After being expelled from the Prep, I entered John Adams High School in 1948. It would take me four and a half years to graduate because of my experience at Prep, where I had been failed in every subject. I entered Adams on probation. I was in a bad place. I was angry and indifferent. I did not see Adams as a fresh start, and I entered with no intention of finishing high school. At fourteen, I felt like a failure. I would not graduate. My plan was to quit school at sixteen and enter whatever branch of the military would have me.

Gradually, however, I began to feel less angry at the world and everyone in it. I grew interested in learning. I began to see that the school was giving me another chance. After two years at Adams, I became focused and successful and moved beyond the pain and humiliation of Prep. Of course, I didn’t make this change in a vacuum. I was lucky to have three excellent teachers—Marie Killer, Margaret Gannon, and Mary Burns—as well as a legendary, tough, profane football coach, Joe Scarlata, who I had as a teacher rather than a coach. Because I chose to work six or sometimes seven days a week after school, I didn’t play football or any other sport. And it was my choice. In those days, having money in my pocket was more important to me than anything else.

I did, however, participate in other school activities. I acted in school plays and was elected president of the school’s General Organization by the student body of 3,500. ln my senior year, our class yearbook, The Clipper, noted that I was voted the student who had “Done Most for Adams” and was “Most Likely to Succeed.”  The Clipper also listed me as being headed for the Brooklyn College of Pharmacy.

A pharmacist? At the time, the BCP was my only option. I had been working at a drugstore, and the owner offered to pay my tuition there for two years, until I graduated and earned my license. I would need to continue working forty hours a week at the store during those years for an unspecified salary, and after I graduated, I would work there as a pharmacist for at least two more years. I wasn’t thrilled at the prospect of being a pharmacist for the rest of my life, and I didn’t see a pharmacy degree as leading to anything else. But as I said, it was my only option.

In the middle of my senior year, I saw a posting on the Adams bulletin board announcing that the United States Air Force was recruiting qualified high school seniors to earn a BS degree at an accelerated program at selected colleges. I could earn my degree in three years while, during the summer, doing eight weeks of USAF-specific training on an airbase. On completion of the program, I would be commissioned as a second lieutenant and serve for four years. I would be trained as a bombardier or navigator with the possibility of further training as a pilot. Best of all, the program carried a modest monthly stipend, which meant that Joan and I could get married.

I had always been fascinated by airplanes and the prospect of being a pilot. Remember: The Air Force was a new branch of the service, only created in the late forties and a great place for a young man to be as it grew in importance. Also, this was 1952, and the US was in the middle of the Korean War. Russian-piloted MIGS, superior to anything the US had at the time, created wartime challenges that were exciting. I immediately applied. I passed the preliminary physical as well as a battery of tests at First Army Headquarters at Governors Island in New York Harbor near lower Manhattan. I was accepted.

Never in my life, before or since, have I felt better about myself as I did on graduation day in June 1952. I was on my way. I felt like a winner. Immediately after graduation, I reported to Governors Island for three days of additional medical exams and other written tests and interviews. On the second day, they picked up an ear condition I’d had all my life. When I was a child, I’d suffered from multiple ear infections that, combined with bad medical care, left me partly deaf in one ear, with an eardrum full of scar tissue. I was in danger of the eardrum’s rupturing at high altitudes or sudden changes in pressure, so an airman’s life was simply not possible.

They washed me out of the program. It’s hard to describe how I felt, largely because I have refused to remember the pain of that turn of events. In a matter of days, I went from the highest high in my life to the lowest depth. But I do remember taking the ferry from Governors Island to lower Manhattan and looking down at the water of the Hudson River, hopeless and dejected and full of dark thoughts. My life seemed to me to be over. Once again, I was a failure with no prospects and no place to go. How could face my friends and family? The ferry docked, and I walked through Battery Park, crying, sick to my stomach.

And then another turning point.

I passed through Battery Park, past the Customs House. I had to decide which way to walk. Up Broadway and into the center of Manhattan, or left on West Street, the beginning of the sequence of piers that extended along the west side of Manhattan? I chose to turn the corner onto West Street, probably because it would be less crowded and I was still an emotional mess. West Street in those days was all cobblestones, trucks, and a row of ugly green piers, except for one known as Pier 3 North River, a yellow-brick three-story building with the words United Fruit Company in gold letters across its length. I had written a term paper on Central America, so I knew a little about what the company did and the fact that it had a fleet of banana boats. I walked up to the uniformed armed guard at the front door and told him that I was interested in applying for a job with the company.

So fate works. The guard directed me to the second-floor personnel department. The lobby was something out of a Hollywood movie, panelled in a dark wood (which I would later learn was Honduran mahogany), and full of soft leather furniture and polished brass. I took the elevator, which looked made of pure gold, to the second floor. The department was empty, but I heard a voice from an adjoining office ask, “Who’s there?” I followed the voice to the large private office of the director of personnel, Donald Marcus. (I found out later that I had come at lunch hour.) I introduced myself and told Mr. Marcus I’d recently graduated from John Adams and was looking for a job on one of the company’s boats. He was abrupt, almost to the point of being rude, and told me that a job at sea was not going to happen. He did offer me a job as a messenger/office boy. The pay was $1,745 a year or $32.50 a week. The hours were long—five and a half days a week. I told him I’d just graduated, that I was a good student, that I was elected president of the school, most likely to succeed, and so on. He was not impressed He repeated the offer. I thanked him and walked out. Two rejections in one day!

As I was leaving the building, the guard, whose name was Joe Brennan, asked me how l made out. I told him. He invited me to join him in his small guardhouse and offered me half of his ham sandwich and a cup of coffee from his thermos. At the end of our lunch, he looked at me steadily and said, “Tom, this is a good company. You have a chance to get your foot in the door.” I thought about that and a few minutes later walked back up to the second floor and told Mr. Marcus that I had changed my mind. The next day I began my employment with United Fruit. It would be my workplace for the next seventeen years.