How I Came to Embrace the Principles
Embraced by Henry George

Worth Considering: Is Child Really Father to the Man?

Edward J. Dodson

[A personal memoir written 20 Decmeber 2013]

I am sure I am joined by many others who reach their seventh decade of life to reflect on the years that have gone by, to assess what has been accomplished and what might still be accomplished. So much of life has passed by quickly and is now passing in an accelerated fashion. While I continue to feel as vibrant as I did two or three decades ago, my thoughts are at times absorbed by a concern that the years ahead will bring on a decline in my physical health and intellectual vigor. To linger on unable to care for oneself or no longer be aware of one's surroundings or the people who once were recognized as friends or family members is not a human life; it is mere existence with no purpose. Life should end with some dignity intact. I hope that will be my future.

In some strange way, I always had an expectation that mine would be a life well lived, with a degree of accomplishment to point to. As I look back on the events and the relationships that forged who I am, I am struck by just how unplanned and unanticipated my life has been. Being in the right place at the right time is part of the story. Struggling with shyness and a delayed process of maturing into adulthood resulted in many poor and a few potentially-destructive decisions. Yet, nothing I did or that happened to me created any permanent or even long-term problems to overcome.

The family of which I am a member was, in hindsight, remarkably normal, or average, I am not sure which term best applies. I know this now only because of listening to the stories of friends and acquaintances about their early lives. My father served in the Marine Corps. during the Second World War, met and married my mother (who was a decade younger than he) at the end of 1946. I was born in January of 1948, the first of five children to come along over the next thirteen years.

What my father's hopes and dreams were I have no idea. We never really had a conversation about anything substantive that I can recall. His one real love seemed to be fishing. He was skilled in the mechanical arts. He could fix almost anything. He almost single-handedly constructed the home our family moved to in the late 1950s, after almost a decade living in rental housing set aside for veterans after the end of the war. We called our first neighborhood "the projects" but the entire development may have been housing constructed for the military and defense workers. When the government announced the development would be torn down, my parents purchased a parcel of land about twenty miles outside of the city and my father began to construct our new home. He was not able to finish the main portion of the house in time for our required departure, so our family moved into the basement for some period of time while the work was completed. Even with four young children to care for, my mother worked right alongside my father during those rather stressful months. Or, at least that is how I remember things.

Ours was truly a working-class family, living paycheck-to-paycheck but at a time in the history of the United States characterized by fairly steady economic expansion. Money was often tight, and my father's work in the housing construction industry was cyclical. I remember some years when he would have to leave our region for weeks at a time in order to keep working. There were also fairly long stretches during which he waited for weeks and weeks to be called for jobs, and we survived on a combination of unemployment benefits, what my father could earn doing home repairs or remodeling work on private homes, and what my mother could earn as a waitress.

To some extent, as "kids" my brother, my two sisters and I were somewhat oblivious to the financial pressures our parents contended with. After all, we had a nice house to live in, located out beyond the inner ring of suburban communities that surrounded the city and "the projects" where we had started our lives. Most of our neighbors were also families with children about our same ages. So, we had a ready supply of other kids to compete against in sports and to make friends with. We could walk outside our basement door and into a woods that ran uninterrupted for several miles until emerging at a county park. This was a vast wilderness we could explore, filled with rabbits, squirrels and harmless snakes. A still-unpolluted stream ran between two steep hills. Small fish and frogs and numerous insects abounded. We constructed crude dams to create swimming holes, and during the winter rode our sleds down the hill behind our house to the edge of the water, and sometimes into it.

My brother and I, eighteen months apart in age, were always competing with one another, whether on the ball field, in the back yard or in the other games children play. Our age difference mattered very little because I was growing at such a slow pace that by the time we moved to our new neighborhood we were equal in size and he was growing larger by the year. I think the last time we fought was when I was about fourteen or fifteen, and I was clearly outmatched and realized the time had come to come to terms with my position as the weaker of the two. This was not easy for me because I had inherited from my father a short fuse that could not be backed up by physical strength. Getting knocked around a few times is all it takes to begin to exercise greater self-control. Anger can still rise up in an instant, but what one does about it is essential to self-preservation.

