An ad agency legend took a shine to my dad, then hired his underperforming high school kid, sight unseen, for a job in the mailroom. White privilege, for sure, but I'm grateful to both of them.
Tom, I owe one of my most important summer jobs to your dad, Bob Cotton. I knew him because your mom Cissy was my very favorite first cousin, and I visited your home in Rye, New York, several times when I was a graduate student at Lehigh University.
On one of those visits, I mentioned my challenge at learning enough German to pass the language exam required in my doctoral program, and your dad had an idea. A few weeks later, he had put me in touch with one of his food science contacts Herr Brabender, owner of Brabender OHG in Duisberg, Germany. He offered me a summer job in his company’s machine shop and to live with the family of one of his executives. That family knew no English, so it was a three month immersive experience in the language for me.
During that summer, I learned enough German to pass the exam, and enough machine shop skills to qualify me to teach the required machine shop course required of all physics undergraduates at Lehigh. None of this would’ve happened without the intervention of your dad, to whom I am grateful to this day.
Dick, first of all, so delighted to be back in touch with you through your delightful son Ben! We had a great visit here at our place in Manhattan.
To your experience with my dad: That is a wonderful--and, lucky for me, typical--story about both of my parents, actually, who loved connecting and helping people.
The language angle of your tale has a funny backdrop: My dad was very proud of his earlier, elementary German skills. Later, when as the founding director of Fundación Chile, he worked hard on his Spanish. But while he could put his strong discipline to work studying language, he had an absolutely tin ear for accents. He simply "spoke Spanish like English"! (If you've ever heard Michael Bloomberg "speak Spanish," that's pretty close to RHC "Spanish"!)
I never thought about the potential impact of this until 1975 when, after graduating from the University of Hawaii, I took a long trip through southern Polynesia on my way to visit my parents in Santiago, Chile.
My last stop before reaching "home" was Easter Island--a mind-boggling place for me, a fresh anthropology grad, to spend a week, long before tourists descended on the island.
One of my dad's collaborators in setting up Fundación Chile, Dr Alfredo Cea Egaña, happened to be there on one of his frequent visits (a legendary scientific and artistic contributor to modern Chile... you can read about him here http://acuarioymuseo.ucn.cl/drcea.html ).
One day, as we were exploring one of the sacred sites, he suddenly swung in front of me, squared up face to face, and pleaded with me in Spanish (I was fluent in Spanish back then) something very close to this: "Tom, I love your father. I really do. But you need to talk to him when you get to Santiago. HE MUST TAKE MORE SERIOUSLY how he speaks in Spanish. His accent is absolutely TERRIBLE. He is so highly respected for his work here, but his accent sends the wrong message...it undermines his care for our people. Because he SOUNDS like he doesn't care for us! Please do what you can."
I tried--gently--to bring this up, but he wasn't hearing it.
He made a big mark there with his work at the Fundación. It had--and is still having--a major impact on food and nutrition advances in the country, and in particular its now-thriving salmon aquaculture industry that the Fundación helped start up from nothing.
Tom, I owe one of my most important summer jobs to your dad, Bob Cotton. I knew him because your mom Cissy was my very favorite first cousin, and I visited your home in Rye, New York, several times when I was a graduate student at Lehigh University.
On one of those visits, I mentioned my challenge at learning enough German to pass the language exam required in my doctoral program, and your dad had an idea. A few weeks later, he had put me in touch with one of his food science contacts Herr Brabender, owner of Brabender OHG in Duisberg, Germany. He offered me a summer job in his company’s machine shop and to live with the family of one of his executives. That family knew no English, so it was a three month immersive experience in the language for me.
During that summer, I learned enough German to pass the exam, and enough machine shop skills to qualify me to teach the required machine shop course required of all physics undergraduates at Lehigh. None of this would’ve happened without the intervention of your dad, to whom I am grateful to this day.
Dick, first of all, so delighted to be back in touch with you through your delightful son Ben! We had a great visit here at our place in Manhattan.
To your experience with my dad: That is a wonderful--and, lucky for me, typical--story about both of my parents, actually, who loved connecting and helping people.
The language angle of your tale has a funny backdrop: My dad was very proud of his earlier, elementary German skills. Later, when as the founding director of Fundación Chile, he worked hard on his Spanish. But while he could put his strong discipline to work studying language, he had an absolutely tin ear for accents. He simply "spoke Spanish like English"! (If you've ever heard Michael Bloomberg "speak Spanish," that's pretty close to RHC "Spanish"!)
I never thought about the potential impact of this until 1975 when, after graduating from the University of Hawaii, I took a long trip through southern Polynesia on my way to visit my parents in Santiago, Chile.
My last stop before reaching "home" was Easter Island--a mind-boggling place for me, a fresh anthropology grad, to spend a week, long before tourists descended on the island.
One of my dad's collaborators in setting up Fundación Chile, Dr Alfredo Cea Egaña, happened to be there on one of his frequent visits (a legendary scientific and artistic contributor to modern Chile... you can read about him here http://acuarioymuseo.ucn.cl/drcea.html ).
One day, as we were exploring one of the sacred sites, he suddenly swung in front of me, squared up face to face, and pleaded with me in Spanish (I was fluent in Spanish back then) something very close to this: "Tom, I love your father. I really do. But you need to talk to him when you get to Santiago. HE MUST TAKE MORE SERIOUSLY how he speaks in Spanish. His accent is absolutely TERRIBLE. He is so highly respected for his work here, but his accent sends the wrong message...it undermines his care for our people. Because he SOUNDS like he doesn't care for us! Please do what you can."
I tried--gently--to bring this up, but he wasn't hearing it.
He made a big mark there with his work at the Fundación. It had--and is still having--a major impact on food and nutrition advances in the country, and in particular its now-thriving salmon aquaculture industry that the Fundación helped start up from nothing.
Here, here!
Love this story!!