787-88. It’s was a shared thing… a partnership. It wasn’t all white colonists who did it; there were people of color who played important roles in being able to win the 15 Revolutionary War battles so that they could move to a Constitutional Convention. (Laughs…) Yes, and that needs to be shared.

Also, Lewis and Clark didn’t do it alone when they went west of the Mississippi River. In fact, this man, who happen have been a slave was an ambassador to the Mandan Indians and also helped with setting up and management of the camps. He saved Lewis from drowning in the Missouri River.

You see, the truth brings people to freedom. When you bring all those dots together, it gives people a whole different perspective of who we are individually and as a nation.

 

Mr. Ernest Hooks Jr., Architect/ MBA (Part II)

(Continued from Part I…)

What do you think your favorite project has been—the one that you’re most proud of?

One that I’m really fond of that I helped to build was a mid-rise building off of Lindbergh Drive near the Marta station. I was called the Resident Engineer and had to be there every day to monitor the construction.

So I had the opportunity to get hands on with the construction as it went. When they were getting ready to pour concrete, I had to be there and monitor and be sure it was done correctly and write up reports and all that. I think that involvement put a highlight on my whole experience because I was able to see the drawings and be there and help to coordinate the drawings. That was the high-rise right across from the old Lindbergh shopping center. Is it still there? Yes, Marian Road Mid-rise Housing for Seniors it’s still there.

When did you get into writing?

After I did work [in Lindbergh], I got an offer to go to South Carolina as the manager of an office. The gentleman I was working for [was part of] McDuffie and Associates. At the end of the job we were doing in Lindbergh, I went to Orangeburg, South Carolina and stayed there for about a year. While I was there, we did a lot of modifications for the campus to make it accessible for the disable. While I was there, I had the opportunity to go on the campus and go into the French language lab. I did it on my lunch breaks, so that was a real plus to be refreshed and speak some French.

Then, I came back here after working there for a year. In South Carolina, I used to come back on weekends. First, I would drive in my car. Then later, I had a motorcycle for my commute, which was really wonderful. I would use the motorcycle to come back for the weekends. I had to leave early Monday morning at about 3 AM to get back to Orangeburg, South Carolina by around 8 AM in time for work.

One of the greatest experiences I had was that when I left at three o’clock in the morning on the motorcycle, I would be heading east going to Orangeburg, South Carolina. At that point, I got the chance to experience something I had never experienced before: seeing a pre-sunrise sky setting. Then, [I could] witness all the different changes in the complexion of the pre-dawn sky that takes place between pre-sunrise and sunrise. Wow—it was phenomenal. I wrote a poem about it from that phenomenal experience I witnessed.

Mrs. Wilkerson was just in her prime. She lived in a mid-rise down in Summerhill, and she was noticed by Georgia State in an outreach program for seniors. They noticed her work and thought it was extraordinary. Is she the artist [in your children’s books]? Yes. She grew up in a farm down in Covington, Georgia and came to Atlanta. She was married but never had any children. My mom introduced me to her when I was a little boy because I used to pass her house on my way to daycare everyday. My mom would tell me, “You stop by and say hi to Mrs. Wilkerson,” so I would stop by. That’s how I got to know her.

When I came back from South Carolina, I learned that she had moved to a mid-rise, and I would go by to visit her. We had a great bond of friendship. When she died in 1984, she made me one of the exequaturs. Her next-door neighbor was also an exequatur, but her neighbor died in 1990, which meant that I was the sole survivor. As the will said, everything valuable would come to the sole survivor, so all her work came to me. Her actual artwork came to you? Yes, well, I had the rights to all of it. I don’t have all the originals. She has three pieces in museums and some that have been sold. Is it still hanging at the High Museum? Yes.

So I took it and put it in a file cabinet, and that’s where it stayed for probably ten years. One day, I pulled it out and said, “I must do something with this.” After a seminar that I went to at Landmark Education, I decided that I could put all of it into a children’s book. I was torn with whether to make posters to sell or put it into a children’s book. Well, I finally went with the children’s book idea. In the children’s book, one of the features that keeps kids engaged is that they can play “hide and find.” They have to find details [of the paintings] in the picture. That keeps them engaged and tests their skills about detail and recognition at an early age. As an adult, being able to recognize details becomes really important, so if they can get that early, they can be ahead of their peers.

