I wonder what my life would have been like without my highschool-learned typing ability.

First, I signed up for an elective class in typing during my highschool time. I was the only male in a class of twenty-or-so females students. I enjoyed the class, passed the course with reasonable speeds on the tests. Also, I enjoyed, and excelled in, english classes, particularly spelling, grammar and vocabuary. All of which helped me later on along life's highway.

Drafted late in WWII, I listed typing as one of my skills, and promptly received a military MOS of clerk typist. Stationed at Camp Fannin, TX, I was later grabbed out of basic training and given the job of clerk-typist in the military messhall, where I ordered food supplies, kept military records of all the GIs who worked in the messhall, etc.

WWII finally ended with the surrender of Japan, and I was due to be discharged. With no future plans in mind, I accepted a 30 day home leave, some money (in the hundred dollar range) and the choice of three or four world areas in which to be stationed...all in exchange for signing up for another year of military service.

Fortunately, my choice of ETO (Europe Theater of Operations) was given me, and I ended up as a clerk-typist in a then 15th Constabulary unit in a small town near both Heidelberg and Mannheim, Germany. That I then met my later-to-be German War Bride, and after two years returned to America, and that we will soon celebrate our 69th wedding anniversary is another story.

Having returned to America, and with only typing as a marketable skill, I searched for jobs. The unemployment office in Portland, Oregon, my then home, gave me some tests, and based on a high score in the manual dexterity test, it was suggested I accept work as a teletype operator. Finally, I decided to become a lawyer, and attended night law school while working as a bank teller in the daytime.

Along came the Korean War, and I was recalled to military service, and stationed at the 6th Army Headquarters at the Presidio of San Francisco in the legal section (JAG). There I met another fellow who, like I had been, was recalled to military service. He was a Stenograph Court Reporter and worked in Los Angeles courts. He recorded courts martial proceedings for the JAG section.

Interested in his skill of writing shorthand on a Stenograph machine, I started night school in downtown San Francisco, taking to the craft of machine stenography like a duck to water. After discharge from the Korean War, I continued day schooling learning machine stenography, eventually finishing the two-year course in a little over six months.

Eventually, I passed the California Certified Shorthand test, gaining a CSR (Certified Shorthand Reporter) classification in the State. Jobs came quickly and easily: first, as a freelance reporter with a Los Angeles, CA firm; later as a CSR in Federal Court in downtown Los Angeles, from which I retired in '83.

Machine stenography speedwise, I passed the National Court Reporters Association Merit Award test, recording testimony-type Q and A at 260 words per minute; Judge's Instructions To The Jury at 240 words per minute, and Literary matter at 200 words per minute.

This story encompasses the years from 1945 to 1983, when I finally retired as a federal employee of the Federal Judiciary Branch of the United States.

All, because I took an elective course in typing in highschool.