Being small for my age was a problem made worse by the fact that my parents started me in school at age five. For the first three years I was enrolled in the Catholic elementary school a relatively short walk from "the projects" where we lived. My memory of my early school years is not very good, generally, but I do remember the one experience with the Nuns that left a mark on my brain. Collecting baseball and football cards was something almost all of the boys of that era did. And, when we could, we would compete with one another in "winner take all" competitions with the cards. One day at school - at recess or at lunch - I came away as the big winner. Back in the classroom, I could not help myself and began to look through the cards as the Nun was instructing us to do whatever it was we were supposed to be doing. I was discovered. All of my cards were confiscated, and I was left to endure the pain of a great loss at a very young age. It did not help that I was emotionally immature even for a seven year old kid.

My reality for the first twelve years of school was that I was almost always the youngest kid in the class and among the smallest in stature. These two factors may have contributed to my shyness and, during my high school years, my almost total invisibility where girls were concerned. Quite frankly, the idea of dating and trying to find a girlfriend terrified me all during high school. I tried, of course. But generally came up short. When, in my senior year, I actually began to grow taller and put on some weight, my social skills were so undeveloped that I continued to remain invisible with the girls in my high school (even those a few years younger). At least some of my friends had about the same experiences, which was one of the things we could commiserate about. However, our social lives improved somewhat once a couple of my friends got their drivers licenses and gained access to their parents' automobiles.

About a half hour's drive from our neighborhood was an all-girls catholic school. The school had dances every so often, and we began to attend. Here, the girls had no idea of our status in our own schools. They found us reasonably attractive and sometimes even said yes when we asked for their phone numbers to call for a date. My first girl friend attended that school, although we met under different circumstances. The relationship did not last very long, but the time we spent together gave me the confidence to approach other girls without an expectation that rejection would be automatic.

The word "mediocre" accurately describes my academic achievements, particularly beginning in grade nine. Up to that point I seemed to be able to focus on school work and showed some potential for rigorous academic study. During grade eight I did very well, making the honor roll every or almost every term, and so was placed in with the really smart kids in grade nine. That turned out to be a disaster that took until my senior year from which to recover. The best I could do with Algebra and French were C's. My real strengths were in history, English literature, art class and physical education. One of the first books I ever purchased on my own, as I recall, was William Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. I loved history and read constantly in this area. Somehow, my guidance counselor convinced me that a good back-up plan would be to learn how to use a typewriter. I had to repeat the basic typing course but eventually got better and as life progressed found the skill both exceptionally useful. A course in bookkeeping during my junior or senior year turned out to be key to my eventual career path.

From the time I was old enough to hold a crayon or colored pencil in my hand I was making drawings. So, by the time I was getting ready to choose a future, the first idea that came to me was to enroll in art school. Second on my list was to try to get accepted into a state college as a history major and eventually teach history to high school students. Neither happened. My parents had no money to spare to send me to college; and, although I had held various menial jobs during high school, I really had not saved anywhere near enough to pay for even one semester of college, if I actually could get accepted. Still, I was strongly motivated to enroll into some sort of school. This was 1965 and quite a few of the guys graduating that year were headed for military service and probably to Southeast Asia to fight in Vietnam.

I have no idea who gave me the advice or helped me through the process, but I ended up getting accepted into what was in those days called a junior college, a two-year program to earn an Associates Degree. I would study accounting and business management. The college was located in the city, so I arranged to ride in with the father of one of my high school friends who commuted into the city each day. Continuing to live at home had some real advantages financially. And, of course, my mother kept feeding me and doing my laundry. During that first year I worked as a stock clerk in a local discount department store for pretty low wages, but I was still able to pay my college expenses and a small amount of board to my parents.

