In December, 1945, I was discharged from the Army Air Force, after nearly 5 years of service. Shortly after, now that I was no longer GI, my wife asked for a divorce and that I leave town. I left her all my discharge pay and hitchhiked to New York City. I arrived just after midnight, Jan. 1, 1946, with a dime in my pocket, a homeless veteran on the streets of NYC. (This part of the story is told elsewhere.) In September, 1948, I began studies at Columbia University -- but only after a hassle which ensured 8 years of university miseducation -- 8 years of fear and loathing! I'm telling this because it is representative of many of the problems faced by Veterans after the War.

The trouble started that summer of 1948, when I'd received a copy of my discharge papers and was judged eligible under "The G. I. Bill". Here I was in the town with the greatest journalism school in the world -- Columbia. And, since I first started reading H. G. Wells at 14, I had dreamed about become a science writer -- which would accommodate all my other interests. But the man who must sign my papers at the VA, said, at first, I'd have to major in meteorology, since I'd been a weather observer and forecaster in the Service. I objected that the meteorological major had been dropped at all New York City colleges and universities with the end of the War. Well, then I could just move my wife and myself to Ithaca, NY, where Cornell U. still offered this major! I fought this ukase through several levels at the VA and won.

The man now said I'd have to major in the related field of physics. I showed him my transcript -- that (with no formal course in math since junior high school) I did not have the mathematical requirements for physics. But the man said he'd consider signing me for journalism only if I were turned down for physics at Columbia. I went there, fully expecting to be turned down, for two reasons: too late (classes were now in the second week), and ineligibility.

To my surprise and terror, I was accepted! My advisor, an English instructor, enrolled me in "College Algebra" and "Calculus I". You heard me! Two different levels of mathematics at the same time -- and for a student without the prerequisites for the given major and entering late! I asked if my advisor thought I could do it. "I don't know. I haven't had any math since the 9th Grade, either. But you'll just have to try."

"Can't I take trigonometry? I need it bad!" "It isn't available." "Can't I take analytic geometry? I ought to have had it before. And I'll need it for calculus." "It's full up. These are the only two available courses I can help you enroll in that have anything to do with your physics major."

What I didn't then understand was that the motivation for this perverse miseducation derived from university conditions which could only worsen my plight. At that time, Columbia U. had an age restriction: you couldn't enter Columbia College if over 26 years of age. Now, I'd been the average age of the discharged veteran (26), so even if I'd started two years earlier (the earliest possible time), I'd have been ineligible for Columbia College. But they wanted to take advantage of so many veterans going to college under the "GI BIll". So a night school without degrees was turned into a degree school, renamed "The School of General Studies", and the matter of prerequisites for many majors was still up for grabs.

But SGS was a shell of a college. It had only a limited faculty, and most of them had no offices. You consulted them on campus park benches. The President of Columbia U., Dwight Eisenhower, had that very September departed for Europe to become Commander of the newly organized NATO -- without resigning his Presidency. (In the Service, they call this "going AWOL"!) But, before going, Pres. Eisenhower appointed historian Louis Hacker to be Dean of SGS. Hacker returned from Oxford U., accepted the post, and went back to Oxford for the next four years! (We first saw him two months after graduation.)

The Assistant Dean, Jack Arbolino, was and is a wonderful man -- God bless him wherever hs is! -- but his youth and time at Columbia left him little clout. (Arbolino later went to Princeton to create the "Advanced Credit Program", which figures in that delightful film, Stand and Deliver!, starring Edward James Olmos.)

So why did I go ahead, under such conditions? Because the only other choice was no college at all. Esther was the sole member of her family and, seemingly, the sole person in her home town, who thought I should be going to college. 28-year-old married men don't go to college! Never mind that I couldn't go before. Face it! It was too late! The only choice I had was to start Coumbia under these ridiculous conditions -- and bull my way through. And listen, for the next four years, to "You're still in college?" "When are you going to finish? or give up?" "Why?" "Why?" "Why?"

When, years later, there occurred the famous "Columbia University Student Strike", I was saddened but not surprised. (This was described in a book, The Stawberry Statement, by James S. Kunen, later made into a film with songs by Crosby, Stills, nd Nash.)

My tale is representative of the plight of many Veterans after WWII.