"The 1960s and Vietnam"

     I was visiting my sister in Jacksonville, FL, for a few days. On Wednesday nights she and her husband take an American history class at the University of North Florida called "The 1960s and Vietnam." It sounded kind of interesting, so I asked if I could go along.

     "The class is three hours," my sister told me.

     "That's okay." I swallowed hard. "I think I can stay awake that long."

     Later, I called B and told her what I was doing. "That's not history," she scoffed. "You lived it."

     "Yeah, I know. But it would be the same as when we were kids, and we took a course about the United States during the nineteen teens, under Taft and Wilson instead of Kennedy and Johnson. That's history, isn't it?" 

     So the other night we drove over to campus and found the classroom, filled with some 25 undergraduates and about ten seniors auditing the course. The topic for the evening:  John F. Kennedy. Of course, as B suggested, I already knew the general outline of the Kennedy story. But I did learn a few things.

     Kennedy had three main problems standing in the way of his election. First was his Catholicism. The professor had to explain to the wide-eyed students that Protestants, especially in the South and Midwest, were prejudiced against Catholics back in those days.

     (As an aside, my wife was from Ohio and she once confessed to me (I was raised Catholic) that her parents would not let her date a Catholic boy when she was in high school.)

     Kennedy addressed the Catholic issue in a famous speech to a gathering of Protestant clergy during the Democratic primary. He stood squarely for the separation of church and state, he told them, and no priest was going to tell the president what to do -- just as no minister should tell their church members how to vote. His campaign also made sure that the Catholic nuns who attended his rallies never sat up front where they might be photographed or appear in any news clips.

     A second problem was Kennedy's philandering, which was an open secret at the time. Fortunately for him, the press was more discreet back in that era. You were okay, so the saying went, as long as you weren't caught in bed with a live boy or a dead girl.

The official White House portrait of President Kennedy

     Then there was his health. He was chronically underweight; he suffered from constant pain from a bad back. He had colitis. But his worst problem was Addison's disease. According to the professor, Kennedy had been close to death and been given last rites three times in his life. He was given cortisone shots when he started running for president, which filled out his face and made him look healthy, even though he wasn't. He took barbiturates for pain on a consistent basis, and then took amphetamines to counteract the barbiturates.

     One of the causes of the Cuban Missile Crisis, according to the professor, was that Kennedy and Khrushchev had already met in Vienna in June 1961. Kennedy was not feeling well and was taking various medications, and he made a poor showing at the meeting. Khrushchev decided Kennedy was weak, and this emboldened him to send missiles to Cuba. Basically, he'd sized up Kennedy, and he thought he could get away with it.

     Well, the class was three hours long, and so there was a lot of information about JFK. He picked Johnson as his running mate because he was Protestant and would take "the stink of Catholicism" off the ticket. Johnson was from Texas and would help carry the South. And then Kennedy said:  Besides, what good would it do to win the presidency if Lyndon Johnson was the Senate Majority Leader? Kennedy wanted Johnson out of the way so he wouldn't block his legislative proposals in the Senate.

     The professor opined that Kennedy could probably never get elected in today's America. And it's entirely possible that, were he not assassinated, he would have died of his health complications before he could fill out a second term.

     He also pointed out that Kennedy was an avid Cold Warrior. Kennedy pledged to go to the moon, not because he was interested in space, but because he wanted to beat the Russians.

     When Kennedy was sworn into the presidency, there were 900 American military advisers in South Vietnam. By the time he was killed, there were over 30,000 Americans in Vietnam.

     Yet the professor believes that Kennedy probably would not have ramped up the Vietnam War the way Johnson did, with over 500,000 American troops at the peak in 1968. Kennedy had already proved he was tough on communism; he could have afforded to step back in Vietnam. But Johnson felt he had to stand firm in Vietnam to prove he wasn't soft on communism. He gave the hawks what they wanted in foreign policy to allow him to pass the social welfare programs of the Great Society (including Medicare).

     And the professor also wondered, were it not for Kennedy's assassination, the Great Society may have never come about. Although Kennedy finally did come around and fully support civil rights by mid-1963, he was never the avid social liberal that Johnson was. Yet his death made him a martyr. And Johnson used that to inspire many in Washington to support his programs, as a legacy to the fallen president.

     Of course, we'll never know the what-ifs of Kennedy. And I guess I'll never know about the rest of the 1960s -- the Johnson years, the Vietnam war, the civil rights movement, the music and the counterculture -- because I have moved on from Jacksonville and won't have the opportunity to attend any more of the classes.

