When and where were you born and raised?

I was born in Jerome , Pennsylvania in 1918, in Hillman Coal Mining Company House Number 40. I was the third-born (of 8). Growing up in Jerome meant that 900 people – Italians, Poles, Germans, Russians, Hungarian and Rumanian gypsies, Irish, and a few Jewish merchants – knew you and you knew them.

The town had one school, seven churches and a good movie house, and there wasn't a paved road in the community till I was eight, so there was a lot of dust from the roads and from the mines. You could never really get clean.

I went to the 8 th grade at the local school. All the teachers were farmers who'd finished the 8 th grade and gone off to a normal school to get their certificates. They had one philosophy: We domesticate before we educate. To them, that meant they talked and you listened, and you learned to read, write and count. It was very austere. We sat with our hands on the desk. We got up when the teacher walked into the room…Out of a class of 40, four went to high school. If you didn't want to be a coal miner – and I knew I didn't – you went on to school.

The high school was 13 miles away [in suburban Johnstown , Pa ]. I liked to play ball – I was good at running and I was pretty coordinated, and what I couldn't do with brawn I could pretty much do by outwitting my opponents – so when I went to high school I went out for football. The coach looked at me – I must have weighed 97 pounds – and said, “Get out of here.” Eventually I did play, but I loved my studies, too.

You came of age during the Depression. How do you think that influenced the person you are today?

I turned 15 in 1933, the height of the Depression. Growing up I learned about violence and poverty and that there had to be order in the universe. I learned to be critical, but not judgmental. I learned that the things you needed to live were simple, and I learned that not just from my mother but from parent-surrogates, my teachers and coaches. I learned the power of education.

But more than anything else, growing up then I learned to be grateful. To this day, I count my blessings. I know that, but for the gifts I received from others, the grace I received from others, I wouldn't be who I am today.

What made you decide to go to college?

When I graduated from high school in 1936, I was supposed to go back home and work in my mother's tap room, but the athletic coaches and the Latin teacher had gotten me an athletic-academic scholarship to Albright College in Reading, Pennsylvania.

[Laughs] In the summer, between high school graduation and college, I worked out with weights and drank three quarts of milk a day and ate bananas, and grew to 150 pounds. I knew that if I went to college at 135 pounds, which was what I weighed when I graduated, that the football uniform wouldn't fit.

After the first year, all the scholarships were canceled, and there were a hundred scholarship students out of 500 students. My high school coach got me into Indiana State Teachers College [in Indiana , Pennsylvania ]. Through the National Youth Administration Act, I worked as a dorm “mother,” and got $19.80 a month, from which I paid all my expenses.

I had two goals, to coach and teach history, geography and English. During the summers, I “bummed” all over the country – from New York all the way to the West Coast. With me, it's always been balls, bats, books, and bumming around.

How did you get from wanting to be a teacher of history, geography, and athletics to wanting to be a teacher of teachers?

That was happenstance. I graduated in 1940, taught a year in Somerset [ Pennsylvania ] and then went back to Jerome to teach and coach. On December 7 th , 1941, I'd been visiting in Somerset , Pennsylvania , and when I got home that morning I heard on the radio about Pearl Harbor . It was a shock. I was 23: I knew I was going to war.

I went to New York City and tried to get into the Physical Education Corps, but all the professional athletes had applied for that, so they suggested that I go to Pittsburgh and join the Navy. Because I had a college degree, the recruiters assigned me to Naval Intelligence and sent me to Washington , D.C. , where I was scheduled to ship out to New Zealand . But they didn't have a place for me to stay on the Naval Base, so they gave me $98 dollars a month to cover room and board and told me to get a room near the Lincoln Memorial, because that was near the offices where I'd be working till I was sent overseas.

At the Naval Intelligence Department I reviewed photographs that were being used to create maps for the invasion of Japan and made phone calls to update the people at Military Intelligence, the Office of Strategic Services [now the Central Intelligence Agency], and the FBI. My commanding officer liked my work, so he never pushed to get my papers in order to get shipped to New Zealand .

My job ended every day at 5 pm, and the place I was staying was near George Washington University , so I decided to take a class or two at the university till I got shipped out. I didn't get shipped out that semester, or the next one or the one after that, and by the summer of '43 I had my master's degree in education. Then I enrolled in the university's Ph.D. program. In 1946 I got my doctorate in education with majors in educational psychology and the professional preparation of secondary teachers.

I never intended to go that far, but I didn't want to hang out in bars or at the USO coffee house. Besides, I recognized the good fortune was staring me in the face.

You have been married to your wife, Ruth, for 62 years. When and how did you meet her?