A year of study and two accounting courses later brought on important changes. I obtained a summer job doing payroll accounting and other duties in the main office of a large railroad in the city. The railroad job paid me about triple what I was previously earning. All during my second year of college the railroad called me back in whenever I had days off from school or between semesters. There was little time for a social life but I do not recall that being much of a concern. I was focused on completing my course work, getting the Associates Degree and then, well, I had no idea.

The U.S. government did have an idea of what I might do. Some time in the Spring of 1967 I received my notice to report for induction in the U.S. Army. That was that, or so it seemed. A few of my high school friends were already back from their tour of duty in Vietnam, and a couple more were home from college. I continued to work (now as a summer replacement for vacationing staff of a large interstate trucking company), but I was not particularly concerned with saving what I earned. Life was about to end for me, so I partied with my friends and prepared to put whatever aspirations I had on hold in case I somehow survived the military experience.

But, then, an unexpected reprieve occurred. I went to the induction center early that September after deciding to enlist in the U.S. Navy, filled out the paper work and was actually interviewed for officers candidate school. For reasons I need not go into, I failed the physical examination. I had no savings, no job and no plans.

I do not recall exactly what happened after that, but the trucking company offered me a full-time position in the office helping customers by tracking down delayed or missing shipments. My job was described as a "tracing clerk." And, when needed, I also helped another member of the staff match up freight that ended up at this terminal location by mistake with its paperwork and get it back on a truck to where it was to be delivered. This job frequently required at least ten hours of overtime each week, so I was now able to begin rebuilding my savings with the objective of returning to college.

During 1968 I began to investigate the list of colleges I thought I could both afford and be accepted into. Eventually, the list narrowed to several state colleges within a reasonable driving distance. I wanted - needed - to get away from my home town (and my parents, to be honest) and finally get out on my own. My employer gave me the compliment of offering to send me to the company's management school, but I could not see a meaningful and enjoyable career for me in the trucking industry. I was accepted at a small state college about four hours away from home and prepared to re-enter college for another two or perhaps three years. Early in the Spring of 1969 I left for college.

Coming onto a college campus in the middle of the academic year presents a number of challenges. Most other new students have finished their first semester and are returning to complete their year. They have made a number of friends and are beginning to establish themselves in various ways. So, it was natural for those of us coming in at mid-year to bond together and begin to forge friendships. That first semester I had a dormitory room all to myself, which helped me to focus on my studies and my grades that semester were quite good. I mistakenly took this as a signal that my next few years of college would be relatively easy.

At the end of the Spring semester I returned to my home time to work again as a summer replacement at the trucking company. When I returned to college in September, I learned from some new friends that they had made the long trip to Woodstock. Some of them actually were able to get close enough to hear some of the music. Others simply got high with the thousands of others our age who managed to get there.

That Fall I gradually became increasingly involved in activities beyond just going to classes and studying, not all of which were entirely constructive. Marijuana was readily available on campus. My introduction to marijuana had occurred somewhat earlier, offered by a few high school mates who returned from the military with more than just stories of what they went through. Studying was still relatively important. But so was the big three: sex, drugs and rock and roll.

At the end of the Spring semester of 1970 I learned that my former employer would not have a job for me until sometime in early July. A friend of mine had found work in another city and invited me to join him there until my summer job came through. That turned out to be a real learning experience (read disaster). I took a room in a home owned by a very nice elderly woman who spoke no English, and I found employment pumping gas. I could say more about those six weeks, but suffice it to say I was very happy when I finally got the call to come to work at the trucking company.

That was the summer I first fell in love, not with a girl, but with the two-seater roadster. My first sports car was a 1960 Triumph TR-3 that was in need of a good deal of mechanical and body work. The relationship I had with the girl I spent nearly all of the year with at college came to an end for the bizarre reason that she wanted to get together over the summer. She lived over an hour away, and my Triumph was not yet up to the challenge of reliably making these trips. I really could not afford to have a girl friend, and I had not idea of what to do to calmly enable us to go our separate ways without some sort of final confrontation. Where women were concerned I was still unprepared for whatever it was that made relationships work. I essentially just stopped calling her and did not return her calls. Afterward, I simply hoped to somehow stumble upon another girl who found me interesting enough to put up with a young male who offered nothing much more than a sexual relationship of unknown depth and duration and someone with whom to hopefully pass some enjoyable times. As it turned out, just such a young girl came into my life. We shared two really great months together, made promises we both knew we would not keep, and at summer's end moved on to the next adventures.

