Instructor Profile - Tom Hauck |
Tom Hauck (click to enlarge)
Meet Tom Hauck - by Ursula Nebiker May 2016
Many OLLI students have shared a classroom with Tom Hauck over the years he’s been teaching classes and know him as the passionate voice of political conservatism amidst the more liberal views of his audience. He has partnered with Doug Longman and others to host The World Today three times a year, as well as other courses on politics, public policy and economics, education in NC, economic development and, this election year, an overview of the 2016 Presidential candidates, primary elections and party platforms. The classes are popular and always well attended and offer a plethora of different views.
If you have ever thought you’re well traveled, think again. Tom Hauck has lived in many countries and has seen far corners of the world, but he shrugs off his international background as simply par for the course and something he has always taken for granted.
His father was an airplane mechanic who built planes during World War II, and when Tom was five years old he and his family left California and moved to Peru in 1945 for two years, where his father worked for Panagra airlines in Lima. They then moved to Ethiopia for seven years and lived what Tom describes as an idyllic childhood. His first school in Addis Ababa was run by an African-American woman whose husband had come to Ethiopia to fight for the Emperor and been given the school after her husband’s death. His next school was larger; he was the only non-Ethiopian out of 1,200 students and each January 7th he remembers all of them marching up to the polo grounds in Addis to receive a sweater and a large orange from the Emperor to celebrate the Ethiopian Christmas.
Tom’s family loved to ride in the hills surrounding the city. Ethiopian horses are small in stature, and the Emperor wanted to improve the breeds, so he imported six Australian horses to improve the herd. When five of them died, Tom’s father (who was by then manager of maintenance for Ethiopian Airlines) bought the sixth, and Tom rode it back and forth to school where it grazed on the grounds while he was in class.
In 1954 his father got a job with Aramco in Saudi Arabia. There was no housing for families at that time, so Tom and his brother moved back to California with their mother for two years before they joined their father in Dhahran. Tom went straight to the American Community School in Beirut, but a month before his graduation in 1958 he and other foreigners in Beirut were evacuated because of the impending civil war in Lebanon. They left shortly before the Marines landed on the beach in Beirut. He returned to his parents’ home in Saudi Arabia for the summer.
Tom graduated from St. Louis University in 1966. While he was there he met and married his wife Marybeth and they had two sons by the time he graduated. A third son was born some years later, and now all three sons are living in the U.S. with families of their own.
After graduation, Tom got a job with Texaco, and spent 31 years with the company until he retired in 1997. He loved his job and loved working for Texaco, marketing company products, gasoline, diesel, outfitting service stations and dealing with officials for permits. Texaco was a large company, so it had some clout in each of the countries.
His first posting was a training session in Puerto Rico for six months, then he and his family were posted over the years to Senegal, Cote d’Ivoire, Angola, Portugal, Cameroon, Chile, Mexico, and Nigeria, returning every so often to Coral Gables, Florida, the headquarters of Texaco Latin America/West Africa, where they bought a home.
Many of Tom’s postings were for three to four years, which gave the family plenty of opportunities to travel and get to know the country. Living overseas was always interesting, but not always easy. In 1975 Texaco’s program in Angola was shut down during the Angolan guerrilla civil war and a week before Angola declared its independence. All the expatriate and many Portuguese Texaco employees left the country, and as most of the company workers were Portuguese, they were evacuated to Portugal and Tom spent six months in Lisbon paying them off and trying to help them find new jobs.
When George W. Bush got elected in 2000, Tom and Marybeth were invited to DC for the inauguration. They loved D.C. and were thinking of staying on there in retirement, but decided to look for a home in a university town with an ongoing OLLI type program. They checked out Charlottesville, but finally chose the Duke OLLI program (DILR at the time), and bought a home in Fearrington.
Tom admits to few hobbies; he hasn’t read a book in years, as he’s hopelessly addicted to his computer, but he’s a busy man. On Mondays he takes classes at Shared Learning in Chapel Hill, on Tuesday mornings he volunteers as a mediator in court to resolve issues between complainants, on Wednesdays and Thursdays he’s busy with his OLLI classes, and once or twice a month on Wednesday or Thursday afternoons he sits on an Institutional Review Board at Duke Medical Center.
He laughs when asked about his plans for the coming years: “I still want to convert my liberal friends to my conservative way of thinking, but in this area it’s an uphill battle and I haven’t yet had one success!” He’ll keep trying, though; he says that he has the courage of his convictions backed up by the facts.