I did that layout and then started seeking a publisher. Finally, Authorhouse came on the scene, and I looked at some of their work and decided, “Hey, I’m going to go with Authorhouse.” I did all of the layout work myself; I used my architecture skills for that. I went back and forth three times. In fact, I had to search very deeply about the text design and how I was going to be able to get something complementary as a text design that could keep kids engaged rather than just reading the text that adults read. I wanted to create text that was going to be playful and unique and keep them engaged, and that’s what I came up with. I love it! How creative!

You know, art has a really great power. I think people enjoy being around art although they may not be artists themselves. So you still have all the rights to all of her work. Yes, yeah. Her nieces and nephews never came back to ask about it? No, she was the last of the twenty-one children, so everybody else is deceased.

Throughout all of your experiences with so many different passions and careers, did you ever have any low points?

Oh, yeah. When I was in college, oh man, it was really something. I was so depressed because of the heavy load of trying to get everything done for classes and all that. It just became overwhelming at one point where I just did nothing practically. My mom and dad were concerned because I stopped writing. I didn’t call because I just was depressed because of the heavy load I had to carry.

How did you get through tough times like that?

I started going to church in Washington with one of the friends I had there. That sort of helped pull me through. Making connections? Yeah, spiritual connections. Then, I had to go on probation as an undergraduate because I was doing so poorly. I learned at that time and said, “I’m going to earn money to help myself.” I went and got a license as a taxi driver and became a taxi driver in Washington DC. Wow! What a challenge to drive there! (Laughs…) Oh boy, it was! I had to learn the buildings, the routes, and all of that stuff, but God pulled me through all that.

I established a foundation after I left meaning to build on that. While I was in the military, I learned Italian since I was in Italy. I was already familiar with French, and then I learned Italian. That was enjoyable.

Now, the next chapter that I’m looking at now is to go back and refresh myself by revisiting the languages and also going back to the piano. I’m really studying Beethoven’s Symphony in C-sharp minor, Moonlight, so I can be able to play it. I think that’s wonderful! It’s cool how you weave all these skills together, like how you weave your architecture skills with writing the children’s book.

The whole game is once you have a suitable product, you have to have enough vision to look ahead and see what your next product is going to be (laughs) or else you’ll be out of business. When I’m talking about branding (we’re talking about branding a lot in the class I’m taking now), once you get established with that first product (no different from Apple, Microsoft, or anything else), you’ve got a customer support base. It’s easier to sell that second product to that base that you have than going out and finding a new base. That’s what you do: you offer and create a market for those people and offer opportunities for them to come and get the second product and then the third product. Then, you just keep going. I think it would be interesting to see what the next opportunities are. I’ve had offers from an agent who wants to consider licensing a publisher outside the United States to use the book in a different language and get royalties from that. I’m looking at that as maybe an option for the future.

Once we got the first volume done, I had to go back and scrap all the text because I wasn’t satisfied with the text. I said, “Well, it’s got to be something to keep kids engaged; it can’t just have regular text.” All the books I saw on the shelf just had regular text. Kids see things differently from adults, and I really realized that. Recently, I tested a young three-year-old. I was using the chicken [illustration]. I made some of the letters bold and large, and I recognized that they were user-friendlier to the three-year old. She was able to see something bigger. She did not know the word l-o-o-k; she knew the alphabet, though. Then, when her dad and I asked her, she could read the letters with confidence, and we sounded the word out for her. She would beam! (We laugh…) He was happy, too, so he bought the book.

She was alphabet-ready—ready for the book. She got inspired, and that inspiration caused her to go on to another word. That was the real advantage there. Her dad and I were off to the side talking about something else, and she and her little brother were playing a game of “hide and find” in the book. That’s great! So it’s great for all age levels. Oh, yeah. Mm-hmm.

So here’s a bird’s eye view of what it was like in the farm culture. Clark Howard said that he didn’t learn that food didn’t come from the factory until he was nine. I gave Clark a complimentary copy and was trying to get this to be a part of his Christmas kid project. He came back later and thought that it wouldn’t be a good hit. I haven’t given up, though. After that Children’s hospital campaign that WSB did, I called in and offered to be able to share some of the proceeds from books, so they asked me to call next year and do that. I’m hoping to maybe get some press out of that. It’s all marketing now.

