After Barbara and I became good friends she bought me a present for my birthday. It was too expensive for me to buy for myself. I taught myself to use the underwater breathing tank and dove frequently at Newport Beach, Laguna Beach, and a few times at Catalina Island and Punta Banda, Mexico. The spear fishing was very good in all those places because the water is often crystal clear, there are reefs, rocks, and kelp for the fish to hide behind. Usually there were no other divers in the water with me. Barbara often came with me. She sat on the beach and watched. I was impressed by her courage. She never complained about the steep cliffs, cold, hot, or lonely places we went.
I drove a twenty year old Chevy full of gardening tools. We used to go double date with my friend and his student nurse. We parked in an orange grove or grave yard, turned on the radio, and danced the Lindy Hop and other popular dance steps like the new yorker.
Barbara sometimes loaned me fifty cents to buy myself a quart of beer. We went to movies, dances, and parties, and we learned to water ski. Barbara earned her R.N. a year before me. After my graduation I spent a year as assistant loan manager of Commonwealth Loan Company to learn about money. Barbara worked in hospitals in Hollywood, then she worked in Los Vegas where I visited her frequently.
I was still almost without any money two years after I became an R. N., but we married at Lakewood Country Club and both worked as private nurses in Hollywood while I attended U.C.L.A. Our beautiful baby Julie Rae was born there, and the next Spring we moved to Loma Linda for P. T. school. This is where our first son Barry Jay, future organ transplant surgeon, was born.