     However, it's raining today in Florida. So maybe I'll read some of those handouts the professor gave us.

Who Is Older?

     As many of you know, I'm fond of quizzes. (If you don't know, take a look over to the column on the right where you can test yourself on retirement, Baby Boomers, and several other topics.) The idea is that a quiz can offer up some information, and do it in a fun kind of way.

     This quiz is mostly for fun. The answers are below. So, do you know . . . who is older?

     1.  Judi Dench or Maggie Smith?

     2.  Arnold Schwarzenegger or Henry Winkler?

     3.  Angelina Jolie or Amy Adams?

     4.  Joe Biden or Joe Pesci?

     5.  Tiger Woods or Derek Jeter?

     6.  Hillary Clinton or Jeb Bush?

     7.  Johnny Depp or Jon Stewart?

     8.  Sen. Dianne Feinstein or Sen John McCain?

     9.  Matt Damon or Ben Affleck?

     10. Jan of D-Janity or Bob Lowry of Satisfying Retirement?

    

Answers:

1.  They both star in the Marigold Hotel movies, they're both from England, and they're both the same age. But Judi Dench, born on Dec. 9, 1934, is 19 days older.

2.  Henry Winkler, the former Fonz, is 69, two years older than the former Governator.

3.  Fresh-faced actress Amy Adams, 40, is actually one year older than the strong-willed Angelina Jolie.

4.  Both are 72; but Biden is two months older.

5.  Yankee shortstop Derek Jeter is retired at 40; Tiger is struggling through injuries at age 39.

6.  Hillary Clinton is 67; Jeb Bush a still wet-behind-the-ears 62.

7.  Jon Stewart, at 52, edges out 51-year-old Johnny Depp.

8.  Sen. Feinstein, 81, is one of five senators in their 80s. McCain, three years younger, still makes the grade as one of the 23 U. S. Senators over age 70.

9.  Matt Damon, 44, from Cambridge, Mass., is two years older than the Berkeley, Calif.-born Ben Affleck.

10. Honestly, I don't know (I'd guess Bob Lowry); but anyway, they're both stars in my book!

Age-Old Aphorisms

     The book has been sitting on B's bookshelf for years, and when I was looking for something to read the other day, I finally picked it up: Benjamin Franklin: An American Life by Walter Isaacson. The author is a former managing editor of Time magazine and current ceo of the Aspen Institute, a nonpartisan think tank located not in Colorado but in Washington, DC. (He also wrote a book on Steve Jobs, as well as his latest, The Innovators, about the geeks who developed social media).

     Honestly, I didn't know much about Ben Franklin. I knew he was a printer and a Founding Father and that he "discovered" electricity.

     I did not know that he was a self-made man among all the powdered-wig aristocrats who created the new country. He was born and raised in Boston, but ran away to Philadelphia in 1723, when he was 17, and started in the printing business. He worked his way up -- occasionally employing some pretty "savvy" business acumen -- to become the head of what was then "a successful, vertically integrated media conglomerate," according to Isaacson, with a publishing house, the Philadelphia newspaper, an almanac series, an interest in the postal system, and eventually some valuable real-estate holdings.

     Franklin was in the vanguard of many American trends -- including early retirement. He retired from his printing business at age 42 in order to pursue his interest first in science (he made his famous kite experiment in 1752, which led to the development of the lightning rod) and then in politics and international relations.

     Today he is known as much for his maxims as his contributions to society. Some came out of his real life experiences. For example, there was once a rich and well-bred member of Philadelphia society that he wanted win over. So he approached the man and asked a favor. He wanted to borrow one of his rare books. The man lent him the book; Franklin returned it on time; and then later when they met "he spoke to me (which he had never done before) and with great civility, and he ever after manifested a readiness to serve me on all occasions."

     And from that experience Franklin developed his advice: "He that has once done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another, than he whom you yourself have obliged."

     But most of his aphorisms came from Poor Richard's Almanac -- which as best as I can tell was a series of pamphlets kind of like the special editions of magazines you see today at the checkout stand of the supermarket. Some of his maxims developed out of his own personal experience, some he made up, and others he "borrowed" from other sources and then polished up to make them more memorable. Here I've selected his Top Ten:

     He that lies down with dogs shall rise up with fleas.

     Where there's marriage without love, there will be love without marriage.

     Necessity never made a good bargain.

     He who multiplies riches multiplies cares.