The original idea was to put the contents of Volume I and Volume II all in one volume. I had a lot to share, so that’s what I did. I put it all down at one time, and I recognized the fact that for any future projects, that would be a good way to do it: put everything that you’ve got to give together at once. Then, you came back, and the board says that it’s too much for them to absorb. Then, do two… a second volume, so I split it and put it into Volume I and Volume II. If I had not done it that way, I would have been slow to come back and do a Volume II. I already had all the contents and all the data, so all I had to do was change the introduction to be able to reflect on both books, so that’s what I did.

Did you make the children’s reading lists [in the back of the book]?

No, Marva Collins [made them]. Marva came out of Chicago and had her own school—Westside Preparatory. I called her and told her I was working on a project and sent her information. She loved it, and she wrote the forward. It’s interesting to me that she put Oscar Wilde in here because I never think of him for youth, you know. She has Dante, too. Yes, see Marva was teaching classics to her students. The benefit she got from teaching them the classics was that they learned early what the shortcomings of adults were through all of the classic characters. Therefore, in real life, they could be able to identify similar characters because things haven’t changed. Love and hate still exist, and they would be able to recognize them. So their maturity level was far better than their peers. Yeah, that’s smart.

 

(To be continued in Part III…)

Mr. Ernest Hooks Jr., Architect/ MBA (Part I)

Parents: Allie and Earnest

 

When were you born?

I was born in Atlanta. I’m a Grady baby. (Laughs…)

What do you remember about your childhood? Were you an only child?

I was an only child up until I was around five or six, and then, I found out that Dad had two daughters from his previous marriage. Those two daughters came to visit me in Atlanta. I don’t remember much about it because I was about five or six. They stayed a short while, and they were in their teens and going through that adolescence stage. (Laughs…) I think Dad took all he could take, and then, he sent them back to their mom, who was in Detroit. So for that brief moment, I got a chance to meet them, and I didn’t see them again until years later when Dad and I went up to visit them in Detroit.

What was life in Atlanta like when you were an only child?

I lived in the city and went to a daycare center: Gate City Daycare Center. In fact, Mom told me that at six months old, she took me there because she went back to work. At Gate City, I had the opportunity to really interact with other kids, and that was a good part about that experience. Then, when I saw other kids leaving the daycare center to go to school, I knew I had the passion, and I wanted to go before I became be six. Oh, wow! My dad told me that one day, I did actually go with them. I wasn’t supposed to go, but I went with them anyway because I was just so envious of everyone else going. I wanted to go to school! (I laugh…)

After that adventure, I had an interesting experience at Young Street Elementary School where one of the teachers was one of my next door neighbors – Ms. Rebecca Dickerson. She was always there to encourage me and treat me with favor. When I left there, I transferred to C.W. Hill Elementary School where her sister, Ms. Sanona Dickerson taught. She kept an eye on me to make sure I got engaged because I was shy at 10. She wanted me to get me involved at twelve years old and really start being outgoing.

Then, the time came when they had a school function that was planned for the Atlanta City Auditorium. They needed some students to play Indians in that particular skit; she put me in that role. (Laughs…) I had a big chance to do self- expression whereas my shyness would have kept me away from it if she had not been there; the opportunity to interact was really great for my early development.

Following graduation, I went to Howard High School. It was exciting because one of the first classes I had was health. (I was really very excited about learning.) I can remember that the instructor had to leave the classroom for a moment and he gave an assignment for everybody in the class. He said, “Hey, here’s the definition of health, while I’m out, read it, understand it, and be able to tell me when I return.” So, we were little eighth graders, and everybody got busy doing something else. But I started studying and reading, and when he returned within 20 minutes, he asked for students to recite the definition for health. I stood up and did it. That was a proud moment for me to be able to recite the definition from memory ahead of the rest of the class.

During those early years, Mom was teaching me to play piano; we were taking lessons together. Dad didn’t have any interest in that, so I used to go with her. But when I got to high school, I decided that I wanted to play the trumpet, so I requested for her to get me a trumpet. Of course, she wanted me to stay with piano, too. I said, “I’ll come back to piano later!” (Laughs…) I wanted to play the trumpet, so I could participate in the high school band. That’s what I did.