Returning to college in the Fall of 1970, I moved into an off-campus apartment with four other guys. Try as I might, I had a more difficult time concentrating on my studies. Our apartment was always filled with friends, girlfriends and girls we invited back for, well, you know where this is headed. For reasons not known to me, my girl friend from the previous year did not return to the college. It did not take very long for me to become attracted to someone new, a very cute girl with long dark hair and a outgoing personality. She quickly became my constant companion and remained so for the next six or seven months (with a few intermittent distractions).

Remarkably, or strangely, I continued to pursue a business degree, with a major in accounting, even though my real interests remained history and art. I was also taking sufficient education credits to potentially qualify to teach high school business courses. My appearance by this time displayed none of the qualities the business world would find attractive. My daily attire consisted of faded blue jeans, flannel shirts and either sneakers or some type of boots. My hair had grown long and now touched my shoulders. Quite frankly, I was living in the moment and dreaded the thought of eventually having to leave this lifestyle behind for the world of my parents. I was hoping for inspiration and the opportunity to change direction in some way. Or, so I thought at the time. College life was in many ways an extension of adolescence but without meaningful restrictions.

I made it through the year with less than a stellar scholarly performance. As the school year ended, I made arrangements to share an apartment with one of my long-time childhood friends. There was some excitement just as I got back from school, as just a week or two earlier several of my friends had an unfortunate experience with law enforcement over their possession of and intent to distribute a rather sizeable amount of an illegal substance. One of those involved was the guy I was planning to share an apartment with over the summer. My father stated simply that if I moved in with him that I was not to ever come back to the family home. I was already pretty much packed up, so I said my goodbyes and moved on to the highs and lows of independent early adulthood. The summer months passed by quickly, between long hours of working and spending evenings and weekends hanging out with friends.

The Fall of 1971 was supposed to be my final semester. I was assigned to spend the semester at an area high school as a student teacher. Unfortunately, I was very much out of touch with reality. I joined one of my closer friends and others I did not know to share an apartment off campus. I would drive each day about thirty miles each way to the high school to teach bookkeeping. My long hair created a major problem with the high school administration, as the school had a fairly strict restriction on hair length for students. After a rough couple of weeks I withdrew from the school. The dean of the college was less than pleased with my behavior and advised that the opportunity to be assigned to another school would not be available to me until the Fall of 1972, and only on condition that I fully comply with whatever grooming standards the high school required. For my part, I simply asked that I be assigned to a school in a more urban, progressive environment.

I had no intention of leaving campus for my home town, so I began to look for a job in the local area. I do not remember exactly why I could not find work in accounting or some other type of white collar work, but I ended up taking a job working for a large nursery as a member of its landscaping crew. For several weeks I returned each evening so exhausted that I did little more than shower, eat dinner and climb into bed. My body eventually hardened and adjusted to the daily outdoor work. When on campus, life without the pressure of studying allowed me to pursue my lingering interest in artistic endeavors. At the start of the semester I had joined the staff of the campus literary magazine, not as a writer, but as illustrator. I would produce small water color drawings or pen and ink drawings to accompany poems and essays written by other students. My work attracted the attention of a professor who served as faculty advisor to the art club. One of the college mathematics professors had approached him with a recommendation for a student to produce several art works for him. He gave the professor my name.

After meeting with this mathematics professor I took on the unique and challenging task of trying to produce using ink, pen and brush copies of the strange lithographs of the artist M.C. Escher. Much of my free time for the next month was devoted to the project.

