During my school years, I was a very poor student. At the same time I was considered a roughneck in a rather rough neighborhood. Some mothers even told their sons: "Stay away from that roughneck. He will never amount to anything." But I did manage to graduate from school and eventually found employment as a production worker. After ten years, I had improved to the point where I was doing precision grinding.
In 1943 I received a severe setback. When I thought I was progressing, I discovered that I had nothing. The situation left me quite stunned. Walking home from work one night with a fellow worker, I mentioned the situation in which I found myself. He recommended that I have a talk with another worker who was a student of Christian Science.
The next day at work, I had a talk with this man. I grabbed at what he had to say as a drowning man grabs at a straw. The first thing I did was to buy a copy of the textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by our Leader, Mary Baker Eddy. Within thirty days after taking up the study of Christian Science, I was guided to enroll in a four-year spare-time course in toolmaking at the company's educational institute. I had always felt that to be a toolmaker was a very high goal.
