Looking Back: Histories, Stories and Profiles
and caring of the environment goes back to the ants and that rock. DAVE: You said there was a third thing. What was that? PAUL: I know . . . the 3 T’s! JEAN: Right. But the 3 T’s need some explaining. I was a competitive fencer and captain of the team at SF State Col- lege. Before I graduated, George Pilar, a Hungarian world saber-fencing champion, came to San Francisco. He taught at the Pannonia Athletic Club in an old five-story building with a funny loft at the top. That’s where the best Bay Area fencers took lessons. When Pilar came, everyone wanted to take lessons from him. He was tall, thin, very gentlemanly, highly respected and smart. He didn’t speak a word of English. I arranged to take lessons from him. I fenced in the French style. In that style your on-guard position is in the center of your body. You’re ready to protect either side with a quick parry left or right. I was proud of my technique and it served me well in my bouts. But Pilar would have none of it. Imme- diately he said, in Hungarian, “No! Not French—Hungarian!” He began pushing my arm until my on guard position guard- ed my back and left the front open. What? I was incredulous! And then, I thought . . . wait a minute . . . with the back line closed my opponent can only come in one way—not two. It was so simple—and profound. Pilar’s lessons were tough and demanding, but I loved them. When I did poorly, he would say, “Zero! Zero!” And I knew I had failed miserably. If I did well he smiled, and invariably, at the end of the session, he’d kiss my hand. He treated all the fencers the same. I just loved the guy. When he was satisfied with my technique he moved on to teaching strategy and timing by “fencing” with me and
sent me to live with my grandparents who lived in the desert, in a small mining town in Nevada. Neither spoke English so I learned to speak Yugoslavian. Baba means grandmother in Slav and Dide is grandfather. There were no children where we lived, but I loved living there. My Baba was very smart. I watched her and learned to crochet, garden and chop wood. There was a schedule to everything she did. Monday was washday. Tuesday was bread-making day. Sometimes I helped her, but many times I just went outside. Nobody said go out and play, I just went out. It was there in the desert that two key things happened to me, when I was four and five years old, that deeply impacted my life. The first one was decep- tively simple—I watched ants. It was my favorite thing. Some of the anthills were waist high and the ants were big ants. I loved it. I’d go out almost every day and hunker down and watch them. They were so patient, so persistent. They had a job to do and nothing was going to stop them from doing it, and, regardless of the difficulty in solving the problem, they always figured out a way. The most important thing was that they never, ever, gave up. I was mesmerized. Without realizing it, that teaching became an integral part of my life. One day, on my way to my favorite anthill I saw, about 40 feet beyond the anthill, a large orangish colored rock. I didn’t remember seeing that before. Puzzled, I walked around the anthill and towards the rock. I got about halfway there, when something happened to me that I couldn’t, and can’t, explain. My feeling was that I had merged with the rock. Now that sounds silly, but that is what my five-year-old mind thought and felt. I merged with that rock. I have, unsuccessfully, searched for words to explain the feeling . . . the experience. All I know, and I will never forget, is that I merged with that rock and it changed me. I believe that as my life evolved, that my love
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Only the golf course would remain undeveloped: Eastern portion of the Valley in the 1961 Master Plan with a shopping center north of Sir Francis Drake Boulevard (dotted line), freeway (thick black line) running through Roys Redwoods, and even a heliport (the circled H).
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50 th Anniversary
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