I wrote this essay/memoir to express the depth of gratitude I feel for my alma mater creating a course of study for something so new that there was no degree plan, and the eleven years I lived and learned in Little D.
Image courtesy University of North Texas.
A stranger knocked on my front door. When I answered, she gave me the name of a bass player and asked if I knew where he was. I did. He was asleep in my spare bedroom.
Within a few minutes, I would realize that this was the opportunity that completed the long arc of my tertiary education.
After high school, education takes many forms. Many people do very well without attending college by establishing their careers with on-the-job experience. Associate degrees and technical schools can quickly get some on the employment track. Others earn a bachelor’s and grab a job that may or may not coincide with their college major. A select pack gets master’s degrees and PhDs to show their proficiency in usually established fields or to research new realms in those fields.
But what if your dream was to do something so new that there were no tech schools, no degree plans, and the possibility of employment nearly nonexistent?
Like a gambler trying to fill an inside straight, I pursued just such a dream. North Texas State University (now UNT) helped me achieve it by employing an innovative approach to teaching. And, the university’s home of Denton, just by being Denton, put me in contact with a unique and inspiring bunch of people. I am thankful for both.
In my high school years, I had been more social than scholarly. It was a lack-of-work ethic I maintained through my first year at North Texas.
Before going to the university, however, I enlisted in the Navy. So, immediately after graduating from high school, I went to boot camp. Following my freshman year at UNT, I went on active duty. Over the next two years, I lived in Japan, dodged rockets at an airbase in Vietnam, and later went for a 28,000 mile ocean voyage aboard an aircraft carrier. I acquired some real (and surreal) life experience, and I learned how to focus my efforts.
Having earned GI Bill’s educational benefits to pay my way, I returned to school. I took classes to assess my aptitude for art, business, history, journalism, music, psychology, and creative writing, but not in that order. I learned that I possessed a little talent for writing and music, but substantially more for visual art.
While plowing through the art curriculum, part-time employment in the campus computing center introduced me to technical publications that hinted at the pictorial potential of computers. And, by bugging programmers, computer operators, and vendors with questions, I gained an understanding of computing technology and programming far beyond what was necessary for me to do my job.
Soon, I fell into the orb of a few students following their curiosity and independently exploring electronic music and image synthesis, videography, the programming of primitive computing devices, and ways to present ideas in these new forms. A diffuse group, we usually worked alone or in groups of two or three, comparing accomplishments and failures between classes or in cafes or bars.
Early in its inception, I got involved in Artists and Outlaws, a campus political movement started by Dwayne Carter, an artist now based in Dallas. The campaign spread from the art department to all liberal arts students. We brought attention to fact that athletics reaped the majority of fiscal resources and sought a more equitable distribution.
Also at this time, I was co-publishing and editing a small art magazine called Prima with Tre Roberts, an artist now living in Portland, Oregon. In addition to the flyers put out by Dwayne, it became the visual center of Artists and Outlaws.
From this organization’s meetings — sometimes in faculty members’ homes — and from Prima, deans of the liberal arts schools heard about a passionate and ambitious group of students exploring art and technology.
Impressed by our enthusiasm and energy, the Colleges of Music, Science, Visual Arts and Design, and Liberal Arts and Social Sciences got together and decided to formalize our efforts.
As I walked into the art building one day, Professor Claudia Betti, the department’s undergraduate coordinator, was descending a stairway just inside the entrance. She called out to me. She was a regal figure, tall and stylish. I looked up at her as if she were a goddess speaking from on high.
She said, “We don’t know what you are up to, but we’re going to help.”
These words were a life-changing moment for me. I still get moved to tears when I think of them and from the unbelievably great educational opportunity that followed.
At about that exact moment, everyone in that loose group of emerging New Media artists experienced a transformative moment similar to mine. Then, over the next year, we studied and jammed with visiting techno-artists while taking courses ranging from holography to television production.
Realization of our potential flourished along with our skills. Our outlandish dreams became more concrete.
