My Unknown Benefactor
I became a father in 1991.
I was 41 at the time. So why did I wait so long?
It gives me no pleasure to
admit the truth. I wasn't fit to
become a father. My porcupine personality acted as a surefire form
of birth control.
It took me twenty years
after graduation from high school to become a halfway decent person.
Until then, my entire life was centered around me me and me. I had
no trouble meeting women. However, the moment they sensed my anger
and my selfishness, they quickly headed for the Exit Door.
Just
because I graduated from high school and college with good grades didn't
mean the problems of my youth magically went away. In other words,
intelligence doesn't necessarily guarantee maturity.
I entered my
Twenties as a deeply troubled, angry young man. My first
indication of just how troubled I was came when I was tossed out of
graduate school. In essence, my professors decided I was too aggressive to be
any good as a therapist. I was forced to admit I carried all sorts of emotional
scars from childhood.
It took me the
next twenty years to grow up, let go of that anger and stop being so
self-centered. It wasn't until I finally began to turn into a decent person
that women
were finally willing to take a chance on me. Hence my late start
at parenting.
Drawing on lessons learned
in my own childhood,
the first thing I did as a father was put my daughter Sam into Duchesne
Academy, a well-respected private school in Houston's Memorial area.
Saint John's had taught me the value of an education. I was determined to give
the same gift to my
daughter Sam. I made a good choice. Duchesne turned out to be
everything I hoped the school would be.
Unfortunately, the tuition at Duchesne was about two pay grades above
what I made at my dance studio. It was a struggle to afford the
yearly bill. However, I was determined to keep Sam at that school
for 14 years because I knew it
was important to her.
So how do I put this
delicately? In 2007, money was especially tight at home. Paying my
daughter's tuition at Duchesne was a larger burden than usual. It
was either dip into savings or get financial aid.
I considered asking for a
partial scholarship, so I contacted the school. One day a thick
envelope came in the mail from the school. It contained a ten-page
form to fill out to initiate the scholarship process. I shook my
head in dismay. There was no way I was going to spend an entire
day filling out these forms. I wasn't too keen on begging for
money in the first place. I would find the money somewhere else.
However, as I stared at that
ten page form, something began to
nag at me. I wondered why my mother never had to fill out a single
page of financial aid paperwork for Johns Hopkins. Or my father
for that matter. That's when I remembered how worried I was back
in 1968 that my father's affluence might sabotage my chance at a
scholarship.
I had just been
given my first-ever look at how the financial aid process is supposed to
work... essay questions, savings accounts, income tax statements, bank
accounts, maybe even interviews. It was a complicated process. And probably a necessary one as well. I have learned the
hard way that not everyone tells the truth. Why should Duchesne
be expected to simply take my word for it that I needed a scholarship for my
daughter? They expected me to prove I needed the money.
My memory drifted back to that
fateful moment in my Senior year. One day a letter had appeared
out of nowhere granting me $16,000.
Through a child's eyes back then I didn't give it a second
thought, but now through my adult eyes I became skeptical. How would
Johns Hopkins know my financial situation well enough to decide some
unknown kid a thousand miles away in Texas deserved this kind of money without any
sort of documentation?
That $16,000 grant in 1968
was equivalent to $100,000 in today's money. No one hands out
$100,000 to a stranger.
So why did Hopkins skip the financial aid process? Well, that's
easy to answer. Obviously Ralph
O'Connor had told Johns Hopkins that I was poor. After all, I met
the man at his house and one week later a scholarship letter appeared in
my mailbox.
Of course Ralph O'Connor had
arranged this!
For over forty years that's what I believed
happened. But now a new question popped up in
my mind.
Who convinced Ralph
O'Connor that Rick Archer was worthy of a $16,000/$100,000 scholarship??
And then it hit me. Of
course.
For the first
time in my life, I realized that Mr. Salls had been responsible for my
amazing $16,000 scholarship at Hopkins all along... and I never once had
the slightest inkling at the time.
How stupid could I be? It
had taken me 40 years to figure out who my
real benefactor was! After all, I didn't choose Johns Hopkins...
Mr. Salls chose me for Johns Hopkins!
Mr. Salls
made it possible for me to go there for free... without bothering to
tell me, of course.
How could I miss this? Yet it had to be true. Back when I
was a teenager, I figured that after Ralph O'Connor had put in a
good word for me, the Johns Hopkins administrators looked at my high
school grades, read the note from Mr. O'Connor that said I needed
financial aid and took his word for it.
So I gave all the credit
to Mr. O'Connor. What utter nonsense!
Mr. O'Connor definitely helped me get the scholarship. However
surely he
did this based on to Mr. Salls' recommendation. That's
what I missed. Back in those days, it never once dawned on me that
Mr. Salls had arranged my scholarship.
Mr. Salls had already persuaded Mr. O'Connor to help me
way in advance of our meeting. I can only assume that my meeting with Mr.
O'Connor was arranged so he could confirm with his own eyes what Mr.
Salls had already told him about me.
If I could have been there,
I am sure I would have heard Mr. Salls tell Mr. O'Connor something like
this.
"Listen, Ralph, I have a
very good student who is perfect for your school. He has been
with us for nine years so I know him well. He has good grades, good
SAT scores, and I am positive he can handle the academics at
Hopkins.
In addition, this boy
works his tail off. I have information from Ed Curran here at
the school that this young man has been working a job after school
for two years now due to trouble at home. And that is the
problem. This boy has the most screwed up parents of any
student we have ever had at this school. There is no way this
boy can afford to go to your school without a scholarship.
Do you think you can
help him?"
After talking with Mr.
Salls, it makes perfect sense that
Mr. O'Connor was prepared to give Hopkins a strong recommendation
on my behalf. However, before asking the school to make that kind of
investment, he wanted to be double-sure I was who Mr. Salls said I was.
That explains
why Mr. O'Connor casually asked me to explain my financial situation. When I
told him the story, he just kind of nodded. I am sure my story checked out
exactly as Mr. Salls had explained it to him ahead of time.
In hindsight, I now realize I had simply confirmed something Mr. O'Connor had already
been told. And how do you suppose he already knew? It had to be Mr. Salls!
There is too much writing on
the wall. Mr. Salls encouraged me to apply at Hopkins five months
earlier because he knew how influential Ralph O'Connor
was at Hopkins. Mr. Salls referred to Mr.
O'Connor as "my old friend".
One thing I did gather back
in my Senior year was that why several
boys in the SJS class before and after mine had ended up at Hopkins.
In fact, two boys were already there. I ran into them from time to
time. Then another boy from SJS showed up a year later. I
deduced that St. John's was something of a Hopkins farm team.
Now it clicked. It all made
sense.
Mr. Salls and Mr. O'Connor worked together every year. It was now obvious that Mr. Salls
recruited me for Hopkins because he knew his friend Ralph O'Connor would
take care of me. In turn, Ralph O'Connor was pleased to be able to send
a kid with such a fine academic background to his beloved school in
Baltimore.
Both men helped each other.
My scholarship was their Old Boy Network in action.