     He's a fool that cannot conceal his wisdom.

     Vice knows she is ugly, so puts on her mask.

     Love your enemies, for they will tell you your faults.

     The sting of a reproach is the truth of it.

     Half the truth is often a great lie.

     God helps them that help themselves.

     Maybe you know a few others from Franklin, or elsewhere. I wonder how relevant they are to our lives today.

    

There's Something About Mary

     The name Mary is loaded with significance. To begin with, Mary was the mother of Jesus, and so we honor her on Christmas day.

     For a long time Mary was the most popular female name in America. According to Social Security's list of most popular names for the past hundred years, Mary was either the first or second most popular name for a newborn female, going back at least to 1914, and up through 1965.

     However, today the rank of Mary as a name has fallen to No. 152 -- ahead of Amy and Rachel, but behind Norah and Natalia -- although a variant, Maria, comes in at No. 80. Perhaps Mary has come to be seen as too ordinary, too plain, to run-of-the-mill.

     (Guess what the most popular name is for a newborn girl in 2014. The answer's below -- but don't cheat!)

     My grandmother on my mother's side (born c. 1880) was named Mary. When she went to name her daughter, my mother (born 1912), she wanted to name the girl after her; but also wanted something perhaps a little more sophisticated. So she gave the name a little French twist and named my mother Marie.

     When my parents had their first child, a daughter, (born 1942), they named her Mary Elizabeth. (My dad's mother was Elizabeth.) But again, they wanted something just a little different. So they called her Marybeth.

     That didn't work for my sister. She did not like the name Marybeth, so at some point in her young adulthood -- either in college or shortly after -- she changed her name to Marcie. Everyone now calls her Marcie, except of course for my other sister and me. She changed her name 50 years ago. But we still call her Marybeth.

     The very first girl I kissed -- this was in 7th grade, walking up the hill from junior high school, coming home from a dance -- was my next-door neighbor, who was named Merry. "Not Mary," she told everyone with a roll of her eyes, appalled that people would think that she had so plain a name. "It's Merry, short for Meredith."

     I haven't seen or heard from Merry in 50 years. So I don't know if she's changed it to Marcie or Marie or something else by now.

    Now, drum roll please . . . the most popular female name for 2014 is:  Emma.

     Anyway, to all a Mary -- I mean Merry Christmas. Meanwhile, B and I are on our way to Pennsylvania to see B's mother for a couple of days. She was born in 1916. Her name is . . . you guessed it, Mary.

     Here's "Let It Be" a song that Paul McCartney wrote after dreaming about his mother, Mary McCartney (born 1909), who died in 1956.

Who's the Smartest Guy in the Room?

     I'm going to take this post, just this one post, to brag about just how smart I am. (I know what you're thinking -- this is a humor piece!).

     Why now? Because I have just finished reading The Bully Pulpit by Doris Kearns Goodwin. All 750 pages. (I confess, I did not read the 100+ pages of footnotes.)

     So, here for your reading pleasure, are ten little known facts about, as the subtitle says: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft and the Golden Age of Journalism:

     1. I'll start with an easy one. Teddy Roosevelt was a Republican -- but the kind now disparaged among Republicans as RINOs, or Republicans In Name Only. Roosevelt believed in capitalism, free markets and the American Dream; but he also toured sweat shops, supported labor unions, believed that the government should intervene when businesses got so big that they could affect the welfare of the public. He famously called for "a square deal for every man, great or small, rich or poor." He would abide neither the excesses of "the selfish rich" nor the resentful outrage of the "lunatic fringe."

     2. William Howard Taft, also a Republican, was a judge in Ohio and made several decisions regarded as opposing unions. Yet he supported labor unions, at least in theory, and some of his rulings were later used to justify union activities.

     3. William Howard Taft was not always the big fat cat depicted in popular photographs. As a student at Yale he was athletic and considered quite the "swell." It was only later that he gained the weight -- he tipped the scales at 350 when he joined Roosevelt's cabinet in 1903 -- that made his profile so recognizable.

     4. The Teddy bear was named after Teddy Roosevelt, after he refused to shoot a small bear in Montana. Cartoonists couldn't leave the incident alone, and kept making the bear smaller and ever smaller in their drawings, until the bear was ... a Teddy bear.