I started with the trumpet, but then, in order to move into the big band—there were two many trumpets, so Professor Days said he needed some tuba players. I switched over and started playing the tuba. So you got to play all those different instruments! Yes, I got to play the trumpet, the tuba. The tuba was very similar to the trumpet for fingering.

Then, we went on a concert. We did some of the classical pieces, and then, we had the marching band pieces, too. We did both, like in the winter, we would probably do classical pieces, and in the warmer months, we did the marching pieces. So I had an opportunity to perform a tuba solo, and I performed the tuba solo at one of the functions that we went to. That was quite unusual, then, as I think back, but it was rewarding to be able to do that.

By graduation, Georgia Tech was close by, but segregation laws prevented me from applying and attending. So I got a State Aide Scholarship to go to Howard University in Washington, D.C. I went to Howard to study architecture. By 1962, I went into the Army and stayed for nearly two years. I spent sixteen months in Italy. I was stationed in Vicenza—a little south of Venice and north of Florence and Rome. I studied Italian and European architecture while there.

I got a chance to plan an extended trip while there; I planned that trip to travel and see as much I could see of Europe. I took leave for thirty days and traveled to many cities of Europe. I started in Vicenza, went down to Florence; then to Rome, and then to Naples. I stayed in hostels in each one of those places, and [staying there] was about fifty cents a night for students. Really?! Yeah, yeah. (Laughs…) Then, I moved around there, went down to Naples for two nights; caught a U.S. Military flight from Naples to Barcelona, Spain. From Barcelona, I hitchhiked up to Switzerland. That sounds incredible! Yeah! It was fun; it really was. Then, I went back into Italy. All alone? Yeah, and I was hitchhiking. That was really, really fun… but challenging.

Was it kind of scary? Oh yeah, it was, but I got a chance to meet some really cool people at the hostels. Then, after that, we communicated for a while and then just lost track of each other. It was a wonderful experience because there was one guy, who was from Cleveland, who had been spending the summer in Israel teaching English. He and I actually hooked up in Rome and agreed that we were going to hitchhike together. Well, another American (laughs…) came by, and we got a ride with him! We went from Florence down to Rome. Then, I met three girls who were actually in Europe for the summer and were from New Jersey, and we started touring together.

At that time, we had a book called Europe on Five Dollars a Day. We were finding places that we could eat for little or nothing; we were using the book as a guide to find those places. We toured through all these places and really enjoyed it.

Then, one night, I got to Rome, and it was too late. [The hostel] did not have any more bed spaces, so we got offered to go up on the roof! (We all laugh…) So we had a blanket, went up on the roof, and stayed on the roof! Slept under the stars! Yeah…

I met some guy from Australia while I was there at the hostel in Rome. We were meeting people from all different cultures, and it was great just being able to have a conversation. We went to Barcelona, met some students there, and spent some time looking through the architect Gaudi’s work. Then, we took a hitch from Spain on up through Switzerland, spent some time there, and then came back around to come through Italy. Wow. Yeah, so it was rewarding! It really was.

I kept a log through part of the trip, so it’s refreshing for me to go back and read that, too. That really opened up some whole new worlds of conversation that I haven’t had before. Travel is one of the greatest educators, I think, that one can have. I just wish it were possible for more of our kids to be able to have that experience early, and I think there would be less friction between other cultures if they were able to do that. I agree. They would be able to help understand other cultures and other religions. Mm-hmm, right.

Then, I came back in about 1964, and Atlanta was in a transition period as far as race relations go because there was some pushback. Dr. King had the Montgomery bus boycott and had come to Atlanta doing some work here trying to get equality.

Shortly after I came back, I found a job as a draftsman for an architect down on West Peachtree Street where the old Marta station is now. Miles Sheffer was the architect, and he hired me, and I started working there. The upsetting first surprise I had was that I had already been to Europe (meeting people from different cultures and enjoying their company), but then I came back and wouldn’t get the opportunity to eat lunch at a local drugstore. That made me a little frustrated. I would explain and say that I had been out for two years in the military in defense of the freedoms of this country, and you’re saying that I can’t come here to eat? Shortly after that, I think that policy changed.

