“This all happened while the country was desperately trying to catch up with the Russians, because of Sputnik. Now unbeknownst to me, my brother, who had graduated as an engineer from the Colorado School of Mines [and later Tel Aviv University with his doctorate], was working on cryogenic metallurgy, so he could design our response to the fuel tanks of our satellites.
“I went down to the Denver Public Schools and said, ‘If you are really so desperate for mathematics and physics majors, I will do it for you until I finish my doctorate.’ I dropped my transcripts off—I didn’t know at that time how to apply for a job—I had never had a job. Everything I had was offered to me. I dropped it on the superintendent’s desk [in my tennis shorts] and said, ‘If you are really desperate, I can give you three or four years.’ I walked back. I had another tennis game or match, lesson, or whatever.
“He came running after me with my transcript in hand and said, ‘Can you start in September?’ This was in July. I said, ‘ Yeah.’ He said, ‘You’re hired.’ I am sure it was because my father had been teaching in the Denver Public Schools since 1935 and they didn’t figure they needed anything else, I guess. They started me at North High School in Denver, then transferred me to South High School, and in the sixties, when the five new high schools in Denver opened up, they transferred me to George Washington High School, where I started teaching in 1960.
“I was never going to teach school, because it didn’t pay anything and I never thought I was going to be a tennis pro, because there were only two in the city of Denver at that time, the Denver Country Club and the Denver Tennis Club. Cherry Hill hadn’t even gotten a tennis pro by then.”