A former student introduced us at a little place in Somerset where the students hung out. Our first “date” cost a quarter. We got Cokes and fifteen cents worth of music from the juke box. We dated all that year.

Ruth had been waitressing on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, but with the war on, she lost her job. I asked the owners of the Capitol Restaurant – I ate there a lot – if they could use another waitress, and they said yes, so I convinced Ruth to come to Washington . She went to work at the restaurant and lived in one of the dormitories the government had for women employees. In the spring of 1943 we got married and moved into government housing. It was so small [that] when our first child – Patty – was born, her crib was in the kitchen. But what did we care, we were young and we had each other.

What brought you to John Carroll University in 1949?

That was Ruth's doing [Laughs]. We'd left Washington in 1946 so I could teach at California State Teacher's College [in California , Pennsylvania ], where I taught history and also took a course in clinical psychology and mental testing. The professor who taught it had a profound affect on me: His dictum was, “a good diagnosis is half the prognosis.” That applies whether you are talking about medicine or educational psychology.

Next we moved to Mansfield State Teachers College [in Mansfield , Pennsylvania ]. We'd built a home near the Mansfield campus, but Ruth didn't like it there. Our family was growing and she was tired of having to drive to Elmira , New York – 30 miles a way – to do all our shopping. So, I started looking for a job in or near a big city.

I looked at openings in Detroit , Cincinnati , and Cleveland . I'd been to Cleveland , during the 1939 Air Races, and it was only 180 miles from “home.” But the real clincher was my interview with Father Edward McCue [then dean of Arts and Sciences]. He made such an impression on me that I didn't look any further. We came to Cleveland .

During a career that spanned almost 40 years, you headed both John Carroll University 's Education Department and its Counseling Center . With a doctorate in Education, it's obvious why you were head of the Education Department, but how and why did you become head of counseling and testing?

When I was working on my Ph.D., I became very interested in psychological testing and counseling, and how both could be used as tools to help people throughout life.

When I came here, in 1949, I was [one of two people] in the Education Department, but I'd gotten a taste of counseling when I was at California State Teachers College, and when I came here I knew I wanted to be a clinical psychologist, so my first two years here I took post-doctoral classes—in educational psychology, in Rorschach testing, in individual testing and measurement—at Western Reserve University.

When the head of the department died, I became director of the Education Department. When the person handling Vocational Services, where counseling and testing—mostly for returned GIs—was done, the university's president, Father Birkenhauer, appointed me acting director. Vocational Services later became the Counseling and Testing Center, and I was there for 33 years….I was wearing so many hats, but [laughs] back then I thought nothing of working six days a week.

Someone asked why I wanted to [run the Center], on top of my other responsibilities. It was curiosity. I wanted to know what was going on up here [tapping forehead], because I realized that if you wanted to help people you had to go beyond the visible – what you could see them doing, what they could tell you themselves – and get inside their head.

Growing up, the “olympics” of the body was paramount to me. Then, at George Washington University where I wasn't doing any coaching, I discovered the more important “olympics” of the mind. Now, with all the counseling I've been doing, I've discovered an even more important “olympics”—of the heart.

You have been counseling students and others since the 1950s, and in 1985 John Carroll named the Counseling and Testing Center after you. Yet you never got a degree in counseling. Why is that?

[Laughs] I never had the time, but more to the point, I had no inclination to sit in a classroom to do all the preliminary work. I was already doing it. I was staying current on it and writing about it [in journals]. And I was doing presentations at conferences, too.

But don't think I've been practicing counseling and psychology without credentials. My professional license number is 175, which means I was one of the first to get that kind of license. I took a class recently, and I asked the presenter what her license number was: It was in the 5800s. [Laughs again] And, I'm going to be taking my re-licensing test soon, so I can practice for the next two years.

As an educator, supervisor of student teaching, and counselor, you have helped thousands of young people along the path to adulthood. What do you hope these young people learned from you?

That “great oaks from little acorns grow.” And that translates to everyone has something special about them – a talent, a gift. That's potential – which you have from the moment they are born – but it takes time to recognize it and maximize it in your life.

And, also, that “great-ness” is relative. Not everyone will be a senator or astronaut or brain surgeon, but everyone can reach their potential if they use the talents they have been blessed and gifted with.

And you know, I get a lot of satisfaction today when I pick up a newspaper and read about one of the people I've worked with doing this or that.

Over the years, what do you think you have learned from all the people you have taught, and counseled and mentored?

[Laughs] Not to be pessimistic about the future: every glass is half full. And not to be impatient about the future, either. I can give them information. I can give them insights. I can show them things. But I can't put old heads on young bodies. That's their job.

How did you come to write the book, A Primer for Counseling the College Male , in 1968?

