What a fantastic overview of life Mr. Charles Kettering had. Indeed, the future is a good place to be, so why not start living there now?

I just returned from a trip to Kettering, Ohio — my hometown — and the home of Fairmont High School. About 2,000 students attend this public school and 30% of them are in the field of the arts. For those of you who are not familiar with this Dayton suburb, it was named after Charles F. Kettering, who invented the automatic starter for your car. I never met him as he died when I was a year old. No matter. I was born and raised in Kettering. I did not find out about his relationship with the automatic starter until I was taking my driver’s test. As a teenager it did not matter to me who he was — I just wanted to pass parallel parking.

My folks still live in Kettering. When I visit, I borrow my Dad’s VW. The license plate says, “BRTZ DAD.” He is my biggest — if not proudest fan — and me his. The trees lining Ackerman Blvd. are much taller than I remember, and the walk from Lovetta Drive, where I grew up, to Oakview Elementary isn’t nearly as far as I recall from when I trudged from school to home through the freezing cold and snow back in 1965.

As I drove by our old house the other day, it seemed smaller than I recollected it as a child. The people who now live there turned the garage that my dad converted into a den back into a garage again. And the Little Leaf Linden tree that we planted when I was 10 now towers over the roof of the two-story, upper-middle class red brick that we called “home.”

I don’t mean to get all mushy and sentimental. I knew “I could never go home again” when I returned for Thanksgiving in the fall of 1976 after my first quarter at Ohio University. The grass was turning a burnt-yellow and the leaves had fallen. Autumn was well into the first act and I cried as I drove around the block, knowing it would never be the same again. In three short months, my life was no longer my parents’ responsibility — it was mine, and I was taking my job seriously for it meant my future.

When I was a senior in high school, I was squad leader of the 200-member, all-brass marching band, and the president of the NFL — the National Forensic League. The NFL is the leading honor society in the field of speech and debate. For 80 years, its motto is, “Training Youth for Leadership.” My point? It is in this particular area that I found my niche. I was able to jump-start my career in voice acting by starting young, honing my skills and learning what it meant to be part of a team — where what you do individually matters.

I participated in individual events, as opposed to debate. I left debate for future lawyers and politicians — I was an artist. I found myself immersed in telling stories, mostly by James Thurber and Ray Bradbury. While my brothers were bringing home Little League trophies, I brought home blue ribbons in humorous interpretation and after-dinner speaking. This was fodder (raw material, as for artistic creation) for the future. Our team sacrificed our Friday nights in order to catch the 4:00 am bus ride to Urbana — a good three hours away. As long as I was able to sit next to P.W., three hours was not long enough as far as I was concerned, but I am sidetracking.

As an artist-in-the-making, I was a dedicated voice-thespian. No time for romance, my heart was in my vocal chords as I traveled the tri-state area. More fodder for the future, I took classes in speech, in oral interpretation, in children’s literature and in phonetics. It all paid off as I laid each brick on the path towards a future I did not know lay in front of me.