It was during this period that a good friend introduced me to Ric Speed, now an El Rancho, New Mexico artist. He was a mathematician working as a freelance programmer for the university’s bookstore. Ric’s intense desire and experimental efforts in computing, music, and visual art met and exceeded mine. We became great friends. Working with him on and off for the next 15 years boosted my knowledge immeasurably.
After many more than four years at North Texas, I graduated with a general art degree and a profusion of electives. At that point, I knew I needed a practical education in computer science. More pressing, I needed to make a living while doing it. Upon graduation, the small but essential stipend provided by the GI Bill’s educational benefits stopped showing up in my mailbox.
I applied for the data control position in the City of Denton’s data processing department. They only gave me a chance due to a recommendation from recent hire and former UNT programmer, Jim Kuykendall.
Jim knew me from my part-time work at the university’s computing center. He remembered the many questions I asked about how things worked.
As a test of my abilities, Tom Foreman and Cengiz Capan, the department’s director and lead programmer respectively, handed me a hefty printout of their entire accounting and billing application. They tasked me with analyzing and flowcharting it. Understandably, they doubted a young artist applying for this kind of work.
This test was my first experience with RPG2, the language used to code the application, and it was the first time I analyzed application code.
I may not have been a trained programmer, but I possessed well-developed design skills. After some study, the patterns and then the logic appeared in the code. From that, I made a visual representation of the application and presented it to Tom several days after the assignment. He examined it and showed it to Cengiz.
After a few minutes, they asked me if I had help. I said that I didn’t. Just to be sure, they asked Jim if he helped me. He said no and something to the effect of “I told you so.”
I got the job.
Even with full-time employment, I continued playing in No Sweat, an eccentric latin-rock-reggae-swing band that emerged from wacky jam sessions a year earlier. Music kept my creative and performative juices flowing while I absorbed information about data processing.
Before long, I was promoted to programmer.
A little over a year after I started working for the City of Denton, the department’s director, Tom, got tired of fussing with the city manager and quit, leaving for parts unknown. Jim left, too, hiring on with and eventually becoming director of data processing for Moore Business Forms. Cengiz assumed the directorship for a while before returning to UNT to teach at the College of Business and, in due course, became associate dean of operations.
That left me as the only programmer on staff. I was promoted to systems architect and named temporary director of data processing. “Temporary” because city management wasn’t all that comfortable with a bohemian-looking guy in that role.
After my emergency appointment, the city manager hired a senior programmer from the City of Houston as the permanent director. His wife did not want to leave Houston and made his life miserable. He only lasted a month.
The city manager remained ticked-off at Tom and was even more upset that his Houston hire had not worked out, so he refused to allow the hiring any more full-time programmers. However, I had a budget at my disposal and occasionally hired a consultant to help me with a maintenance load that used to be covered by a team of three.
Before Cengiz left, he and city management set a plan in motion to build a new computing center. It was now up to me to take the lead in designing and building it, and converting the city’s accounting, customer service, library, tax, and utility applications from our old Univac 90/30 system to a new IBM 4341 platform.
This work load kept me busy around the clock and forced me to leave No Sweat. Yet, even after taking that off the table, I dropped from my slim 135 pounds to a ghastly 118 due to ceaseless toil and subsisting on vending machine coffee and animal crackers.
My old friend, Bob Schloss, still in Denton, came to my rescue. Bob became a registered nurse after getting a degree in psychology because he thought he could meet people’s needs better that way. I was impressed by this.
He didn’t urge me to quit my position for my health because he knew that I loved and served the citizens of Denton like he did. Instead, he propped me up with injections of vitamin B-12. We understood that temporarily sacrificing oneself for the greater good was sometimes necessary.
Upon completion of the new computer center, installing and testing the converted programs on the IBM and its peripherals, and switching operations to the new location, I trained my chain-smoking, aspirin-gulping replacement and left. Weeks prior, I informed the city manager of my plan to resign.
I considered those years to be graduate school. My diploma was an official commendation from the Denton City Council in recognition of my efforts.
After two weeks of decompression, I took a consulting job combining the Univac 90/40 computer systems of Colonial Savings and Fort Worth Savings and then converting them to the IBM 4300 series. However, even though earning three times what I made at the City of Denton with much less effort, I was ready for creative work.
