By Craig Erb '68

Have you ever wondered to what extent you might affect someone’s life without knowing it, just by going about your daily routine? Here’s one such story:

In the fall of 1963, I was attending Galileo High School, an urban school in the north part of San Francisco. It drew students from Chinatown, from Italian-American North Beach, blacks from the Fillmore District, rich kids from Pacific Heights and the Marina District, and military brats like me from Fort Mason and the Presidio. Joe DiMaggio was its most famous alumnus. The football team, which had lost every game the year before, was starting to win a few with a running back named O.J. Simpson. (The next year he would lead them to the city championship.) J.F.K. was president. In a kind of urban-to-rural affirmative action, our California Scholarship Federation honor society was invited to visit the UC Davis campus. Asking around, I discovered that no one at “Gal,” student or faculty, had ever known anyone who had attended UC Davis. On a clear day, you could see the Campanile from our school. The University of California was synonymous with Berkeley.

When our group arrived for the campus tour, our Cal Aggie host was an undergraduate student named Howard “Howdy” Miller. He waxed enthusiastic about the campus, its Honor Code and “Hi, Aggie!” spirit. Howdy concluded with a fervent rendition of “Bossy Cow-Cow.” Although I had my doubts that there was such a thing as “oleo- butterine,” by the end of the tour I had no doubt about wanting to attend UC Davis. By the time I took my SATs in December, L.B.J. was president, but my decision hadn’t changed. I did what today would be unthinkable: I sent my scores and my application for admission to only one college campus.

I arrived on campus for the fall semester of 1964. What Howdy said turned out to be true. You could say “Hi, Aggie” to anyone wearing a “dink,” and they would answer “Hi, Aggie” back. (A dink was a blue beanie with a short yellow bill, required by tradition to be worn by entering freshmen until the conclusion of the “Frosh-Soph Brawl.” That was a spirited interclass competition consisting of hay-bale stacking, men’s and women’s obstacle course races, and men’s and women’s tug-of-wars across a mud-hole.)

Fast forward to fall 1967. There was little evidence of computers on campus. There was no computer science department or major. In fact, there was just one computer class—offered by the agriculture college. Non-credit. Pass/Fail. In FORTRAN! The teacher was none other than Howdy Miller, by this time a grad student. He taught with the same enthusiasm with which he had conducted tours and with the same result. The subject caught my interest, and I thoroughly enjoyed the class.

Later, after graduating in UC’s centennial class of ’68, I took a civil service job with the federal government. There were few computer personnel in those days, so most organizations and businesses trained their own. On the basis of having taken that one computer course from Howdy, I was selected for a training program. Now after all these years in the computer field, I still wonder at the simple but fortuitous chain of events that led me to UC Davis and my chosen vocation.

So if you ever see Howdy Miller, say “Hi, Aggie” for me. And also “thank you.”