Candidate for
Trustee; San Jose Unified School District; Trustee Area 1

A BRIEF LOOK AT A LIFE

By Timothy Fitzgerald

Almost all my life, I have lived in Santa Clara Valley, long before it was 'Silicon Valley' and an Industrial heartland of California. My father had attended school here, graduating from University of Santa Clara in Engineering in 1929. He met my mother while attending college, she attending San Jose State Teachers College at the same time, and working her way through school as a waitress in the Ice Cream Parlor on South First Street in downtown San Jose.

Their parents came to San Jose before World War I, my grandfathers both businessmen in the San Jose Area upon settling down here. My paternal grandparents had met and married during the Klondike Gold rush in Nome, Alaska, and my maternal grandparents migrated here from Kansas City. Neither of my parents however, began their careers here in San Jose. My father traveled back East to work for Westinghouse, and my mother sought a teaching position in the high plains desert of Bishop, California - near the Nevada Boarder and Death Valley. They soon returned to San Jose, unaffected by the Great Depression, where they worked until the coming of World War II brought them to decide to get married.

The first born, I was the oldest of three boys raised in a house my father built with his own hands right after the War. I was an independent youth, attending Los Gatos Union High during the Kennedy Administration, and competing in Cross Country and Track events for four years. I graduated with a PTA Scholarship awarded more because of my mother's prominence in the Local PTA than any particular scholastic achievements, and was named an Eagle Scout in the Boy Scout program at 17.

Declining to enter military, I sought admissions to San Jose State in 1963, just a few months before John Kennedy's assassination. I joined the Scouting Fraternity and ROTC (Reserve Officers Training Corp), and the second year moved into the red-brick dormitories on campus - where I stayed until 1968. During this time, I worked vacations winter and summer in Yosemite Park, in food services, climbing the Yosemite Valley Walls in my spare moments, and becoming a pretty expert climber with some 'first assents' to his credit before stopping in 1970. I had worked on a truck farm harvesting Apricots along side Migrant farm workers throughout my high school summers to amass just enough funds for my first year in college (my father declining to assist with any moneys my entire period of my post secondary education).

During those later years (and I had considerable difficulty finding a subject to study that I could pass, starting out in Engineering, than transferring to Business Administration, and finally to Economics, where something 'clicked' and I began to get better than passing grades), I became a campus spokesperson for human rights, aligning myself with the movement formed behind Tommie Smith before his demonstration in the Mexico City Olympics, and paring off with his ally - Harry Edwards younger brother, James.

This was immediately after recommending myself for re-organizing the Campus government and creating at my direction an All College student / faculty Governing Apparatus, as I had learned a good deal about leadership while a business and engineering student. James then was elected the first black student body president, with my leadership, in the State College and University system, getting the largest voter turn out in the history of the system, before or since. There upon I promptly had an emotional break down that handicapped me the better part of the next decade, falling victim to campus violence and subterfuge.

Determine that James crowning victory, in my opinion, of the entire civil rights movement would not be overlooked, or passed by, I began to struggle to write my first of three accounts that eventually were drafted of those turbulent and confusing years. All three accounts are available in the Martin Luther King, Memorial Library in the California room, for reading by the public, but on reserve.

That effort led me to return to San Jose State in 1977 to attain another degree, this one in History, where by I hoped to change my career from business management to teaching. I graduated in 1980, but was dissuaded from going further by Fannelle Rinn, a senior member of the Political Science faculty, and one Dr. James Pratt, also of the San Jose State faculty, who both felt I would be wasting an opportunity if I did not pursue graduate study. I did not have the grades from my undergraduate years to get a Masters in Economics, though the Department had at one time considered waving the requirements, and so I worked for the next five years on a Socio/Economic Degree in Marxian economics in the Social Science Department planning to exit as a Corporate planner and perhaps a return to my goal as a youth of becoming a legislative aide.

But as things do, my path took another direction. I entered a campaign in the first challenged race for City Councilman downtown, against Susan Hammer and Tony Estramera, and drove myself to a second break down requiring at least three years recovery in the mountains of my youth - working as a laborer in resort work in Mammoth Lakes, Sequoia National Park, and South Lake Tahoe. The faculty, who had been supportive of sponsoring me for a Doctorate, having passed the opportunity by, and I resigned myself to a secondary credential again, as was all academic work, at San Jose State.

These became my 'Green Year's. when, abandoning the Democratic Party of my youth, for brighter hopes and opportunities, I held several posts for the next decade, running at one point for State Assembly against Dave Cortese's father, and then a disappointing effort against Jorge Gonzalez for this seat on San Jose Unified School Board (in 1996). I had by that time positioned myself as an appointment of Susan Hammer's on the Disability Advisory Commission, making no small effort at defending the homes of the mentally ill near the San Jose State Campus. These were heady years, and I labored at menial and thankless tasks to pay for my education, as I still did not qualify for Federal Financial aide, and was supported by this time on a small allotment of Social Security Disability. I had decided to try to get another degree in History, a Masters, to give me a teaching degree in the Community College System, I never finding disability or welfare sufficient to make even subsistence living expenses on.

Driven to the point of homelessness, at the end of 1997, when rents and costs of living went 'through the roof' in Silicon Valley, I migrated back to Mammoth Lakes, where I employed myself as a part time Community College Instructor in the Social Sciences, and a full time Front Desk Clerk at a major hotel in town to cover my needs. My parents having passed on during this period, I came a year later into a rather substantial inheritance that I promptly invested in Real Estate, in Second Income Property as a shelter from the collapse in Wall Street. Five years later, and three properties bought and sold, the inheritance had about run out, and a friend convinced me to move to Sonora, where again I went back to work as Economics Instructor.

For reasons that are still unclear, that prospect fell apart the next year, and seeking Social Services, and old friends, I returned to San Jose in 2005 to enroll in an 'Over Sixties' Program at San Jose State in an effort to acquire a Third Masters in Philosophy, this time, and proceed to commute to UC Santa Cruz when and if the degree is completed, for study toward the long withheld doctorate in Angela Davis, "History of Consciousness. I have been under contract as a writer for almost 15 years, producing about 10 manuscripts prepared for publication, with hopes that I may yet find employment with a major four year campus if I succeed at Santa Cruz, and my works are, as I eventually hope published and made generally available to the public.

I never married, though I became engaged twice in the 80s. Not having the financial means to establish a household and family that would surely, as I hoped, would follow. I attend Scott Wagers Community Homeless Alliance Ministry at First Christian Church, and have once again, relocated much as I always did since leaving home at 17, in downtown San Jose.