|
Today's Featured Biography
Andrew Lilly
ALL INCLUSIVE LIFE HISTORY OF ANDREW LILLY
S'61 to November 1, 2009
What I really wanted to do after graduating high school was to race sports cars. Instead, I went to USC and took Engineering for a year. No concentration. Next I tried LACC, Glendale College and even got expelled from LA Trade Tech for arrogant tardiness. Probably some hormonal ADD.
So I worked as a mechanic and raced cars. I drove at local raceways; Riverside, Santa Barbara, Pomona, Willow Springs, in 1960s Austin Healy, Sprite, Renault, Abarth, Volvo, Sunbeam. Meanwhile I’d play fast pitch softball at night. I had fun for awhile being a greasy, dirty boy.
That all changed when I crashed my motor cycle. Took about 10 years of recovery.
I cleaned my fingernails and learned to like reading; went back to school at 24. Cal State LA, five different majors, ending in Communications.
Left school for a job as a copywriter at an ad agency in Laguna Beach. I was writing newspaper ads and radio commercials. Then the company suddenly went belly up.
I took a (temporary) job selling Fiats and used cars in Glendale. With shoulder length hair, I was wearing bell bottoms, earth shoes, madras shirts and silver jewelry. Made out pretty well for a few years. Was #4 Fiat salesman in US for year 1974.
(Oh....by this time, I’d been married and divorced twice.)
By ‘75 I was able to buy my first house, for $39,500, where I still live, at the top of Mt. Washington, overlooking the LA River, railroads, Dodger stadium and downtown.
Within a few years the car business had slowed down and I got fired for crashing the owner's car...I collected a lot of unemployment, made jewelry and did metal sculpture for 3 or 4 years. Couldn’t figure out how to make a reasonable living. During that time I tried maybe ten other jobs. I never lasted over six months. Always got fired...so I could collect unemployment.
Studied real estate, but by the time I got a Realtors license, interest rates reached 17%. So that wasn’t working out either. Then one day, about age 35, I went to the library and checked out all the books on real estate appraisal. A month later I hung out my shingle and said “I is an Appraiser.” That’s all it took. No license in those days. Been doing it ever since. Started own business; gained freedom. Bought and sold properties. Rebuilt old houses and apartments.
Along the way I played about 20 years of tournament handball and racquetball, but I was getting too tired. Fatigued all the time. Had to quit.
Then I developed a hernia. Went in to Kaiser for repairs, and from routine blood test, they found I had Hepatitis C and Cirrhosis, which had probably been progressing for 30 years. I was real sick. After over three years of bizarre and failed treatments, I was finally cured. Now, four years later, my liver is brand new. Side effects of treatment included temporary hearing loss and permanent vision loss in one eye. An eye for a life. Biblical. But now I’m good to go; I‘m too excited to sleep much.
I still do appraisals, specializing in fire damage to big commercials, industrials and forest fires; I‘m the Disaster Man. Meanwhile, I manage apartments and trade the stock market.
Most of my spare time I work on music, which I suddenly started about 3 years ago as my hearing returned. I’m writing, singing, playing mainly harmonica and recording novelty and folk songs. My virtual band, L.A. RiverCatz is on My Space at: www.myspace.com/larivercatz
Next, I want to do some music videos.
Have a beautiful daughter, Megan 22, who goes to Glendale College and works as waitress.
Son, David 40 is successful computer programmer, with two kids, in Temecula, Ca.
***
When I was considering what to write for the high school reunion Bio, many vivid memories came back about good ol' times at L.A. High. Here's one...
PLAYING BASKETBALL at L.A. HIGH
I’m thinking it was in the winter of 1960, when I was playing on the lowly “C” Basketball team. We went to play an afternoon game at Jordan High. When we arrived at the gym entrance, there seemed to be a lot of tension. We stepped off the bus, with a bunch of Jordan guys, not basketball players, yelling stuff at us. We went to the locker room and changed into our uniforms.
The first half of the game was played about even… each team was equally mediocre. For halftime, we all went back into the locker room to discover that our lockers and clothes had been ransacked for money. That’s “home court advantage.” Anyway, we played the second half…and lost, I think. Went back to the locker room…got dressed, with empty pockets. Mad, sad and sort of shaken.
Everyone got together with the coaches to walk back to the bus. There were maybe 50 Jordan tough guys waiting next to our exit, yelling all sorts of jive at us. There were several assistant faculty members, not even trying to control the situation. No cops in those days. We sort of ran to the bus and piled in. The bus driver looked scared as the bus was being hit with rocks, and he was ducking while he tried to accelerate hard away from the curb, with the door still open. All at the same time, I saw a Jordan guy running toward us with a pointed steel fence post. He threw it like a javelin…it stuck!!...He’d harpooned the side of the bus. Then BANG!! A gun shot. Shards of glass flew everywhere. Scary, but we got away…with our lives. I felt like we had been saved by a gutsy bus driver.
So that’s it. That was the way it was to go play basketball at a really rough school, like Jordan.
* * *
The next day, during 2nd Period, it was announced that the gunshot had come from inside the bus.
I can’t remember our shooter’s name. He was a friendly guy...didn’t graduate, but we could still invite him to the reunion.
Andrew Lilly S’61
[email protected]
VIEW ALL BIOGRAPHIES
|
Indicates an included photo
