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Russell C. Coile
in men's golf tournaments. She wasn't quite good enough to
get her foot in the door, but according to the gossip columns
she made $10 million in endorsing products in 1966. Another
famous Punahou graduate is President Barack Obama who
went there on a scholarship.
I decided in high school to become an electrical engineer.
We had a marvelous shop teacher who was an amateur radio
enthusiast and faculty advisor to the high school's amateur
radio club. I had previously thought that I might like to
become an architect when I grew up. I tried to design the
ideal home and worked up what I thought was an innovative
design. I went to the library and ready books about famous
architects. Then I decided I should design home number 2.
That was an eye opener I had architect's block, or something.
I found it diffi cult to design a different house my mind kept
comparing the new possible design for house number 2 to
my beautiful house number 1 and rejecting the new design. I
made the right choice I didn't have the right temperament
or psychological makeup to be an architect where every new
design would be different from the previous designs because
the new owners were different from the previous owners and
would be paying for a design which suited their desires and
life styles.
Amateur radio was much more to my liking. It was a
challenge to study electricity, antennas, getting to know what
all the electrical components of resistors, condensers and
vacuum tubes could do and could not do. It was a challenge
to avoid getting electrical shocks or even getting killed. There
was an old wives tale about jumping a foot for every hundred
volts of a shock. Fortunately our shop instructor was very
safety conscious and he kept drumming safety, safety, safety
into us.
I had previously tried to get interested into model airplanes
as a hobby. That was a different scenario. If you didn't build
the fl ying model just right, it would crash. You personally
would not get hurt. However, you then had to pick up the