One evening while hanging out in the student union with a friend, we noticed two attractive girls sitting by themselves. We walked over, introduced ourselves and sat down to talk to them and tried to get them to come over to my apartment for the usual reasons. They said, no, they needed to get back to their dorm and study. And, that was that, or so I thought. A few days later (I think) I ran into one of the two girls somewhere on campus. I was on my way back to our apartment to prepare our dinner, as it was my turn to do so. I invited this girl to keep me company while I got dinner ready and invited her to join us for dinner. She agreed but warned me that she was not interested in anything happening between us, that she was pretty sure we would not get along. She was right, of course, but we did not come to realize this until sometime later, actually until we passed our first year of marriage.

The months that followed our meeting were, well, surrealistic. We were spending more and more time together, not alone very often, but in company of my apartment mates and a wider network of friends. What I did not know when the school began was that two of the four people I was living with were gay. The friend I shared a room with had always had a girlfriend but one weekend he turned up at our apartment with a male friend with whom he had become involved. Such were the times that I just sort of ignored some of the strangeness around me. One thing that helped was the fact that my new girl friend got along quite well with everyone. Months went by. Despite her early warning we did seem to be getting along and in a way I had not experienced before with any other girl. I did not really know what being in love was, but I thought I must love her. So, in a rash moment I raised the idea of us getting married. I was thinking of sometime in the future, but she responded with great enthusiasm over the idea, announced our news to the world and the wedding plans accelerated along a path of no return. I should have expressed my true intentions but just let events unfold.

Getting married was the craziest idea I ever had. I was twenty-two years old; she was twenty. I still had my student teaching semester to complete in order to earn my degree. I had no money in the bank to speak of and no idea what I would be doing for a living after school ended. She had worked for two years before entering college, so this was her freshman year, and now she was ready to quit college to marry me. What was she thinking?

I have no concrete recollection of the Spring months of 1972. I reapplied for admission in the Fall and was assigned to complete my student teaching at a high school near the state capital, a school district in the middle of an industrial, working-class area. My girl friend and I were married soon after the end of the Spring semester, and we found an apartment near where I would be teaching. She secured a job with an insurance company, as I recall, doing exactly what I do not recall. I had two jobs that summer.

Part of the summer I was hired to work for the press secretary in the Office of the State Attorney General; my job was to read the state newspapers each day looking for any news articles mentioning the attorney general, cut them out of the newspaper, tape them to a sheet of white paper and photocopy them for the press secretary. Needless to say, this rarely required a full day to complete. The press secretary was a young, easy-going person who later in life was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. He and I engaged in regular discussions of public policy. And, he encouraged me to apply for a full-time position in state government, which I did, but without result before I finished student teaching and we moved from the area. Eventually, the person who held the job I was performing returned from vacation, and I had to find new employment.

Just then, the United States was hit by a massive hurricane which came north far enough to cause widespread flooding. The state capital was hard-hit, and the Red Cross arrived in force. The Red Cross advertised for people with accounting experience to work in the payroll department being established to handle the disaster staff. I applied and was immediately hired. This resulted in another job offer, to work for the Red Cross based (as I remember) in San Francisco, on a team that would go into disaster areas and set up the systems as was being done in this case. Had I still been unmarried this might have been an interesting adventure to pursue but I now had the feelings of a another person to consider.

September came and I started my student teaching obligation. I was assigned to teach an introductory accounting course and business law under the direction of a fairly young teacher who was also the school's basketball coach. We got along very well. My hair was cut reasonably short. The students were fun to teach, and the weeks went by rather quickly. Near the end of the semester my supervising teacher encouraged me to apply to join the faculty, as there was an opening in the department. I briefly considered this but my new wife and I decided to move closer to where she had family and look for work there. I was not sure I wanted to teach high school students to make my living.