From that point, I worked for Miles Sheffer and went to other architects for opportunities. I worked for a Greek architect who was also an instructor over at Georgia Tech for about three and a half years. Following that, I went to work for Sheetz and Bradfield, which was one of the leading firms in Atlanta that was doing a lot of housing—multifamily housing. While I was there, I was qualified to take the architectural registration exam and became a registered architect. Was that hard? Oh, yeah—very difficult, but it was rewarding for the amount of time that was invested.

Then, I did some small projects on my own since I had registration, and I went to work for a larger company. Maynard Jackson [the first black mayor of Atlanta] was in office at the time, and I worked for M.A.P. (Magnusson Architecture and Planning). They had a piece of the contract to do the old airport—not this new one, but the one before this one. It cost a lot—350 million dollars. Whoa! Yeah, so I was on the team for that. That sounds exciting, though. Did that team work together well? Mm-hmm, it worked out quite well.

After that job, I went to several other positions in Atlanta. Then, I went to B & E Jackson Associates, which was an architecture and engineering firm. For continuing my education, I proposed to him to allow me to go to Harvard because they were cutting-edge on a lot of the new strategies, techniques, and all that. So I went there and became a whole lot more knowledgeable on indoor air quality. Oh, wow… Yeah, from 1989-95, I was going there over the summers to really be able to be in the professional development program. So every summer, you went up to Cambridge? Yeah, yeah. That is so cool!

So I got to enjoy the environment of the Harvard Square. It’s like a comedy just to be able to see all the different characters there. Several musicians were seen on the street. I guess that was the highlight: you would hear the musicians as they played their instruments, and you would just be able to reflect…

Then, I wrote a poem about the experience that I had there. Writing is my second passion. I think it’s wonderful because you are such a creative person, but then you have the math and the really analytical stuff too with architecture. Yeah, so then I had a real high after I was able to write the poem about my experience there.

Also, I went to one session [at Harvard] and had the chance to interview one of the instructors. That was one of my goals—to have an interview about architecture with one of the instructors there. I did that at the Harvard Club. We were sitting outside, and I had my recorder, such as you have there (laughs). I interviewed him and then came back and had to transcribe. I actually offered it for publication in the AIA Newsletter, and they accepted it. That was a really nice benchmark. Was he a professor in your department? Yes, in architecture. Ken Demay was the gentleman I interviewed; he’s deceased now. We had a great interview session at the Harvard Club during my brief visit as a summer student.

Later, I got really enthusiastic after being able to do that interview, so I went and contacted MIT, which is a short distance away from Harvard. The architecture head, who was at Harvard before, was unable to be there, but he sent a substitute, who was a British fellow. We went to the cafeteria at MIT, and I did interview him, which I still have to this day. I have the recordings. (Laughs…) I said, “While I’m here, I might as well make the best of this moment and get all I can within this short time span,” so I did that. It’s great to go back and reflect and hear those recordings again.

One of the last recordings I did was with Ike Saporta, who was a Greek immigrant architect. He retired, and he had a world of knowledge. This man spoke about six different languages. He was educated in Germany. His parents sent him there at about twelve years old, and he knew some of these leaders in architecture. He worked for Le Corbusier, the Swiss architect! He worked for Walter Gropius, too, before Gropius left Germany and came to Harvard as the head of architecture.
Saporta knew Gropius back in Germany for the Bahaus movement. The Bahaus was that group of imaginative, creative artists who got together and wanted to be able to create products that common men and women could afford. That was interesting for me to be able to hear him talk about those experiences. He also mentioned that the unfortunate changes came after Hitler was elected in 1933. Free thinking institutions, such as the Bahaus were shut down because they didn’t want freethinkers. I think Mr. Saporta left Germany shortly after that since he was a Greek jew.

It brings up confirmation when I hear the subject come from somebody who was there [during events] of which you’ve read. I thought that was really great. I had these recordings in my library, and I can go back to listen to them. It’s really refreshing to be able to hear that history.

That was another chapter that I completed. Then, I met Jefferson Brown who was my associate here in Peachtree City in architecture. I met him at Harvard, and then we talked about coming back and doing some projects together. When we got back, we made contact and started a project together. It came out real well. That was twelve years ago.

 

(To be continued in Part II…)