Retrospect at 95: A Memoir

By Ben Muzzey

Ben Muzzey chronicles and celebrates a long life filled with surprising and exciting lessons learned in this debut publication offering a Retrospect at 95. As an engineer, skier, mountaineer, boater and bicyclist, Muzzey has tales to tell.
Misunderstood and considered retarded in his early years due to severe undiagnosed dyslexia and myopia, he overcame these obstacles to graduate from MIT in 3.5 years and become a respected engineering manager at Boeing. He details these things and more in this narrative filled with poignant human-interest stories and observations about life.
Muzzey looks back at the events that shaped his character and at the people who believed in him and those who didnt. He recalls being nearly penniless and living in the hay in his bosses barn. He describes driving across the country with his second wife Nancy, in a small, unreliable car and surviving for weeks on blackberries and tea; finally camping under a bridge in Seattle rain. There are stories about their colorful neighbors in the tenement that was their first home.
There are many surprising episodes, including moving part of his originally decrepit farmhouse to their beautiful Mercer Island waterfront property by tugboat and his employee at Boeing whom he mentored until he was discovered by Upper Management. They announced that theyd found a diamond in a turd and later made him a vice president.
The book is lively, inspiring and sometimes outrageous. His wife Ann, states that There are no books like it - Bens adventures and philosophy are uniquely his own. He encourages readers to be themselves and to consider the amount of risk appropriate for their adventures. His story clarifies this.

This romp through one mans fascinating life produces
some enriching and widely applicable lessons.
- Clarion Book Review

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Aug 2, 2016
• ISBN: 9781532002786

Ben Muzzey

Ben Muzzey was born in Lexington, Massachusetts in 1920. He graduated from MIT in 1942 with a Bachelor of Science in aeronautical engineering. He had started on an advanced degree, but the pressures of WWII forced him into work developing airplane propellers for General Motors. After WWII he moved to New Hampshire to hike and ski where he met Nancy Drew, a Smith College graduate and WWII veteran. They married, and ventured west to Seattle in search of larger mountains and a career at Boeing where he worked for 40 years until retirement. Throughout his life he has been an enthusiastic skier, mountaineer, kayaker and bicyclist, until a road-bike accident ended his active lifestyle at 92. He lives near Seattle with his wife, Ann, and their dog, Laika.

Book preview

RETROSPECT

AT 95

A Memoir

Ben Muzzey

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RETROSPECT AT 95

A MEMOIR

Copyright © 2016 Ben Muzzey.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-5320-0277-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-0278-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016912222

iUniverse rev. date: 11/15/2016

CONTENTS

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction

The Beginning

Early Skiing

The River of Dubious Return

The Influence Of Small Events

The Rat

Animals

General Motors

Spelling

Women and Other Women

Architecture

A New Life

Boeing

Strong Letter to Follow

Too Late

Ski Lodges

Building Our Own House

Doctor Scott

The Annoying Yard Light

Mt. Rainier

Mt. Rainier Sequel

The Rescue

Boating

Bicycle Riding

The Race

Retirement

The Wedding Feast

Seattle Mountaineers Keen to Conquer Cook

Marriage on the Mountain

Learning from Disaster

About the Author

PREFACE

A S BACKGROUND FOR MY LIFE STORY I WILL GIVE you a brief glimpse of what I know about my family history, starting in England perhaps 400 years ago. As I understand it, the Muzzey family was part of the English aristocracy: not the type to venture into an unknown world of hardship on the Mayflower to obtain religious and probably political freedom.

Well after the original American colonies were established, the King of England granted one third of the land that became Lexington, Massachusetts to my family. They were spared the hardship of the earlier settlers in America, and incredibly, were able to live for generations by selling off sections of that land. They owned a large house in the center of town near Muzzey Street. The only hotel in town was theirs, along with the Muzzey Tavern, with its 5-foot 6-inch ceilings, built to accommodate the height of the people of those days. The Minutemen met in that tavern in preparation for the Battle of Lexington which started the American Revolution. That battle claimed the lives of several Muzzeys, who are honored by having their names engraved on a granite monument that still stands on the Lexington Common by the Minuteman Statue.

Both the hotel and the house burned to the ground after about a hundred years, and a new house of exactly the same architecture and structural shortcomings was constructed on the same location. The property was then sold to the Edison Electric Company for an electrical substation to supply the entire town. Later the reconstructed house was moved from the center of Lexington to Dude Hill, on a three-acre plot of land, which was the last remaining bit of the land grant. That house on Dude hill is where I was born and raised. My uncle David Muzzey moved from Lexington and eventually to New York and extended recognition of the Muzzey name by writing an American history that became a standard textbook used for many years in the American public school system.

The Lexington part of the Muzzey family considered themselves aristocracy and superior to the rest of the townspeople, but for the most part did nothing to warrant that view. My father, on the other hand, demonstrated an intellectual achievement that I feel far outweighed the significance of the family’s social eminence back in England. He obtained a four-year electrical engineering degree from M.I.T. in three years, without ever having finished high school. He was the first one of the family to have to work for a living. He successfully supported the family through the Depression years with his job as an engineer at General Electric. But socially, most of the neighbors referred to us as The Muzzey Clan. The family was a true anachronism.

The format of this book consists of a series of chapters of varying length that treat experiences I have had and can still remember in considerable detail, looking back over roughly 90 years of my life. Some chapters deal with activities like skiing, in which I engaged over an extended period of my life. Other chapters treat specific instances, which may or may not have occurred during that same time period. No precise chronological consistency is attempted or possible. The people involved in this life story are an integral part of the experiences and I have tried to bring key personalities to life through my descriptions of them. An important aspect of the stories I want to emphasize is that they are all true to the best of my 95-year-old memory.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I WANT TO THANK MY WIFE, ANN, FOR TYPING UP the rough pencil drafts that I usually could not read myself. She has helped the quality of the writing, even where, at first I disagreed with some of her recommendations. She understands my character and has helped to make the writing more me. Thank you, Ann, for making this work into a book, and a better one at that.

