Yes, going back, I told you I was working at TRW Systems and at that point, I really thought I'd become an aerospace scientist, that that was my objective at that time. But in the I guess it's the early seventies, the aerospace industry is in decline and there are layoffs going on at TRW systems and they want to transfer me. Lucretia will verify this. They want to transfer me to a place called Hazelton Laboratories. They want to put me in charge of a lab there. And I came home and told Lucretia, Well, I think I'm going to get laid off. But they have offered me a job at Hazelton Laboratories. And Lucretia says, Where's Hazelton Laboratory? And I said, I was in a place called Falls Church, Virginia, and my geography isn't very good. So she asked me worse. Falls Church, Virginia. I said, I think Virginia is where all those coal mines are. Okay, so she gives me this look like, well, you're going to be awfully lonesome out there by those coal mines by yourself. Now, it later turns out that Falls Church, Virginia, is a suburb of Washington, DC. So if I had known better, I probably would have taken that job just to go. Maybe it was supposedly three-year commitment, but you know, read that they wouldn't have been able to do anything if I didn't keep them for three years. And then she asked me where, where we're going to end up. And I said to her, well, there are labs in Alabama, there are labs in Florida. And so if I stay in Washington or in Falls Church, I probably will end up somewhere in the South.
And Lucretia, I wouldn't describe Lucretia as a bad ass, but she she runs a show. Okay? So she tells me, no, I'm not I'm not going near I'm not going anywhere near those places. So I said to her, well, where would you like to go? And she said, I've always wanted to live in Palo Alto. So I said to her, Well, you can be unemployed anywhere. And that was a time when you could be unemployed anywhere. So I said, We'll move to Palo Alto. And she liked Palo Alto because she liked the city and its infrastructure. It was close to San Mateo, so we moved. We first stayed we first stayed here. Actually, my my father and my mother-in-law were here. And we you know, we stayed with him when I was looking for a job. And Lucretia is looking for a job. It's a very tough time to be looking for a job, actually, because, as I said, there are layoffs going on. So finally I get two offers, and I would say my life is a series of mistakes. My life is a series of making choices that I like. They might not necessarily be the best choice.
So I am offered two positions or have a chance at two jobs. One is at a company called Fairchild Semiconductor, and Fairchild Semiconductor becomes Intel. So I don't know what would have happened, but if I had gone to Fairchild Semiconductor, I probably would have stayed in the semiconductor industry, maybe found those guys that started Intel in business, but instead the other job offer was with something called Westinghouse Learning Corporation and Westinghouse Learning Corporation was doing something called programmed instruction. I didn't mention this, but I was interested in programmed instruction. It was using a computer to to teach. So I took the job at Westinghouse Learning Corporation and worked for not that long, maybe a year. But at that time I was developing curriculum materials and later on I'm sure you mentioned that AACI. AACI had a lot of background at that time in the curriculum field, so that's kind of how I ventured into that. But after a year of doing this, I decided, well, this is a I mean, I like education, but I don't really like doing this. So the see did I go directly to the yeah, I, I found a job teaching middle school here in San Mateo actually. So I did that for four years and was for want of a better description and I was very good at it. And one thing I remember in particular at that time was I was very popular with Asian students. I used to take Asian students on field trips along with African American students, and we'd go to Chinatown. And I remember these kids, you know, the African American kids, particularly my my family, you know, my mom and dad had been in all these associations and things. So we'd go into the back alleys in Chinatown. I'd take them up to the Lee Family Association, you know, knock on a door. And when the person answered, they would recognize me as my they would just record it. So we'd go through all these different places in Chinatown. They really loved that. So. So I did that for a few years.
But then something I forget, you have notes, and so hopefully I'm not jumping past some life changing events occur and I'm perfectly happy teaching middle school. Lucretia is teaching elementary school and she's perfectly happy. We own a house. We're just, you know, everything's good. But what happened is. Proposition 13. Proposition 13 comes and there's a freeze on property tax, which generally was beneficial to homeowners. We were homeowners at the time. But the problem was it it especially in the Palo Alto area and Menlo Park, it really affected school funding. And what happened was this Lucretia worked in a small district called Los Alamitos School District, and they they lost some funding and they had to lay teachers off. And I forget Lucretia will remember, but I think at the time, we're young and it's at the time you had to have something like 13 years of experience before they didn't lay you off. So Lucretia loses her job. She's at home not doing anything. And then she says something that's sort of I wouldn't say it's frightening, but she says, well, I guess it's time to start a family, okay? And I'm going, okay, you just lost your job. I'm working here. I don't have many years in as a teacher, so I don't know if we're going to have a family. And also we had a house. Vickie has been to the house. It was a house we were remodeling. So I needed money to remodel. So I said, I better do something different. So I left teaching and I went to work in industry.
