Читать книгу The Bravest Hunter - Michael Newell - Страница 8

When Gordon Graves was a freshman in high school, he decided to be an engineer. First, Gordon wanted to be an aeronautical engineer, but by the time he started college, he had switched his interest to electrical engineering.

Graves went to Tarleton State Junior College in Stephenville, Texas. Aside from his studies, he held an interest in playing football. Graves quarterbacked in high school and did the same at Tarleton, and his friend and teammate at Tarleton, Mike Myers, followed a similar path. When Myers had a chance to comment about Graves’s football prowess, he said, “Gordon was a good quarterback, but beyond that, he was the smartest guy on the team.”

Coach Sanford gave Graves a scholarship covering his tuition, books and room and board. He received spending money for sweeping the office of Coach Flory, the tennis coach. Graves said his sweeping effort was nothing to brag about. Coach Flory would see him on campus occasionally and say something to the effect of “Graves, you better get over and sweep out my office…cotton’s growing about a foot high in there.”

Following junior college, Graves went to the University of Texas in Austin. His extracurricular activity was grading papers, and during the summer, he worked various jobs. One summer, he was on a surveying team for the Texas Highway Department, and another summer, he worked as a draftsman for a steel company in Fort Worth.

In college, Graves learned about differential equations, Ohm’s law, and the strength of materials. He graduated in 1959 from the University of Texas with an Electrical Engineering Degree.