I also thank my daughter, Ann, for relieving us of much of the mechanics involved in submitting the manuscript in a form the publisher could work with. You took on a bigger job than you anticipated.

INTRODUCTION

I WAS BORN IN LEXINGTON, MASSACHUSETTS IN 1920 AS A myopic and dyslexic in the era before dyslexia was recognized or vision was tested in the schools. These challenges helped me excel in other ways, as an athlete and an independent thinker. Instead of learning by reading what others had done I tested things out experientially, and this approach to life defined my personality and working style for the rest of my life.

As a child I understandably performed very badly in school, and I learned at an early age that my family considered me retarded. They were reluctant to change this opinion even after I graduated from MIT in three years with an aeronautical engineering degree, and starting work on an advanced degree. They may or may not have changed their minds by the time WWII came along and I became recognized at General Motors for work on an invention of a structural integrity test which became required by the military for all the propellers GM delivered.

After WWII I went to New Hampshire to be close to the mountains I had always loved. There I worked for an architect which prepared me for building my own house and supervising the building of two ski lodges. I eventually ventured west to Seattle in pursuit of larger mountains and work at The Boeing Company, where I became an Engineering Manager and continuing on as a consultant after a 40 year career.

I never lived to work, but worked to live as an avid skier, mountaineer, kayaker and bicyclist. My active life came to an end with a hit and run road-bike accident at the age of 92. This led to the extra time to write these stories which are snippets of my experiences over the past 95 years. I hope you enjoy reading about them as much as I have enjoyed living them.

THE BEGINNING

I WAS BORN ON A RAINY DAY IN 1920 IN late October at 1:40 a.m. I was not aware of the details at the time, but the inconvenience to the family was pointed out to me later, when I was old enough to accept the blame. There was some question in my mind as to what the inconvenience really was, as I was assured that the stork had brought me, and nothing carnal had happened. The only understanding I could grasp from all this was that I was bad.

Later events confirmed this. I couldn’t read. To an aristocratic New England family in the pre-dyslexic era, not being able to read was a willfully-imposed stigma for the entire family. This was inexcusable, considering that I had one uncle from Harvard, who was Dean of History at Columbia University, and another uncle who was Dean of Mathematics at Cornell, and especially an aunt living in the house with me who was, of all things, a librarian! Later in life my infirmities became a fortuitous advantage – but more about that later. For now, much more evidence confirmed my badness. I was allergic to milk and howled with imminent starvation so much that the neighbors moved away. I grew only in length; not in diameter. I was so dysfunctionally near-sighted that I could not identify anything written on the blackboard at school. All bad!

School was a disaster. The first-grade teacher was new at teaching and feared for her job if she had students failing her course. She took the cowards way out, and promoted me to the second grade. A year followed - of looking out the window instead of at the mysterious blackboard from which the rest of the class could draw meaning. Again, the second grade teacher was afraid to endanger her record by producing a failed student. She too, graduated me into the third grade. The third grade teacher was an older, no-nonsense woman, whom I was told had probably taught my father. She said No more – this guy’s got to go back and learn the first two grades of school. Actually, they demoted me only one year and I could not handle that work, either. There was a meeting of the Principal, the third grade teacher, and my parents. This meeting took place in the parlor at my house one night and I was able to hear the gist of what was being discussed by sneaking out of bed to the top of the stairs. It, the gist, was alarming. I imagined that I would probably have to be sent to a school for the retarded, which I interpreted as sort of a 24-hour lock-down prison, a la a Dickens novel.

Then one day my mother took me to Boston to the eye doctor. I was dumbfounded leaving that office - the stairs had a regular pattern of treads and risers, the trees had individual leaves, and people’s faces looked different from one another. The blackboard had visible patterns on it - I could see!

With a change of diet and fitted with glasses, I was able to see my childhood infirmities change into advantages. I got strong and never got fat. I was stronger than my class-mates, partly because I had flunked a grade and was older than they were. I became captain of the track team, and after our real miler graduated, I became the county leader in distance races. Actually my best time for the mile, 4 minutes, 48 seconds, would probably not win a grade-school mile today, but the tracks then, were like sand pits, the track shoes heavy and slippery and the training was at best, casual. At out-of-town meets the runners were fed coleslaw while the football team ate steak with their cheer-leaders.

I took up skiing, essentially for life, and organized my friend’s ski activities. I credit a long and healthy life to my lifelong interest in skiing and mountain climbing, which was then an integral part of skiing. But perhaps a bigger advantage had come from that first trip to the eye doctor. At the time I left the optometrist’s office, I was so far behind my contemporaries in school that I had to work overtime to catch up. The work habit stuck, and by the time I graduated from high school I was pretty well ahead; enough so, that MIT accepted me without entrance exams. While many of my entering class at MIT flunked out that first year, MIT seemed to me simply an extension of high school and the hobbies I had enjoyed. From building and flying model airplanes I understood the dynamics of the stall and fugoide oscillation, and the blind flying trap that killed so many pilots, including members of the Kennedy family. Mechanical and electrical courses quantified effects I had already observed working on reasonably complicated electric trains. Inertial navigation seemed like an intuitive extension of some wild automobile driving that my friends and I had done. These understandings came to me from a different channel than book learning. Things fit together, as I acquired a more formal education.

As I started to grow into adult life I had some intuitive understanding of the problems I would have to deal with throughout life – with one big exception – GIRLS. I had been