![]() His classmates were from private high schools or very good public schools, and they were much better prepared than he was. Sperling found the coursework at Reed more challenging than at San Francisco City College. They were always saying, 'I got where I did because of hard work,' and I thought, 'You stupid son of a bitch, you don't know how privileged you are.'" "I loathed them," he said, "because of their privilege. Reed College was John Sperling's first interaction with people from the middle and upper classes, and he hated them. "Had it not been for my one semester of junior college A's plus the fact that Reed desperately wanted males to replace the ones leaving daily, I would not have made it in," he writes. While he waited to be called, he enrolled at Reed, a prestigious liberal arts college in Portland, Oregon his family was now living in Portland. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in December, Sperling enlisted in the Navy Air Corps. "All the classes were easy for me and I got straight A's."Ĭommunity college didn't last long. He had always hated school, but "this time school was different," he writes in his memoir. He went to class during the day and worked at a gas station at night. ![]() Socialism ignited an intellectual curiosity in Sperling that led him to enroll at a community college in San Francisco when he got out of the Merchant Marine. It was 1939, the tenth year of the Great Depression, and he writes that his fellow seamen were "socialists plus a sprinkling of communists." Sperling came from a family of Republicans, but the culture of the left appealed to him and he became a socialist. "I had no idea that college was even a possibility," he said in an interview with American RadioWorks.Īfter high school Sperling joined the Merchant Marine. No one in Sperling's family had gone to college. At one point he "sold drinks and snacks on a train that ran between Kansas City and somewhere," writes Sperling. Sperling's father was an unsuccessful farmer who spent a lot of time looking for other ways to make money. "We ate mostly what came out of the garden, the henhouse, and two milk cows." His mother was constantly worried that her children - three boys and two girls - would starve. "We always lived in tiny houses," Sperling writes in a memoir, Rebel with a Cause, published in 2000. Sperling was born in 1921 in the Missouri Ozarks. John Sperling in 2005 at his home in Phoenix. Symphon圜ast The great orchestras in concert.Saint Paul Sunday In-studio music and conversation.Pipedreams Celebrating the King of instruments.Performance Today America's classical conversation.Holiday Specials Programs to celebrate the season.Composers Datebook Profiles of composers in history.Classical Live The best concert events of the year.Carnegie Hall Live 12 "must-have" classical music events.The Writer's Almanac Today in history and a poem or two.The Story The human side of news and issues.The Splendid Table Public radio's show about food.A Prairie Home Companion Variety show with Garrison Keillor.Marketplace Tech Report A guide to the modern world.Marketplace Morning Report 8 minutes you can't afford to miss.Marketplace Money How money makes the world go 'round.Marketplace Business news for the rest of us.The Dinner Party Win your next dinner party. ![]()
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