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recreation and cultural arts commissions. For me, that tradition continues to this very day: my wife, Leah, and I are cofounders of Ryman Arts, a program for talented young high school artists that has served more than four thousand students in Southern California during the twenty-two years since it was created.
    One day in the late 1980s, when Disney was negotiating with the city of Long Beach to build a park in the harbor area, I was approached following a meeting by Jim Hankla, then city manager of Long Beach. “The reason I’m here today in this position,” Jim said, “is because of Leon Sklar. I was not a good kid at Banning High…in with the wrong crowd, not a good student. But somehow I got into your father’s speech and debate class, and it changed my life—motivated me to go on to college and do something positive with my life. I’ll always thank your father; I wouldn’t be here without his encouragement.”
    My father’s high school experience also rubbed off on my brother and me. In the fall of 1951, Dad became advisor to the Banning High student newspaper. At the same time, Bob—a ninth grader—became editor of his junior high newspaper, and I was named editor of the Long Beach Poly High Life . It was a portent of things to come; two years after I was elected editor of the UCLA Daily Bruin , Bob was chosen chairman of the board of the Daily Princetonian at Princeton University.
    But it was my mother who really and truly propelled the family’s writing careers. In 1946, I had entered a college football pool and somehow picked nine out of ten games correctly. I won a cash prize, which became the Sklar family’s first television set. I think my mom decided then and there that if a twelve-year-old could do it, imagine what she and my dad could do in the contest world! In those days, contesting was actually skill-based, versus today’s blind drawings. Most contests required you to write twenty-five words or less about something. My mom and dad became so proficient at the contest game that we learned never to be surprised when the U.S. mail delivered another prize. And these were not just trinkets: Mom and Dad won a car, cash, vacation trips, furniture, household appliances, and television sets.
    Meanwhile, Bob and I were beginning to build on the foundations in education, values, and ethics our parents had created. I headed off to UCLA on that $100 Alumni Scholarship in 1952. Two years later, my brother received full tuition scholarship offers to Harvard, Yale, and Princeton valued at $1,300 each in 1954. Suffice it to say that on a teacher’s salary in 1954, Dad and Mom could only have dreamed of sending Bob to Princeton without that scholarship.
    As it was, I had to earn a good part of my UCLA education. The summer after high school graduation, I was fortunate to be hired at Douglas Aircraft in Long Beach, bucking rivets being installed on (and inside) the wings of C-124 military transports. (Riveting was a manual operation in 1952.) Another summer I scooped ice cream at a 19-cent hamburger drive-in; one evening between 5:00 and 7:00 P.M. I made seven hundred malts! During the Christmas season, I caught on as a seasonal temp delivering packages for the U.S. Postal Service, only because Dad let me use the family car (you had to have your own wheels to get the job). And during my last year at UCLA, I worked for a West Coast version of Advertising Age , a successful weekly called Media Agencies Clients (MAC Publications) in Los Angeles. I became assistant editor before resigning to rejoin the Disneyland staff in September 1956.
    Today scholarships are still based on a variety of elements—academics, extracurricular activities, community service, athletics, need, and a live competition with other nominees. I’m not sure, after observing the UCLA Alumni Scholarship selection process as an Alumni Association board member, how my credentials of 1952 would hold up. Editing the school newspaper and