"The Flexibility to Have an Open Mind"

by J. Grant Hauber

I went to school on the GI Bill. I didn't have family backing; I was on my own. You had to know what you wanted to do because you didn't have the money to start over. I took four years of classes in two years, plus summer classes and a couple of courses at night.

I took three years of English classes to improve my writing ability and my understanding of what I read. During one semester, the teacher, Dr. Sine, used the Bible as a textbook. He wanted us to use our imagination to enlarge upon a story. We would hand in the assignments on Thursday and he would read them over the weekend, then he picked out four or five and brought them to school to discuss on the following Tuesday. One time he chose one of mine. I had used a word he didn't understand: I was trying to say that I thought the story was bologna, and he laughed. To have the professor you admire going over your work and giving a response is very important. It must be; I remember his name 50 years later.

Dr. Martin Baumbaugh wrote the text on business data. I admired him so much I had him autograph my book. His course got my mind organized. It taught me how to organize a problem and how to substantiate a decision before moving forward. I use what I learned in that class to this day.

I remember the chancellor, Dr. Capen, walking down the sidewalk to his office. He was very dignified. Had a goatee, always wore a dress suit. He gave the office of chancellor the dignity that it deserved. The squirrels would part and the acorns and chestnuts wouldn't fall from the trees until after he got to his office. That's the feeling that you got with him.

You had to be focused on an education that would give you the wherewithal to get a job, but I wanted to round myself out. I took chemistry to get insight on what engineers are disciplined in. To see what the doctors went through, I took zoology with the department chair, Dr. Shadle. He was the foremost authority on the life cycle of porcupines. He had a zoo in the back of the biology building on campus where he raised porcupines.

Those electives helped me. They gave me the flexibility to have an open mind. That's what the university encouraged: becoming a person who has an open mind. I majored in accounting in the School of Business, but I didn't go into public accounting. I went into banking instead and then I went into the brokerage business.