At the end of the Fort Worth contract, I heard that the USDA Service Center in Denton needed someone to help them clear out a batch of overdue projects. I jumped at the chance to create graphics and do voice-overs for a series of educational film strips.
I knew this position was just part of a waiting game, but I wasn’t sure what I was waiting for.
Nevertheless, that job was like a vacation compared to my job at the City of Denton. They wouldn’t let me work more than eight hours a day or on weekends. These parameters allowed me to regain weight and muscle mass by eating better and tooling around Denton County on my bicycle in what I considered to be my copious free time.
A few months later, Neil Feldman was almost two years into his role as president and co-founder of Video Post & Transfer, a fast-growing post-production house for film and video in Dallas. While attending the National Association of Broadcasters convention, he was intrigued by a conversation in an elevator. That encounter led to a demo in one of the hotel’s rooms. He liked what he saw and purchased a Dubner CBG-2 on the spot.
That machine, initially developed for the American Broadcasting Company, was the planet’s first dedicated, broadcast-quality, graphics and animation computer.
Shortly after the Dubner arrived at Video Post, I heard that fateful knock on my front door. When I answered it, I met Marci Folsom, an artist now based in San Francisco or Chico, California (sightings vary). She heard I was letting her musician friend crash at my place.
Indeed, my former bandmate Gregg Hansen, a musician and song writer currently based in Denver, Colorado, asked me if I could take in a young bass player. He said the bassist was adrift because his girlfriend tossed him out of their apartment.
Marci later verified this by telling me she dumped him for his inability to do housework and run errands. According to her, he only slept and took showers when he wasn’t playing bass.
While waiting for my houseguest who didn’t help around the house to wake up and shower, she and I sat and chatted. It didn’t take long for us to realize we were who each of us was looking for. Marci was already learning to create with the Dubner for Neil, but they both realized she needed a partner who was a programmer as well as a technologically adept artist.
That was Friday night. Monday morning, I requested and received the day off from work and drove to the Video Post & Transfer studios in the old Braniff Airlines wing of Love Field in Dallas. There, I presented my resumé and laid out my portfolio in front of Neil and his Chief Science Officer, Dan Sokol, last seen living the good life in Los Gatos, California.
They liked what I had to offer.
The team I worked with at the USDA recently eliminated the backlog, so I reported to Video Post the following Monday. I immediately began working day and night, seven days a week.
For the next few months, I learned the Dubner CBG-2 and everything I could about the art and technology of video post-production. Even more exciting, I jumped with both feet into the incomparable thrill of creating with artists working at the cutting edge of high-end video.
Becoming established at Video Post & Transfer marked the end of my tertiary education.
Even so, because I was fortunate enough to work with so many artistically and technically creative associates over the years, opportunities to learn never ceased.
I thank my lucky stars for the intellectually stimulating environment and imaginative response to new ideas embodied by The University of North Texas, and for the City of Denton for taking a chance on me. If not for them, I would not have received the invaluable education and human connections that made my dreams a reality.
Postscript
All those guys in the experimental cadre at North Texas worked in the field we hoped would be a viable career path — all of us.
Dr. William McCarter of the UNT College of Visual Arts and Design informed me of this at a party six or seven years after I started working at Video Post. Bill was instrumental in crafting our unusual coursework and finding visiting artists to work with us.
He said that this educational initiative made him incredibly proud, not only because it is difficult for a student with a degree in the arts to earn a living in their area of expertise but because we did it in a field unique and undeveloped at the time.
The party host was Joe Clark, both then and now a Denton-based artist with fantastic skills. He joined Marci and me in our little animation department at Video Post & Transfer a year and a half after I came aboard.
A notable member of the experimental group at North Texas was Tim Walsh, a Texas artist now based in San Marcos. He was the original clarinetist/saxophonist for the Grammy Award-winning band Brave Combo and continues to perform with them on occasion. He later started Laser Spectacles, Inc., an entertainment production company specializing in designing, producing, and installing laser shows and related projects that merge sound and light to create stunning effects.
Alas, time has blurred almost all of the names and faces of the others in this group. Don’t hesitate to contact me if it’s you or someone you know.