In the middle of 1972 the employment picture was not particularly good. There were no teaching positions available in the area where we now moved to. So, I ended up taking a job doing clerical work for a real estate financial consulting firm. My wife found work as well, but I do not remember if this was with another insurance company. We had been rushed into the responsibilities of adulthood years before we were (or, at least before I was) prepared emotionally to handle them. I had a job but the work I was doing gave me little satisfaction. I felt trapped, and I turned into a rather unpleasant person to live with. Within a year our relationship had deteriorated to the point where my wife hardly spoke to me. Near the end of 1974 she asked me to move out. Soon after the new year began I found a small apartment and we separated. There was no discussion between us about what had gone wrong. Some months went by before we saw one another. One of my close friends in college had graduated and was living in the area. We reconnected and started hanging out together. I quickly reverted to the life of a single person, meeting and dating young women for short periods of time, always avoiding any possibility of commitment.

Sometime early in the Spring of 1975 I received a postcard in the mail informing me that I was no longer married. At least the split was simplified by the fact that we had no assets and no child custody issues to resolve. I was both sad and relieved. At least now I would have the time to think about who I was and what I wanted out of life. Dragged kicking and screaming, I was beginning to face up to the fact that my years of carefree youth had come to an end.

My responsibilities at the real estate firm were changing. I was promoted to the position of office manager, even though I was by far the youngest person on the staff. And, I was given my first opportunity to make some use of my accounting training. Unfortunately for our firm, the U.S. economy was hit hard by the actions of O.P.E.C. to use their control over fossil fuels to achieve political objectives. Rising prices of everything pulled the U.S. and other national economies into recession but with inflation rather than deflation. The real estate sector was imploding. My employer lost several key clients and several asset managers left the company.

One of the asset managers who left joined a newly-formed subsidiary of a major regional bank, charged with taking over the property and loan assets of a real estate investment trust that had become insolvent and was taken over by its creditor banks. Some months later she contacted me and asked me if I would be interested in coming aboard to handle project accounting responsibilities. The firm's small team of asset managers worked long hours to manage properties scattered all around the United States, and in addition to my responsibilities for developing project cash flow projections, budgeting and establishing a unified system to track construction contracts and leases, I was sent into the field a few times to help with actual project management. This work was both challenging and enriching. I was not sure this was something I wanted to do for the long-term, but my resume was improving.

By 1979 the creditor banks decided to divide up the remaining assets among themselves, and our firm was dissolved. I was brought into the bank to take over responsibility for managing the residential mortgage servicing function. I moved into downtown Philadelphia and into an apartment building within an easy walk to my new office. After a brief period in my new position, I was asked to represent the bank working with a coalition of community groups focused on neighborhood revitalization. This was my first real exposure to the problem of urban blight and the disinvestment from many neighborhoods. Ironically, I also reconnected with one of my brother's close childhood friends who had come to Philadelphia to attend art school and was now living in a neighborhood attractive to artists because of the low rents and housing prices. He was among a handful of urban pioneers who were acquiring vacant properties and slowly bringing them back into use. His and similar neighborhoods were still plagued by crime and occasionally more serious attacks on people. These next few years were for me a very first-hand introduction to the poverty that plagued the lives of so many people.

A long series of decisions, some mine, other thrust upon me, brought me to this point and to this place. I found I had a social conscience and a desire to somehow contribute to improving existing conditions. I still did not know how this would unfold but I was now prepared to recognize and pursue the opportunities.

In the Fall of 1979 the door opened, literally opened, and I walked into the front room of the building where the direction of my life from that point on would be forged. That building was the first home of the nineteenth century philosopher, political economist and newspaper editor, Henry George. It housed the Philadelphia extension of the Henry George School of Social Science. Everything I have written about above brought me somehow to this moment, and now my immersion began into the true principles of moral philosophy and of how civilization had evolved. Three courses devoted to the reading, studying and debating the major works of Henry George (Progress and Poverty, Social Problems, Protection or Free Trade, and The Science of Political Economy) followed. At the end of a year, I had come to embrace the principles embraced by Henry George. More importantly, I think, I was now committed to doing whatever I could to work with others who also shared these principles to change the course of history.