     5. Roosevelt's pre-presidential experience makes Barack Obama look like a grizzled veteran. T.R. was a New York State Senator, an assistant secretary of the Navy, and governor of New York for just two years before the Republicans maneuvered to get rid of him by nominating him in 1900 for the emasculating position of vice president. They never dreamed that William McKinley would be assassinated in Buffalo only a few months after winning re-election -- making Theodore Roosevelt, at age 42, the youngest president in U. S. history. (Kennedy was 43; Clinton 46; and Obama a hoary 47.)

     See how smart I am? I was an English major in college. I recently saw a chart showing average I.Q. by college major. English majors came in way above sociology majors, education majors, business majors. They ranked just above biology majors . . . but way below physics, math, economics and engineering majors.

     6. Anyway, T.R. was known as a trust-buster, maneuvering to break up some of the biggest conglomerates of the time. His administration filed an anti-trust suit against Standard Oil which led to a break-up of the company. But what struck me more was his effort to regulate the railroads, the main link of communication for Americans at the time, which used all kinds of schemes and "cunning devices" to set rates that favored corporate allies and crushed competitors. That led me to ponder: Would Roosevelt be in favor of net neutrality today?

Taft at age 20

Taft at 350 lbs.

     7. Roosevelt and Taft were fellow Republicans and long-time friends. Taft wanted, more than anything, to be a justice on the Supreme Court. Roosevelt offered to appoint him on four separate occasions, but Taft kept turning down the opportunity, feeling that by taking the position he would be abandoning his responsibilities first as governor general of the Philippines and later as a member of Roosevelt's cabinet.

     8. Isn't it weird? In the first decade of the 20th century it was conservative Republicans who argued in favor of tariffs and protectionism, and liberals who claimed they simply served to increase corporate profits. Now in the beginning of the 21st century, it's progressives who decry free trade, saying it depresses American wages, while conservatives support globalization saying it brings better, cheaper goods to ordinary Americans.

     9. In 1910 President Taft threw out a ceremonial first pitch at the Washington Nationals baseball game, establishing a tradition that has continued into the 21st century.

     10. After ascending to the presidency upon McKinley's assassination, and winning in his own right in 1904, Roosevelt pledged that he would not run for re-election in 1908. He instead pushed to get Taft elected. But Roosevelt came to regret his pledge. And after a falling out, Roosevelt challenged Taft for the 1912 Republican nomination. Roosevelt lost. So he ran as a third party candidate under the Bull Moose label. Despite surviving an assassination attempt in Milwaukee -- the bullet was deflected by his glasses case and the notes for his speech -- he went the way of all third-party candidates (remember Anderson, Perot, Nader?) and lost again, splitting the Republican and independent vote between himself and Taft, and paving the way for Woodrow Wilson to win the presidency.

     So do you now know the answer to my question . . . who's the smartest guy in the room? Not me. Maybe it's Teddy Roosevelt? Or maybe it's Doris Kearns Goodwin who has brought history to life in her long but very readable book.

     Or . . . maybe it's William Taft. In 1921 he finally got his wish to be on the Supreme Court, appointed Chief Justice by Wilson's successor President Warren Harding.

A View of the Kennedys

     Yesterday B and I went over and took a look at the Kennedy compound. Maybe because it's the end of summer, and the beach looks empty and lonely, or maybe it's because the house is vacant, no one living there, but the place seemed abandoned, almost haunted.

     It reminded me, in just two more months we will be marking the 50th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination. It was November 22, 1963.

     B and I didn't actually go into the compound. As far as I know, it is never open to the public. What really happened is that B and I, on a week's vacation on Cape Cod, took a drive over to Hyannis. We'd read about some artist's shanties located in a harborside park, and we thought it would be fun to go hang out.

     The artist's shanties turned out to be an extreme disappointment -- just a little tourist trap with overpriced crafts and photos -- although the trip was saved by a run across the street to find some very tasty clam chowder.

    But while we were there we saw a sign for a harbor excursion boat. It was leaving for a cruise at 2 p.m. We hadn't planned on doing anything like that, but it was only an hour and fifteen minutes long, so we purchased tickets, for $20 each, and climbed aboard.

     A father and son team ran the boat, and they skippered us out of the harbor, showing us a series of old lighthouses, multimillion-dollar estates along the coastline, a tower marking where the Cape Wind project would be located.

     There has been for several years now a proposal to build a series of windmills along a sandbar in Nantucket Sound. It is controversial because while the windmills would produce environmentally friendly electricity, they also have the potential to disturb some birds. More significantly, they would also disturb the view from many of those multimillion-dollar estates -- one of those estates being the Kennedy compound, so Sen. Edward Kennedy was a powerful opponent of the project. What's happening now, since Ted Kennedy has left us, I do not know.

