Piles of grey, melting slush from the spring snowstorm dotted the parking lot beneath the hospital window. The sounds of clanking carts announced the end of lunch in the maternity ward and the arrival of newborns, tightly wrapped and ready to be held and fed. The newest Hershberger son alertly studied the room’s shapes and colors. He had too much to learn to waste time sleeping.
Once home, the neighbors, all grandparents and great-grandparents, came to check out the newest little person on the block before he outgrew the socks that slid off his feet that first week home. The oldest left her constant yard work to visit the newborn. She held the infant, looked deep in his eyes and pronounced the blessing she gave every newborn, “It’s a hard, hard life” and she shook her head at the harshness of life. Those few words encapsulated her early adulthood during World War I and raising a family through an economic depression that ended with the advent of World War II. Young parents may have startled at her pronouncement, but the ensuing years validated its truth.
The infant did not care. He quickly became known among the neighborhood of grandparents for his “mischievous grin.” The twinkle of a tease and his celebration of life reflected his defiance of the danger he faced as a six-month old the day he figured out how to give a little hop to reach each step as he climbed the stairs to the second floor.
The old gardener smiled at the story and said her son had climbed on top of the dining room table at that age. (Her son later earned a comfortable living roofing houses.)
At nine months the youngest Hershberger pushed his older brother out off his mother’s lap and climbed up to see the pictures in the book being read. Weekly trips to the library insured a fresh supply of 20 or 30 books and a couple hours of total absorption as he studied every book. As the years increased his age, the pictures in books disappeared and the words increased. At eight, he read an article about infant development and weighed the information against his baby sister’s growth.
Reading consumed him. He read ahead in the school reader and shrugged off the necessity of workbooks the teacher wanted to increase his understanding. He understood, that’s all that mattered to him.
In sixth grade, the family purchase of a new Radio Shack personal computer with a manual for learning the MS-DOS operating system grabbed his attention. His siblings ignored the user friendly manual. He lived, breathed, slept and ate with the manual. He hogged every minute he could at the computer … and stayed up late his fingers racing over the keyboard. Quickly he shrugged off parental concerns that he might damage the computer, edged into the back door of the computer to manipulate it and joined chat groups for computer geeks.
In junior high, he defied the wisdom of computer experts at his father’s plant who said it could not be done and developed a program to compile information for the quality assurance department. The company bought the program. Years later the manager reported the company continued to use the program.
No one asked what he would do “when he grew up.” Everyone knew computer technology fit him like a fine glove. Anything else that educators mandated he needed to study received a begrudging cursory glance. Spelling? Well if you insist. Learn a second language? Why? His knew two or three computer languages.
College graduation freed him of the demands of formal education. Every job since then has tapped into his computer skills. Computers support his family, fill his work room and accompany him to every event. As one teen observed after noting the hours he spent in the chair working on his laptop, “He is like a piece of furniture.” A piece of furniture whose still mischievous grin draws every toddler to him, and whose extensive reading fills his Facebook page with challenging ideas and concepts.
Tomorrow his family celebrates his 43rd year since that snowy spring day. The years have provided a wealth of memories. May there be many more to come.
Joan Hershberger is a staff writer for the El Dorado News-Times. She can be reached at joanh@everybody.org