[Hey]

I’m a legacy, unfortunately I wasn’t accepted.  Despite that, I’ve always identified with Stanford as my home school and I’m in awe of its academics.  I’m among the purists who were recently afraid of Stanford becoming a football factory, but so far I’m very pleased how they’ve kept their priorities straight.

My dad’s story is much more interesting.  He was born in 1943 in Palo Alto and was raised there.  His family had a hard time paying bills, and he was very motivated to be certain that would never be a problem for him once he was on his own. 

He knew Stanford was a great school, but school wasn’t easy for him and there was no way he could afford it.  He was good at sports, and when he wasn't working or studying, he spent all of his free time playing basketball so he could get a scholarship.  In his senior year he was MVP of the Peninsula League while at Paly, and they also won the league title (under Clem Wiser, who also coached Jim Harbaugh when he was there).  He had a GPA of 3.0, the lowest allowable GPA possible for admissions, but that was good enough for the basketball scholarship.   

He started every year on the team, and every year they finished second in the conference to Wooden’s UCLA team (two of those teams were the national champions).  The bummer was that back then only the first-place team from each conference got to go to the NCAA tournament.  He was second team all-conference his junior and senior years to Gail Goodrich twice, and Walt Hazzard and Jim Jarvis.  He remained among Stanford’s all-time career free throw leaders until the mid-80’s.

His other notable experience was that in 1965 his picture was in the nationally-published Look magazine as his fraternity was one of the first to allow an African American into their house.  The national chapter suspended their charter for that.  Eventually, the national chapter changed their minds, elected new leadership, and let them back in.

[Hey]

I’m a legacy, unfortunately I wasn’t accepted.  Despite that, I’ve always identified with Stanford as my home school and I’m in awe of its academics.  I’m among the purists who were recently afraid of Stanford becoming a football factory, but so far I’m very pleased how they’ve kept their priorities straight.

My dad’s story is much more interesting.  He was born in 1943 in Palo Alto and was raised there.  His family had a hard time paying bills, and he was very motivated to be certain that would never be a problem for him once he was on his own. 

He knew Stanford was a great school, but school wasn’t easy for him and there was no way he could afford it.  He was good at sports, and when he wasn't working or studying, he spent all of his free time playing basketball so he could get a scholarship.  In his senior year he was MVP of the Peninsula League while at Paly, and they also won the league title (under Clem Wiser, who also coached Jim Harbaugh when he was there).  He had a GPA of 3.0, the lowest allowable GPA possible for admissions, but that was good enough for the basketball scholarship.   

He started every year on the team, and every year they finished second in the conference to Wooden’s UCLA team (two of those teams were the national champions).  The bummer was that back then only the first-place team from each conference got to go to the NCAA tournament.  He was second team all-conference his junior and senior years to Gail Goodrich twice, and Walt Hazzard and Jim Jarvis.  He remained among Stanford’s all-time career free throw leaders until the mid-80’s.

His other notable experience was that in 1965 his picture was in the nationally-published Look magazine as his fraternity was one of the first to allow an African American into their house.  The national chapter suspended their charter for that.  Eventually, the national chapter changed their minds, elected new leadership, and let them back in.