     Anyway, on the way back to the dock, the captain swung around Hyannisport and showed us the Kennedy compound. You can't see much of it from shore -- it's cordoned off by winding streets and tall hedges -- but you can see it remarkably well, and up pretty close, from the water.

     If you are old enough to remember 50 years ago, and those old film clips of Camelot, with young Kennedys playing touch football on the lawn, sailing in the bay, healthy, toothy, kids in tow, you can't possibly take in this scene without feeling some nostalgia, a sinking in your gut as the old newsreels play in your mind.

     According to our guide, Ted Kennedy moved into the main house after his mother Rose died in 1995, and he used it as his main residence until his death in 2009. But while a number of Kennedys still live in the six-acre compound, the main house has been empty ever since. Apparently there are plans to open the house to the public, perhaps turn it into some kind of monument or museum, but all that would be sometime in the future.

     Last summer, pop singer Taylor Swift bought a house down the street, when she was going out with Conor Kennedy, grandson of Robert F. Kennedy. That didn't last long, our young guide quipped. But rumor has it Swift made a million dollars when she sold the house earlier this year. Conor is the son of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and Mary Richardson Kennedy. The two had a troubled marriage, and they were already estranged last year when Mary, Conor's mother, committed suicide.

     I guess we all have our own thoughts, our own opinions about the Kennedys. Joseph Kennedy, the wealthy patriarch, made his money under questionable circumstances. John F. Kennedy, icon of his era, was later revealed to be something of a sexual predator. Bobby Kennedy, attorney general to his older brother, senator from New York and passionate anti-war presidential candidate, was a man who many hailed as a visionary, while others scorned him as just another calculating, self-serving politician. And Edward Kennedy . . . he had his own brush with disaster at Chappaquiddick in 1969, but in many people's eyes he redeemed himself with his long career in the U. S. Senate.

     There's nothing I can add to the Kennedy legacy, the Kennedy mystique. But I do remember those heady, historic days. I remember my Irish Catholic mother was a fan; my more conservative, indifferent Protestant father remained unimpressed. But back then I wished my father was half as cool as John Kennedy; and I was in love with Caroline, as I'm sure many young women fell in love with John-John, who we all remember died when his plane crashed off Martha's Vineyard in 1999.

     Love 'em or hate 'em, they were a great American family. But as their old house suggests, sitting forlornly on the windy beach, it all seems long ago and far away.

Steve Jobs, We Hardly Knew You

     Steve Jobs was a computer entrepreneur, a marketing genius and an inspiration to all Americans. He died yesterday at age 56 of pancreatic cancer.

     I thought it appropriate to revisit a post from earlier this year that I did on the former Apple ceo. From April 2011:

     I've never owned an Apple computer. I don't have a iPod or an iPhone or an iPad. Yet Steve Jobs has changed my life immeasurably, simply because of his impact on the personal computer and the electronics revolution.

     Steve Jobs, at age 56, is one of the most influential Baby Boomers. I don't want to write his obituary prematurely, but apparently he's in real trouble. And I don't submit this post to give any credence to a sleazy newspaper that may sensationalize his health problems, but to pay homage to a brave and creative genius. And honestly, until I saw this item, Ten Unusual Things I Didn't Know About Steve Jobs, I didn't know much about him. But Steve Jobs is one fascinating guy.

     I didn't realize that he was adopted. His biological father's name was Abdulfattah Jandali. His mother was an unmarried graduate student who felt too young to raise a child. So she put him up for adoption, with the only proviso that his new parents be college graduates. But after the first adoptive parents fell through, the next in line was a couple -- one of whom didn't go to college; the other didn't even graduate from high school. This couple ended up getting the boy only after making the promise that they would make sure he would go to college.

     I did have a vague awareness that Steve Jobs was a college dropout. He spent a semester at Reed College, a good but not especially highly rated college in Portland, Oregon. The reason he dropped out? He felt he wasn't getting that much out of his experience, and he knew that paying the tuition was impoverishing his parents. So he dropped out, but stayed around campus auditing courses for a couple more semesters, sleeping on the floor of friends' apartments, picking up some knowledge and skills at little to no cost.

     Before he started Apple with partner Steve Wozniak, he worked briefly for Atari, creating those primitive shooting and "pong" type games we all remember from the '70s. He then co-founded Apple Computer in 1976, when he was just 21 years old.