Many OLLI students have shared a classroom with Tom Hauck over the years he’s been teaching classes and know him as the passionate voice of political conservatism amidst the more liberal views of his audience. He has partnered with Doug Longman and others to host The World Today three times a year, as well as other courses on politics, public policy and economics, education in NC, economic development and, this election year, an overview of the 2016 Presidential candidates, primary elections and party platforms. The classes are popular and always well attended and offer a plethora of different views.
If you have ever thought you’re well traveled, think again. Tom Hauck has lived in many countries and has seen far corners of the world, but he shrugs off his international background as simply par for the course and something he has always taken for granted.
His father was an airplane mechanic who built planes during World War II, and when Tom was five years old he and his family left California and moved to Peru in 1945 for two years, where his father worked for Panagra airlines in Lima. They then moved to Ethiopia for seven years and lived what Tom describes as an idyllic childhood. His first school in Addis Ababa was run by an African-American woman whose husband had come to Ethiopia to fight for the Emperor and been given the school after her husband’s death. His next school was larger; he was the only non-Ethiopian out of 1,200 students and each January 7th he remembers all of them marching up to the polo grounds in Addis to receive a sweater and a large orange from the Emperor to celebrate the Ethiopian Christmas.
Tom’s family loved to ride in the hills surrounding the city. Ethiopian horses are small in stature, and the Emperor wanted to improve the breeds, so he imported six Australian horses to improve the herd. When five of them died, Tom’s father (who was by then manager of maintenance for Ethiopian Airlines) bought the sixth, and Tom rode it back and forth to school where it grazed on the grounds while he was in class.
In 1954 his father got a job with Aramco in Saudi Arabia. There was no housing for families at that time, so Tom and his brother moved back to California with their mother for two years before they joined their father in Dhahran. Tom went straight to the American Community School in Beirut, but a month before his graduation in 1958 he and other foreigners in Beirut were evacuated because of the impending civil war in Lebanon. They left shortly before the Marines landed on the beach in Beirut. He returned to his parents’ home in Saudi Arabia for the summer.
Tom graduated from St. Louis University in 1966. While he was there he met and married his wife Marybeth and they had two sons by the time he graduated. A third son was born some years later, and now all three sons are living in the U.S. with families of their own.
After graduation, Tom got a job with Texaco, and spent 31 years with the company until he retired in 1997. He loved his job and loved working for Texaco, marketing company products, gasoline, diesel, outfitting service stations and dealing with officials for permits. Texaco was a large company, so it had some clout in each of the countries.
His first posting was a training session in Puerto Rico for six months, then he and his family were posted over the years to Senegal, Cote d’Ivoire, Angola, Portugal, Cameroon, Chile, Mexico, and Nigeria, returning every so often to Coral Gables, Florida, the headquarters of Texaco Latin America/West Africa, where they bought a home.
Many of Tom’s postings were for three to four years, which gave the family plenty of opportunities to travel and get to know the country. Living overseas was always interesting, but not always easy. In 1975 Texaco’s program in Angola was shut down during the Angolan guerrilla civil war and a week before Angola declared its independence. All the expatriate and many Portuguese Texaco employees left the country, and as most of the company workers were Portuguese, they were evacuated to Portugal and Tom spent six months in Lisbon paying them off and trying to help them find new jobs.
When George W. Bush got elected in 2000, Tom and Marybeth were invited to DC for the inauguration. They loved D.C. and were thinking of staying on there in retirement, but decided to look for a home in a university town with an ongoing OLLI type program. They checked out Charlottesville, but finally chose the Duke OLLI program (DILR at the time), and bought a home in Fearrington.
Tom admits to few hobbies; he hasn’t read a book in years, as he’s hopelessly addicted to his computer, but he’s a busy man. On Mondays he takes classes at Shared Learning in Chapel Hill, on Tuesday mornings he volunteers as a mediator in court to resolve issues between complainants, on Wednesdays and Thursdays he’s busy with his OLLI classes, and once or twice a month on Wednesday or Thursday afternoons he sits on an Institutional Review Board at Duke Medical Center.
He laughs when asked about his plans for the coming years: “I still want to convert my liberal friends to my conservative way of thinking, but in this area it’s an uphill battle and I haven’t yet had one success!” He’ll keep trying, though; he says that he has the courage of his convictions backed up by the facts.
Please, Tom, can I speak next?
(click to enlarge)
|
Did you ever think that leading the World Today could be so much fun !
(click to enlarge)
|