He earned his education on the high seas

He was part of the Merchant Marines for about a decade.

“I found college less than stimulating by the third year, so I became a merchant seaman for a decade or so. I enjoyed all the traveling and seeing other cultures.

“One time just outside Egypt, we rescued a hawk that got tangled up in the rigging of our boat. We decided to take it to a veterinarian, but the taxi cab driver wanted to drive us all over Alexandria rather than to a vet. Even not being from there, we could tell we had driven by the same places four or five times. Then we met another cab driver who had gone to school in California. He just shut off the other driver and took us where we needed to go. They fixed up the hawk and we set it loose. Then the second cab driver invited us to his 2-year-old son’s birthday party. It was a pretty neat experience.”