     We all know about the success of Apple. But who remembers that Jobs was unceremoniously fired in 1985? He was the loser in a corporate power play, and found himself publicly humiliated and out of work at the age of 30. Some people thought he was washed up. But he quickly prove them wrong. He immediately founded another company, Next, followed by Pixar, the animation company eventually acquired by Disney. Jobs went back to Apple after Next was bought out by Apple in 1996.

     Jobs was first diagnosed with cancer in 2004, and underwent surgery to remove a tumor on his pancreas. In 2009 he had a liver transplant, and reportedly went to Switzerland to receive an experimental treatment for pancreatic cancer. In January 2011, Jobs took yet another medical leave of absence "so he could focus on his health." Since then he has been observed, according to Mail Online, looking "thin and frail," and he has been seen going in and out of Stanford University's state-of-the-art cancer center.

     People have written Steve Jobs' obituary before. Literally. Apparently Bloomberg news published a Jobs obit. in August 2008, much to their embarrassment. Let's hope he will defy the odds one more time.

     For a look at Steve Jobs, here is the graduation speech he made at Stanford University in 2005, where he talks about the three pivotal moments in his life. When he dropped out of college. When he was fired. And when he was diagnosed with cancer and learned to ask himself:  If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?

    "Remembering  that you are going to die," he says in his speech, "is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart."

What You Can Learn from Steve Jobs

     I've never owned an Apple computer. I don't have a iPod or an iPhone or an iPad. Yet Steve Jobs has changed my life immeasurably, simply because of his impact on the personal computer and the electronics revolution.

     Steve Jobs, at age 56, is one of the most influential Baby Boomers. I don't want to write his obituary prematurely, but apparently he's in real trouble. And I don't submit this post to give any credence to a sleazy newspaper that may sensationalize his health problems, but to pay homage to a brave and creative genius. And honestly, until I saw this item, Ten Unusual Things I Didn't Know About Steve Jobs, I didn't know much about him. But Steve Jobs is one fascinating guy.

     I didn't realize that he was adopted. His biological father's name was Abdulfattah Jandali, and his mother was an unmarried graduate student who felt too young and unprepared to raise a child. So she put him up for adoption, with the only proviso that his new parents be college graduates. But after the first adoptive parents fell through, the next in line was a couple -- one of whom didn't go to college; the other didn't even graduate from high school. This couple ended up getting the boy only after making the promise that they would make sure he would go to college.

     I did have a vague awareness that Steve Jobs was a college dropout. He spent a semester at Reed College, a good but not especially highly rated college in Portland, Oregon. The reason he dropped out? He felt he wasn't getting that much out of his experience, and he knew that paying the tuition was impoverishing his parents. So he dropped out, but stayed around campus auditing courses for a couple more semesters, sleeping on the floor of friends' apartments, picking up some knowledge and skills at little to no cost.

     Before he started Apple with partner Steve Wozniak, he worked briefly for Atari, creating those primitive shooting and "pong" type games we all remember from the '70s. He then co-founded Apple Computer in 1976, when he was just 21 years old.

     We all know about the success of Apple. But who remembers that Jobs was unceremoniously fired in 1985? He was the loser in a corporate power play, and found himself publicly humiliated and out of work at the age of 30. Some people thought he was washed up. But he quickly prove them wrong. He immediately founded another company, Next, followed by Pixar, the animation company eventually acquired by Disney. Jobs went back to Apple after Next was bought out by Apple in 1996.

     Jobs was first diagnosed with cancer in 2004, and underwent surgery to remove a tumor on his pancreas. In 2009 he had a liver transplant, and reportedly went to Switzerland to receive an experimental treatment for pancreatic cancer. In January 2011, Jobs took yet another medical leave of absence "so he could focus on his health." Since then he has been observed, according to Mail Online, looking "thin and frail," and he has been seen going in and out of Stanford University's state-of-the-art cancer center.

     People have written Steve Jobs' obituary before. Literally. Apparently Bloomberg news published a Jobs obit. in August 2008, much to their embarrassment. Let's hope he will defy the odds one more time.

     For a look at Steve Jobs, here is the graduation speech he made at Stanford University in 2005 (skip to 7:30 unless you want to hear the long-winded intro.), where he talks about the three pivotal moments in his life. When he dropped out of college. When he was fired. And when he was diagnosed with cancer and learned to ask himself:  If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?

    "Remembering  that you are going to die," he says in his speech, "is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart."