“I got back [from Washington, DC] and I wanted to promulgate more use of the computer and we decided that use of the computer could be spread through the Denver Public Schools through a magnet grant. Prior to this magnet grant idea, the schools had refused to let students from other schools to go to the University of Denver, like we had allowed student to learn on my ID. We invited students from every high school in the metropolitan area. We saw students from Abraham Lincoln, from South High, Manual, East High, and could all go there to learn. We had students coming from all those schools to learn and the class at DU for high school kids was very large. DU was very happy. The public schools said that’s showing a special relationship with the University of Denver. It is not fair to the other universities, where Denver students cannot go. That really pissed me off. I did it for every school system outside of Denver and Denver kids couldn’t go and I couldn’t send letters. I think it was illegal, when they did that. I didn’t know much about legalities in those days.”
“The idea of a magnet school really appealed to me. After I won the Presidential Award and met all these big shots in the country, and got back, that’s when Denver decided ‘Only Basics.’ We had about 720 kids enrolled in a pseudo-department, being the computer department. I had, by this time, trained 14 faculty members to use computers and we had language teachers using it. We had, actually, teachers who taught remedial students using it and all the departments. I helped them find uses for their curriculum on the computer and, if there wasn’t any software to promulgate those uses, my students wrote it.
“We decided to have a wake. We put the curriculum that the 720 kids were studying in a small casket and we learned how to boiler plate. I never knew how. We boiler-plated letters and put in names. We learned exactly how businesses sent you something with your name on it. Then we invited 900 people; and 550 accepted. We carpooled. All the departments of mathematics, computer science around the state, who couldn’t believe what my students knew. They had no idea how hard it was.
“I called a school and said, ‘What is the language your students have to program in, if they have to program in?’ and I got so many different languages. Algol, Pascal, Fortran. Unbelievable. So I sat down and decided that there were things in common with every language. They all had to accept information, they all had to know the difference between real and integer arithmetic. They all had to have pathways, flow charts, on how to do things. They all had to get things stored. Find things.
“What I did was put down a list of all the things computers had in common and assigned one part of a blackboard to each of those things and we ended up teaching seven languages. They did the mathematics. Same mathematics in seven languages. They did linear equations, quadratic equations, they did prime numbers. But they had to write it in all of these languages. And then, after they got one semester of learning all these languages under their belt, they could write the lab at the university and say, ‘I have studied Algol. Can I have a job in your computer lab? I can also help them in Fortran and …’ None of them were ever refused a job. They couldn’t believe that this young 17-year-old was able to work in these various jobs.
“We even added — because of the Vietnam War — they still had the draft and they were drafting these bright kids and letting them get shot. So I went to the recruiter and I said, ‘Suppose you have a real need in mathematics and physics. If I taught these kids this, could they apply for that? Instead of getting shot at, use their brain?’ And, by God, they needed Cobalt programmers more than anything in the world. Cobalt was a dead language and, as a result, they had nobody teaching them. And I was teaching them and they had mastered so many languages, that it took them overnight to master it enough to show somebody that they knew it. Nobody would do that after I left. They thought it was impossible. I had sixty computers at the time.
“When they walked in, it was the first time in their life they had a computer take their picture. They saw a computer playing chess. People who were interested in the minorities went to the line of minorities girls from the business class using word processors. They hired three of them. I’ll never forget this. This person hired three of them on the spot, because he couldn’t find anybody who knew word processors. In fact, all three girls got scholarships from those businesses to finish college, as long as they worked for them. It was fun. The National Council of Teachers of Math had sent their science advisor — these are all national figures in the United States — to the first day. It was so big we had to run it over two days.”