Okay, so let's see. I don't know how to describe this. It doesn't sound like a schoolteacher could just hop right into industry, but if I have one talent, I suppose it's selling myself. So I get a job with a company that's a printing company. And ironically, they they interview me, and they want to know if I know this process. It's called screen process printing. And the reason I know about screen process printing is Lucretia at that time, besides being a teacher is an artist. You know, she did street fairs and she did screen process printing. So I knew the whole process. So I could describe the process to this company, and I'm not that old at the time, but this company, which is the largest screen process printing company in America, I mean, this is a big company. They had just fired their president and they said, well, this guy seems pretty sharp. Let's make him the president. So I go from being a schoolteacher to the CEO and president of the largest screen printing company in America. And screen process printing is a little different. The kinds of things we printed were like, if you look at a video game, there's a glass panel and it has a graphics on it. And that's done by the screen process, screen printing process. So we did lots of printing and our customers were companies like Atari. And I think I told you this story. We actually were the first printers for Apple. Apple Computer was in two buildings in Cupertino at the time. And we print the first Apple logo, you know, the logo with the colors and a little tip and the second printing, a much larger company doing what's called lithographic process came and pushed us out.
And we all said at the time, that's absolutely the wrong thing. And so I don't think you see it that often now, but every once in a while you drive around, you see a car with an Apple logo on it and it's all white. And the reason it's all white is it has been produced using the lithographic process, which puts it on a very, very thin layer of ink, as opposed to the screen process printing, which puts down a very heavy layering. So two things. One, this process is much, much more resilient. And two, we designated that the the the decal be covered with a UV blocker, you know, so that it would stay. But obviously that would be more expensive. So we we didn't we didn't stay with that. So I stayed in the printing business for a while. I should say parenthetically, how does a guy go from having a Ph.D. in physics to working in a printing business?
And it there's an interesting story there. When I was in middle school, I went to a school called Francisco Junior High School. And in those days they looked at Chinese boys especially, and they said, well, these guys aren't going anywhere. They're, you know, that we need to put them in vocational programs. So a Francisco Junior High School, I was in a vocational program and in vocation. I love that program. The classes that I took besides the regular English and math, the vocational programs were classes like Machine Shop, print shop, electrical shop, mechanical drawing, just all these, all these things. And so when I went back and went into the printing business, ironically, having spent probably 12 years in college, the thing that I found most useful in my work after I started doing these things was the fact that I had done a lot of vocational training. So I knew, you know, how the printing process worked. I could read a drawing because of the mechanical drawing, you know, the drawing classes. And so I could operate pretty well in a business that required you to do a lot of vocational type things. So I did that for a few years, not with this company, actually this company in the 1980s was a time almost a recession. So this company actually went out of business. But I, I went to another printing company, and I don't know, is anybody here in a rock and roll music or something or.
