Critical Points and Random Events That Shaped the Early Career of William A. Goddard III
William A. Goddard III
Abstract
My grandparents all moved to Imperial Valley in the desert of southern California in the period 1905-1912. They came from Arkansas (William Andrew Goddard I; his father Peter was a Baptist minister, his mother Lucy Minor Goddard traced her relatives back through the revolutionary war), Colorado (Frances Thomas Goddard Whitsett; her father was half Comanche), Angelina County in east Texas ( Lias Austin Bright; one of his grandmothers was Cherokee), and Coushatta, Louisiana (Lula Gray Bright). Except for the Indian, their ancestors were from Germany, Holland, England, Scotland, and Ireland, arriving in the U.S. in the period from 1700 to 1840. My dad (born in Holtville, California in 1912) left school in 9th grade (his younger siblings were the first in his family to finish high school; none attended college). My mom (born in Calexico, California in 1918) graduated from high school, the only one in her family to do so [she went to college part time in her 50's (while working full time on the night shift at Pacific Telephone), getting a BA in English]. I was born in a small cabin behind the baseball stadium (on the wrong side of El Centro) on March 29, 1937. My dad made the wooden boxes used to ship lettuce, carrots, grapes, and cantaloupes. Consequently, we moved forth and back every year between Imperial Valley (El Centro) and the central (San Juaquin) valley of California [Delano, Mac Farland, Oildale (suburb of Bakersfield), Lodi, Firebaugh, and a few tiny towns that no longer exist]. We also lived once in Yuma, Arizona (the farthest east I had traveled until I had a Ph.D.) and several times in Coachella Valley (Indio, Thermal). We lived in a house trailer that was moved from trailer park to trailer park. Our only books were the bible and a Webster dictionary, but my mother took me to the library (most funded by Carnegie) nearly every Saturday to get books (I liked psychology).
Group Members
III, W. A. G. (2000). Critical Points and Random Events That Shaped the Early Career of William A. Goddard III. *J. Phys. Chem. A*, *104*(11), 2147-2150. https://doi.org/10.1021/jp000181r