Education is more that Schooling

Education is much more than schooling.  It includes everything you can experience.  My Mom was one of 12 children and her father was Doctor Couch.  My Dad was one of 9 and his father was Mr. Leahy, an industrialist and an investor.  I spent lots of time with my aunts and uncles and grandparents in my younger years and benefitted from the richness of their company. My uncle Billy taught me how to play the piano when I was 4.  Everyone else brought me everywhere. Grandpa Couch taught me lots of things.

I was born in St. Louis Mo. In 1943.  My Dad owned 13 filling stations and had been the Night Manager of the small arms plant during World War II.  My Dad’s Dad was a major shareholder in several chemical companies that supported the War effort.  He was “Daddy War-Bucks”.

My Dad’s brother, uncle John was a chemist who found himself as the Night Manager of a cotton seed warehouse.  He brought in his lab equipment and discovered cotton seed oil and all of its uses. He was hired by Volkart Brothers, a Swedish multi-national conglomerate involved in cotton.

Uncle John became Dean of Agriculture for Texas A&M and Secretary of Agriculture for the State of Texas.  John called my Dad to recruit him to join the Volkart Brothers management team.

We moved to Hallettsville Texas, so my Dad could get his Masters in Cotton Research Technology at Texas A&M.  The plan was to join the management team at Volkart Brothers. 

After my Dad’s graduation we moved to Providence Rhode Island and then Memphis Tennessee where my Dad set up Research Labs. We ended up in New York when he became VP R&D for Volkart Brothers.  In 1950 my Dad was promoted to Managing Director for Volkart Europe in Brussells Belgium.  My Mom didn’t want to go, so we moved back to St. Louis.  I consciously avoided my parents’ errors and put my marriage first and my career second.

I home schooled from age 1 to age 7 when I entered 3^rd grade at Holy Child School in Queens NY.   My childhood included having a horse and a speedboat in Texas and later lots of exposure to theater, stage plays, musicals, concerts, restaurants, museums, Broadway Shows, Central Park, delicatessen visits and humor. 

When we moved back to St. Louis I attended Immaculate Conception, the local parish school in Maplewood Mo., a suburb of St Louis.  I was a “free range child”.  I was always on my bike and with my friends.  I was a Cub Scout and Boy Scout.  I taught myself how to play the bugle and was the troop bugler.  When my school started a band, I played the trumpet and won a music scholarship to CBC, the “family high school” where all of my relatives had attended.  I also taught myself to play guitar and started a Rock Band in 1957.

My time at Christian Brothers College Military HS. was rich with opportunities.  It was a top-rated “all-boys prep school”.  I played trumpet and French horn in the CBS Band. 

My Rock Band worked 3 to 4 nights a week giving the 4 of us a weekly income of $45 to $60.  I played guitar, sang and led the band.  The other guitar player and saxophonist booked the jobs.  The drummer was a year older, so he drove us to band jobs until we were 16.   

My English teacher recruited me to join the Speech Team and I won gold medals as a Humorist.  I was elected Class President my Freshman  year.  As a Sophomore, I was recruited to take a lead role in the school play and then recruited to be in musicals at St. Joseph’s Academy for girls.  In my Junior years, I was chosen to be Band Major and was the Band Company Commander during my Senior year.  

In my Junior year I was elected to be a Prom Magazine reporter for CBC and initiated the practice of having a “Pep Band” to play Dixieland music for “away” ball games.  I enlisted the poster club and students with convertibles to form parades of decorated cars to these games.  CBC had a lot of talent in their teams during these years and I thought they could win the State Championships with a little support.  They did.  They won all of them.  That gave me the experience to tackle things like “corporate culture” later on. 

My Rock Band members were all leaving to go to out-of-town colleges.  I didn’t want to start another Band, so I prayed to join a “dirty, two-horn blues band.  Within 3 minutes, the phone rang.  It was an offer to join a “dirty two-horn blues band”.  I thanked God and joined them to sing and play bass guitar.

I entered St. Louis University in 1961. I wanted to be a Personnel Director for manufacturing companies.  I got the idea when I was 10, sitting on the porch with my uncles reading the Sunday paper.  The front page showed a car bombing assassination in St. Louis.  The bomber killed the Steamfitter’s Union President. I asked my uncles how this could happen.  They said “Mafia”. I said, do you mean we have Mafia running the unions ?  They said: Yes.  I said, we are not doing this right !  My interest in reforming labor and management began.

My summer jobs during college included Granite City Steel and St. Louis State School and Hospital with 700 severe to mildly retarded patients. I learned how to make steel and work with patients.

Entering St. Louis University I knew I needed a sufficient amount of science and math to be able to understand manufacturing operations.  I needed to learn how things work.  I also needed to study human nature.   We were required to minor in Philosophy and Theology in addition to our stated major and minor.  This gave us the chance to look at what all the “Pros” had to say to determine for ourselves what they got wrong and what the seemed to get right.  I majored in Science and minored in English. I managed to take some graduate courses surveying contemporary consultants.  I graduated from St. Louis University in 1965.

But I wasn’t done.  I honed my speaking, writing, researching and integrating skills on and off the job. I was offered a Fellowship in 1983 with Western Behavioral Science Institute for Strategic Studies and graduated in 1986. 

My wife of 50 years, Marlene and I served in Catholic Marriage Ministry Leadership from 1977 to 2007 in Marriage Encounter, Engaged Encounter and Sponsor Couple. We have 6 grown kids, 13 grandkids and 2 great grandkids. We spend a lot of time with them.

In 1966 Marlene and I assumed a loan on a house next door to my brother in St. Charles Mo.  Bob was 6 years older and was an Electrician at McDonnell Douglas and an investor.  He knew how to do electrical, plumbing, HVAC, concrete and construction and taught me all of it.  We lived on 1 acre lots and had 1/4^th of these lots planted in corn, beans, lettuce, strawberries, etc.  We also had fruit trees in the back. Bob was also the head of the IBEW at Mac and I was a union election winning Personnel Director.  Oddly, we had the same management philosophy.   My corporate career included Personnel work at Kearney National, Monsanto and Washington University in St. Louis, Schwan Foods and Rickel Manufacturing in Salina Kansas and Hayes Microcomputer and Electromagnetic Sciences in Atlanta.

In St. Charles, I founded the St. Charles County Council of Homeowner’s Associations with 300 subdivisions and 66,000 homes.

In Kansas I was the District Director for the American Society for Personnel Administration and business columnist for the Kansas Business News.

In Atlanta I co-founded the Atlanta Metro High Tech Personnel Association and served on the Board of the American Electronics Association.

Marlene entered Dental Hygiene school in Dunwoody in 1983, graduated in 1986 and has picked on almost everybody for almost 30 years.

In 1993, I was kidnapped by a half dozen electronics companies to open a private consulting practice, which I still operate. 

In 2011, I started the Dunwoody GA Tea Party.  Now I spend lots of time writing and posting articles the media won’t cover on ntlconsulting.blogspot.com. In 2012 I worked on the Team that beat the T-SPLOST.  I co-founded Save Dunwoody in 2013.  I have joined in the battle to return the US to the US Constitution (as written) and abolish UN Agenda 21.  

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader