Harry (Duke) Haiduk

Amarillo, TX

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The packet from Joy Vanderburg Rice, the several e-mails back and forth to Mike Conway, and the excitement of Dianne Zachry Meaker started for me a mind journey back in time.  That journey was bittersweet but gave to me cause to realize that surely I had taken the path less traveled since graduation from PHS.  The hardest thing for me has been to decide what not to include. 

I was one of several transfers from Grandview (now Grandview-Hopkins) and, thus, became a part of the class in the 7^th grade and attended the, now obliterated, Pampa Jr. High.  My home then (and still now 6 months or more a year) was 18 miles southwest of town.  I worked with my dad on the farm beginning farther back than I can remember.  The life was good and the only restrictions were those of decency, honesty and integrity.  My dream was to follow in my dad’s footsteps.  Although he quietly shared that dream, he wanted for me to have more options than an 8^th grade education bought for him.  Figuratively, he put his boot on my rear and pushed me out of the house with the plan to get a degree.  His words were (and I paraphrase), “Prepare yourself for a better future.  After you gain that, you can always come back should you then so choose”. 

The fall of ’58 saw me a freshman at UT Austin when there were only 17,000+ students, and Austin was a town no bigger than Amarillo is now.  I set out to be an accountant since numbers and I had become such good friends (although I really didn’t really fully appreciate that at the time).  The only problem I had was that I had never really had to study and didn’t know how.  It took bouncing back and forth between UT and WT and me arriving at my senior year before I figured out how to study.  In between and amidst all that bouncing around and in addition to farm work, I worked as a bouncer, a roughneck, a last-resort collection agent, a bar tender, a janitor, and a courier (carrying who knows what but it gives me a fright).  All the while I was searching for what it was that I was to become.  Having found no solid answers, I thought the Navy would be a great way to find out, but I wanted to do it in style.  So I applied for and was accepted to Naval OCS.  I walked out on that opportunity the day of my swearing in.  Finally, in 1963 I earned a BBA degree.  

I signed on as a life insurance agent selling college plans and led the country in sales for quite some time until my conscience began bothering me.  I’ll never forget the day JFK was assassinated, cancelled all appointments (which would probably never have materialized anyway), and watched my little black and white TV all the rest of the day and evening.  Shortly after that I began looking for a different challenge. 

Cabot Corporation hired me on as an industrial engineer at the Machinery Division west of Pampa.  That lasted awhile but was still not the right fit.  Something was driving me to find my real purpose in life.  After much soul searching, I entered the seminary and spent nearly a year in Boston studying philosophy, metaphysics, Greek, Latin, and French.  This afforded me the opportunity to study at Boston College and also at Harvard.  What an experience that was!!!  However, after a Christmas break and a two-week retreat in the Berkshire Mountains, I realized that priesthood was also NOT my calling.  So I came home back to the farm once again to sort out my life.  It was also becoming clear that farming was not in my future (not just yet anyway).  We are now into 1965. 

While attending a church-sponsored young adult event on Valentine’s Day, I met Arlene Diller (from Hereford).  She so overwhelmed me in that one evening that I went home to tell my parents that I had just met the person I would marry.  Although I am certain they took my comments with a grain of salt, we were married in a beautiful German/Polish Catholic wedding ceremony on September 17, 1965 (a Friday).  We had a one-day honeymoon to Carlsbad, NM and I began classes in the pursuit of my MBA on Monday.  And now, almost 38 years later we remain partners.  My life had really begun and I had found one part of my calling! 

Upon completion of the MBA at WTAMU (then WTSU) where I minored in linguistics, I was offered an out-of-the-blue opportunity to teach for the College of Business.  I taught statistics and business research and writing (two of the most hated courses offered).  Alas, I found that holding to academic standards was to be partially the cause of a number of young men getting an all expense paid trip to the tropics of Vietnam.  In this year of teaching I also found what I was supposed to do for a living. 

It was clear that to continue the pursuit of academe, I needed to pile it higher and deeper (PhD).  The choices narrowed down to Harvard or the Wharton School of Finance at the University of Pennsylvania.  Harvard seemed intimidating now.  So off to Philadelphia we went with Arlene five months pregnant with our first daughter.  That all went OK.  Our first daughter, Celeste, was born in the West Jersey Hospital in Camden, NJ.  But somehow, life in the northeast was just not hospitable to a young wife and a new daughter and a West Texas country boy.  The Chair of the Department of Finance at UT came and, to make a long story short, recruited me out of there with significant dollars and a research and teaching appointment.  While studying at UT, our second child, Morgan Paul, was born.  Also while there, two of Arlene’s brothers were killed in a head on crash on a dusty country road in southeast Colorado. 

Now on top of everything else, I had gotten to be just a bit of a smart ass, so my appointment ran out before I finished the PhD.  However, I was definitely employable since while studying Finance I was also studying Computer Science.  Mind you, this was in 1971 during the Neanderthal years of computing.  Offers came from the likes of Cal Polytechnic, Virginia Polytechnic Institute, and others of that caliber.  These schools were intimidating; so I chose Drake University.  The next five years there were five of the richest years of our life.  While there, our third child, Talese Estelle, was born.  Also while there, I dived into graduate study again, this time in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Iowa State. 

And then, one brisk October day during a visit from my parents, Dad asked if I would be interested in working out something with the farming operation.  Could I get an academic appointment somewhere closer than 800 miles away?  That Christmas break I went to see the Dean of the College of Business at WTSU and discovered that there was indeed an opening in the Computer Information Systems (CIS) Department.  I applied, interviewed, and got the job.  We moved to Amarillo in the summer of 1976 and have lived a big part of the year at the same address just south of Amarillo High. 

Thread through all that follows a significant commitment of time, energy, and money to the farming operation known as Lazy H Farms.  That commitment continues although the mileage is showing on this West Texas country boy. 

After two years at WTSU I was then recruited for more money at Amarillo College to help build the CIS Department there.  Early in this experience our fourth child, Amanda Lea, was born in 1979.  During the twenty-three years at AC, I was able to be active in research and writing.  During the eighties and early nineties I was able to turn out over a dozen textbooks.  There were translations into French, German, and Spanish.  It was early during this publication process that I found myself at an editor’s home on Pacific Avenue in San Francisco just a couple of blocks from J. Paul Getty’s home.  My editor asked what name I wanted to write under.  Well if J. Paul was good enough so was H. Paul.  Thus, professionally, I am now known as H. Paul Haiduk (where the H is pronounced).  During this time Arlene lost her dad and a few years later her mother. 

I was visible enough to warrant an invitation from Borland International to spend time at their facility to work out final details of the Turbo Pascal 5.5.  This product was largely the catalyst for the wide spread acceptance of Object-Oriented methodology of software analysis, design, and programming.  I also served as Department Chair and was the energy behind and the only faculty for the Computer Science degree.  In 1993 I stuck my neck way out and said I could put AC on the Internet map.  Thus, I built the name server and did all the other techie stuff to put AC on the Internet with the domain actx.edu and managed that resource single-handedly for several years until the IT organization matured and could assume that responsibility.  Also, during this time I formed my consulting firm known as Wider Horizons Technologies through which I develop software systems and also advise clients on technology deployment. 

I was also visible enough to warrant in 1993 a connection with Texas Tech where I did more graduate study in Computer Science, taught and also conducted research in artificial intelligence (this along with a near full time appointment at AC).  Man did that commute from Amarillo to Lubbock get long twice or three times a week!  Following my mother’s death on Christmas Day 1996, the grind got too much so I settled back to just one academic job at AC. 

By 2000, I had done all that I felt I could do at AC and was ready to retire or do something different.  The Chair of the CIS Department at WTAMU recruited me to come and help him to rejuvenate the strength and rigor of the academic offerings.  I signed on in 2001 and now teach undergraduate and graduate courses in Information Systems and in Computer Science.  I am also the Director of Academic Computing for the department. 

Arlene and I have been blessed with three grandsons, one granddaughter, and one grandson on the way.  Now that these precious grandchildren bless us with their laughter and energy, it is clear that a new calling is emerging.  By the time we come together to celebrate 50 years since graduation, I hope to have significantly decreased direct commitment in one or more of my current involvements.  My dad is 87 and lives in Amarillo now and still drives out to check on my farming efforts periodically.  He and I enjoy visiting and eating at Coyote Bluff not nearly often enough. 

I really do hope to be able to be at the reunion this time since I missed the last one.