It was a guide for educators. To do it, I got a grant from The Cleveland Foundation to buy equipment for neurological [brain wave] tests and to do academic, physical, and psychological testing of the leaders of the 1965 senior class and members of that year's freshman class. They were tested on everything from their interests, values and personalities to their physical stamina and energy levels.

When the research was done, I wrote the book and had it printed and every member of the faculty here got a copy. It wasn't for the general public (though over the years chapters from the book have been excerpted and used in counseling), it was for educators.

I had a lot of help with it, and that's how so many things get done – with help from lots of other people.

I hate that song by Frank Sinatra, “My Way.” No one is an island…If you don't acknowledge that you are connected to others – just like islands are connected to continents because all are part of the earth's crust – then you don't understand your humanity, or that you had a lot of help along the way getting to where you are.

What are you writing today?

I'm not. I don't have time. Ruth and I have six children and 22 grandchildren and 14 great grandchildren. And we spend time with them.

And I'm here in the office three or four days a week counseling people. Each session is individual, and each session is 8 hours. They have to commit to that, or I don't see them.

Though I've been counseling people for almost 50 years, every person who comes into my office is a mystery to me, and a challenge. With each person, I haven't a clue about what I or they are going to discover. Sometimes I think I'm more amazed at what turns up than they are. And I'm always overjoyed to be able to say – at the end of a day spent with a person – here's what your talents are; here's what your gifts are; here's what you might want to think about doing.

I don't just work with young adults, people in their 50s come for counseling, too. Mostly they come because they think they are fed up with their profession, when in reality they are fed up with what they are doing. They have prepared for one thing, and they don't know how to “see” how to use it in another way or area. What I provide is a way of looking at their talents in a new way, and a way to verify that they aren't falling or failing…but rather climbing into something new and different.

You are famous for your aphorisms. My favorite is, “Every pearl comes from an irritated oyster.” Where do you get them, and how and why did you start collecting them in the first place?

I read all the time. I listen, and I hear what's being said. I scribble them down on a piece of paper and save them. I don't create any of them. [Laughs] I'm a borrower.

Why do I do it? Because they are a distillation; they are experience in a nutshell.

When we were in Israel , I heard someone say: All sunshine makes a desert. That was a powerful metaphor for me, especially where it applies to the children born to privilege. I think the number one sin of parenting is indulgence. It takes away a child's zest for life and deprives them of their chance to go for the gold.

Who are the people who influenced you the most, both personally and professionally?

When people ask me that I give them a couple of answers: One is the teachers and coaches and professors who challenged me and stimulated me and brought forth the insights and information I'm using today.

Another is “Whizzer” White. He played football in Colorado and professional football in Pittsburgh . He got a law degree at Yale and was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford . You'd know him as Supreme Court Justice Byron J. White.

But my real hero is my mother. She'd been orphaned at eight, only finished 3 rd grade, and married at 14. She lost a son (1926), then 18 months later, when I was 10, my dad died (1928). She was left with a little grocery store and five children to raise, but when the Depression began she was slowly going bankrupt because people couldn't pay their bills. When Prohibition was repealed in 1933, she opened a small tavern…When I was a kid, I thought she never slept…Whatever I do pales by comparison with what she did.

How did you prepare for retirement?

I gave up my formal teaching duties in 1988, when I was 70, but who says I've retired? You know what General MacArthur said about old soldiers: They just fade away.

Neither Ruth nor I made many changes in our lives when I stopped teaching because we were already doing things that we liked to do and simply continued doing them. My favorite things are reading, playing ball, and working with young people. While I'm not teaching, I'm still recruiting for the university, and I'm working with students who are already here, and I'm doing a lot of pro-bono counseling, too…Yesterday, the family I worked with I didn't charge.

Ruth walks four miles a day at the Jewish Community Center and she plays cards and she likes to bowl with her friends. When I ask her what she did that day, she asks: Where shall I start?

…Whatever comes, for either of us, we are prepared.

At 88 you are working nearly full-time, staying active in the community, traveling, etc. Where do you get your energy ?

[Laughs] I'm a jock; always have been. I'm in good shape physically because I've always taken care of my body. I do a workout – sit ups, torso twists, deep knee bends, etc.—every morning.

This morning, when Ruth asked me to rub some painkiller into her shoulder, I said: Honey, I want to show you something. I got her to lie down on my workout bench and showed her how to stretch out her back till she heard it pop like popcorn. When I asked her if she still wanted me to rub in that painkiller and she just laughed.

I've always been able to stay at a good weight, so I don't put much thought into my diet. [Laughs] I'm still eating red meat and [tapping a box of Malley's chocolates] I've had a couple of these today.