Okay, so I'm out of a job at that point. This is a few years after here that I came to know a guy named Lavonne Muscovy, and his name is probably lost to history. He had a print shop called TEA Lautrec lithography. And Lavonne said to me, “Oh, Ron, I see you're you don't have this job anymore. I'm going to give you this print shop because I want to retire.” He was kind of old at the time. And and so he gives me this print shop, and I'm running a print shop. Lucretia, who's very good at keeping books, is the bookkeeper. And the significance of TEA Lautrec lithography is that Lavonne was what you would call a house shop for Bill Graham. Bill Graham, this is a time when Bill Graham is doing all these rock concerts, okay? And so we when we took over the print shop, we at the time weren't really printing these things. But he, for instance, the shop printed of 200 and some rock posters done at Winterland. And for Bill Graham, we had printed probably maybe 210 of them. So we had printed like well, on the wall he had these shelves and on the shelves were these sample posters and he had some posters like Grateful Dead posters, Pink Floyd posters, just all these really probably those posters now are, you know, two or $300 apiece. And I would guess he had more than 10,000 posters there, but I couldn't make a go of it. It was a variety reason I couldn't make a go of it. So I told Lavonne, Lavonne I can't make this okay. And one of the reasons was he was a union, so he had union workers and his history goes all the way back to when, you know, labor movement in San Francisco. He was, you know, one of those fellows. And I said, well, Lavonne, I can't make it, so I'm going to give you back the shop. And the reason I couldn't make it was I told you, I learned a lot of things, but I couldn't operate a press, okay? If I could have operated a press or done a film or something that would contribute to the shop, then I would have been okay, but let's see. At the time we were doing Journey posters. Do you guys know Journey or you do? Whoa. You guys are older than I thought. Okay, so we're doing all the Journey posters. That's that's to show you there. But I left the shop, and because I felt bad, I didn't keep a single poster. Everybody in my family has a poster from TEA Lautrec Lithography that you see that we have a very large collection of posters.
But because I felt guilty, I didn't I didn't take a single I did take one poster which was in my sales kit, but I gave that away. So and ironically on site stories that that's the most famous Grateful Dead poster ever printed. It was called the Egyptian Tour Poster. And I don't know what it was worth, but I can tell you that it was the most famous poster ever printed. And as an example, when we would go to Bill Graham's office, he had the Egyptian tour poster on the wall behind his desk. That's how much he thought about it. So so let's see what happens. Print shop. I know this is a long story, but I did a lot of things somewhere along the line. I think it was after this, but I'm not sure.
I mentioned I had a lot of knowledge about vocational, vocational things and a very good friend of my own and AACI is this fellow named Paul Fong. You must know. Paul okay, so Paul comes to me and says, My family owns this property in Palo Alto. I want to form a limited partnership and I want to build some condos on it. But Paul didn't want to. I didn't want to take that on. And if you have learned anything from listening to me, it is that I'm sure I, I sort of look smarter than I am. Okay. So Paul says, Ron, why don't you form a limited partnership and build these condos for me? And I said, well, I'm not doing anything. Okay, I'll do that. So we formed a limited partnership, found an architect to build these condos there on Middlefield Road and then lo and behold, it came that one of his one of Paul's family members wanted to be in charge of this project. It was pretty much turnkey at that point. He just had to, you know, just say go. So I didn't really object to that, you know, because, you know, this is his family and it's their property. So I said, okay. So I left that project and I had see, that's when I decided to go back to teaching. Okay? So I couldn't find a teaching job. I mean, nobody would hire me because at that point I'm pretty old, okay? It's just older. So I would apply, I'd settle. Ideally, I would go to Palo Alto and this is a bit of an AACI story I think. They're interviewing me and they say, well, what have you been doing? So I tell them, and then I said, Now what are you doing now? And I said, well, I'm doing two things.
One is I'm on this curriculum commission evaluating textbooks, okay? And the other thing I was doing was I was helping on another curriculum commission which called a science curriculum commission. There was a Japanese American fellow who was in charge of this project. His name was Ken Kitajima. So I have trouble finding a job. Eventually October comes and I see, I see this listing for a science teaching job in San Jose. So I go down to interview for that job and the people interviewing me says this is the worst middle school in San Jose. Everybody sends their incorrigible kids to this school. It's so bad that we have our own police substation to try to keep track of things. And a teacher who is teaching science has left. So we need something right away and right away meant this is the day before Halloween. So I said, okay, well, I need a job. I'll take it on. So I take that job. And like I said, middle school is particularly middle school science is sort of my, you know, my strong suit. So I stayed there a few years and I taught there and had a very good experience. The only reason I left, I believe I went to another school or closer by. I changed schools and went to a school in Redwood City. And the reason for that is this school was pretty far away. It was way down off of Blossom Hill Road. It was from here. You had to go, you know, down 85 all the way almost to where it intersected with 101. And it was just a long drive. So I found this other job and I. I changed changed schools. And then I taught at this other school for a couple of years, taught in Hayward for a couple of years. And then retired.