I did not talk to Harry that much, but do remember vividly one particular day when I walked with him as he walked home. I lived in Woodcliff Lake, but on this particular day I had to walk in the direction of his home in Montvale. I did not know the history of Harry's difficulties with being harrassed as a kid. However, I could sympathize with his need for wanting to "fit in". I don't recall the specific conversation during our walk, but I do know he was a typical 16 or 17 year old kid. Like him, it was hard to "fit in", and at the time it really really sucked, but now it's just a blip on my mind. In fact, I think my struggles of those awkward years of High School continue to provide a wonderful perspective and philosophy of life. Today I am very successful and confident, while yesterday I was lost and insecure. I am glad there was no need to deal with the pressure as a "big man on campus" with post high school days and living the life of Springteen's "Glory Days" song. Unfortunately, it went in the other direction for Harry. But really, we are all just a few notches between sanity and insanity, and hopefully, as Pink Floyd says, the "lunitic" just stays in your head.
Someone recently forwarded me Steve Jobs Speech to the Graduates of Stanford University, and given you read my message thus far, you will really enjoy the rest:
"I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories. The first story is about connecting the dots. I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out? It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college. And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting. It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating. None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later. Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut,destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life. My second story is about love and loss. I was lucky - I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation - the Macintosh - a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating. I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down -that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me - I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over. I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I retuned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together. I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.
This message has been edited by starlinefilms on Jul 9, 2005 2:05 PM This message has been edited by starlinefilms on Jul 9, 2005 2:04 PM This message has been edited by starlinefilms on Jul 9, 2005 2:01 PM
Hey, we are talking about Harry De La Roach here, post that dribble on OPRAH’s consciousness raising website, it is too late for that kind of talk.
forgetaboutit, you may have graduated in 76, but you strike me as a phony, wannabe Hollywood mobster with nothing to contribute, unless Harry confided his plans with you and you just ‘forgot about it’.
I think the original message was very worth reading, and Bob, I think your response was meaningless with an angry tone. Like Howard Stern says, if you didn't want to read the entire message, then "tune out", as opposed to "lashing out".
Hey Hawkins, You're the one involved in this "movie" and therefore the hollywood wannabee. A message board is exactly that.......leaving messages, and besides, who died and made you king to determine what should or should not be posted. Finally, you've got along way to go before you pick up that Oscar award, and you should take the class titled "Promotions 101". This would clue you into not scaring off the potential financial investors with responding so negatively to comments. But I guess you know in the bottom of you heart the chances of this flick returning any of your investment is viturally zero.
Unknown family friend: Did you need to see the letters IMO? Well here they are, in caps, IN MY OPINION. This is my two cents. Now, are you a friend of my family, Harry’s family or are you just afraid to say? Do you have any opinion of the quadruple homicide? Or was it just O.K. with you, whatever happens, happens. I understand, murder is O.K., but my free speech is offensive to you. I understand that completely.
Unknown alumni: Sorry, I never listened to Howard Stern, never did and never will. I see him as an evil ‘Hollywood entity’ who uses sexual titillation to program the weak into glorifying him. I am angry that my tax dollars are being wasted on high school educations when Howard Stern (and TV, MTV & BET) does all the educating in America. Why don’t you DO what your mentor Stern says, and just tune out my response? I have the right to free speech and I will use it, and if you don’t like it, than I guess you will have to kill me, because you will never mute me. I feel that this board relates to the bloody killings and that graduation speech comes about 30 years to late for one family.
At least I have the guts to give my opinion and my name instead of cowering behind the cloche of anonymity. And of course, no one has a sense of humor.
Dave (afraid to give name): I am NOT promoting this movie, I signed up to contribute to this movie, and if they ask me to contribute, my contribution will not be candy coated, warm or fuzzy! Hollywood wannabe? Hypocrite? Not me, that is why I use my real name and not some soprano’s moniker. (Too much TV, MTV and BET)
Hypocritical is when you give an opinion but are afraid to source it due to lack of any stones. Grow a pair and contribute if you have any relevant information. But do not post the Gettysburg address, it is excellent but not relevant. Who died? Do you really need to ask? Four people died, they did not elect me king, but I am entitled to post my opinion. Again, I hate Harry DeLaRoache for killing four people instead of just running away. (Although he probably would have become another BTK type of guy.)
So DAVE, how does this sound, Tom Cruse as Harry, and Pamela Anderson as Harry’s girlfriend? It would be far from the truth, but it would return big bucks to those investors, and you could promote the hell out of it with what you learned in that ‘Promotions 101’ class. That is how Hollywood operates, I have seen it million times.
I feel for you Bob. You're so angry. Where you picked on in PHHS, too? Do you have any friends that will chat with you? If not, you can rent a friend by the hour ... he or she would be called a psychiatrist.
I'd use my full name but you kinda scare me ... I'd hate for you to be able to look up my address. At least our buddy is behind bars.
WOW! Thanks for the diagnosis! I guess we don’t share a sense of humor. Sure, I was picked on, even by Harry. I even got a wedge-E on the track team. So, yeah, I’m way behind with my kill ratio. And don’t feel for me, save your feelings for YOUR buddy behind bars.
Bobbie, Bobbie, Bobbie ... we are all buddies. There are drinking buddies and buddies that you wish you never knew but we are all buddies. Our buddy in jail started life just like you and me. For a moment in time, we were just like Harry ... a single cell that wasn't fat, wasn't skinny, wasn't dumb, wasn't smart, wasn't ugly, wasn't beautiful, wasn't a douche bag, wasn't cool, wasn't ... you get the idea. We were all alike ... just a cell. Somewhere between being a single cell and a a 45 year old guy in jail, a buddy of our's got lost.
At the extremes there are two types of people ... ones that own their demons and ones that are owned by their demons. The demons owned Harry ... at least in '76. Do you own your anger-demon or does it own you? Run at test ... keep your anger-demon caged for a week before responding to this note. A quick response to this note might suggest your anger-demon owns you. See who owns who.
It sounds like this whole movie thing is bringing back some bad memories of the past. You can feel the anger in your messages. Perhaps you should seek some help if all this is to much for you to handle.
