AC_1965_Web
46 AN T I OC H CO L L E G E C L A S S O F 19 6 5 5 0 t h A N N I V E R S A R Y B O O K A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z F R E E D FREED JUDITH ANN SILBAUGH FAMI LY 4 Husband, Harvey 4 Son, Adam 4 Twin grandsons ADDRESS 4 844 Las Lomas Ave. Pacific Palisades, CA 90272 CONTACT 310 454-1903 or 310 913-0608 jaflady@gmail.com M Y F A T H E R U S E D to say that while at Antioch I majored in guitar playing and demonstration and he was not far off the mark. I was really only interested in folk music and the volatile politics of 1960. My photo carrying a sign at a major demon- stration during the Kennedy-Nixon campaign made the national news to the discomfort of my family. I looked forward to my first co-op experi- ence in NewYork as a hospital clerk and ended up spending much of my time in the Greenwich Village folk scene. My two quarters there were rich with experiences of all kinds. I learned how to take care of myself in many situations. In my on campus life I studied the courses I liked and ignored the ones I did not. I had no career plans and was consumed with civil rights and the encroaching war in Vietnam. By January of 1962 I was a dropout and back in Los Angeles where I began working in various political campaigns. I was born during the war in 1943. My father was stationed in Hawaii and I did not meet him un- til 1946. My mother had to leave me in my grandparents’ care for a year while she went there to work for the government and nurse my father after a serious surgery. After the war my family lived in a house that my grandmother built on our homestead place 17 miles out of Red Bluff, Calif., at the very end of a dirt road. We had water from the well and light from kero- sene lanterns. We were very poor but so was everyone else. I started school at the Catholic convent in town that would allow a 5½-year-old into the first grade.The nuns were very strict but very sweet with me, the only non-Catholic in the school. There I learned the joy of reading. Second grade was in a 16-pu- pil, one room school house—grades one through eight—keeping warm by the central potbellied stove and ecstatic when the new f lush toi- lets were built.We had a truly gifted teacher at that school. She taught us to make and furnish a cabin and grow a garden. At home,my mother,with a new baby and desperate to keep me oc- cupied, gave me a beginners music book and wrote the names of the notes above the keys on a huge old upright piano my dad found in an alley. My mother played the piano and my father the clarinet and both sang. They had an extensive collection of jazz records which we played on an old wind-up victrola. In the variety store in town I was mesmerized by the wall of colorful yarns displayed on the back wall. Strong memories. Third grade I was in a modern school in Palo Alto, Calif., where un- fortunately my grandmother was principal. I had to be at school the same long hours my grandmother worked. My salvation came in the person of a warm and lovely 6th- grade teacher who was an artist with no children of her own. I spent wonderful hours in her classroom after school drawing and painting. My parents finally got their own home in Palo Alto where we lived for many years. In the 4th grade a woman came to class and taught all the girls how to crochet. I wasn’t very good but I was intrigued and went home and practiced. I began piano lessons and loved them. In ju- nior high I joined a knitting club and the jewelry club and took art classes. I made dolls and stuffed toys for my sister. Art, fiber and music—the die is cast. I did well in school because I knew I needed good grades in or- der to go to college. There were some wonderful teachers along the way and I learned a lot from them through discussion, argument and outside reading. I had little use for formal school and its rigid and re- strictive lessons.When it came time to pick a college,Antioch looked as though it offered a good plan.Work- study really appealed to me and I
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