Stringing together a cross-country life

Herb Ring likes to travel around the world to experience different

cultures, with his most recent trip being to Vietnam. He left the

cold of the East Coast and came to live in the sunny, warm climate of

Newport Beach after his children graduated college.

Though a little older than many who have come to California to

seek new opportunities, Ring was able to do just that. He had a small

shop that strung tennis rackets for all the major tennis

manufacturers, such as Wilson, Head, Dunlop and Prince.

The 70-year-old recently sat down with the Pilot’s Luis Pena and

spoke about his life from East to West.

Where did you grow up?

I grew up in a city called Everett, which is a suburb of Boston,

during the early years of the Great Depression. My father was a

plumber, my mother was a homemaker and I grew up in what you would

call a working class area of mixed culture -- Italian, Scottish and

Irish. Growing up in Boston and being surrounded by all the mementos

of the Revolutionary War and Paul Revere gave you a significant

appreciation of the evolvement of our country and the patriots who

served it.

Because it was during the early years of the Depression, most

cities sponsored outdoor band concerts that were free to the public,

which sort of took the burden and the heaviness of the era off of the

people’s lives.

What kind of childhood did you have?

It was relatively happy in the fact that my father, being a

plumber, was able to find work and as a result we were able to stay

off welfare. Very ordinary. We were a normal family.

I had an older sister and a younger brother. My father worked and

my mother was a homemaker, and we had a very simplistic life, as most

of the families did at those particular times. We were in a

working-class area, so consequently there were no extravagances. It

was middle America.

How did you end up in Newport-Mesa?

After my two kids graduated from college, I decided that I had

enough of the cold weather and putting on snow tires and cold feet,

and felt it was time to go to a warmer climate. A friend from Chicago

suggested the Newport area as being ideal for weather and for growth

opportunities, and we decided to sell my business and move there.

What are your greatest accomplishments in life?

I’m going to be very prosaic and say my greatest accomplishments

are having two very, very successful kids in every right and to have

stable and productive lives, which means free of calling on me for

anything.

If you could re-do one moment or incident in your life, what would

it be?

It would be moving at an early age to California and going into

the real estate business. That would have been in the ‘50s, when the

boom was just starting and the possibilities were endless. Had I come

out here at that time, where the growth was expanding because of all

the veterans who came here after the war, I would have been able to

participate in this growth.

What profession other than yours would you like to have tried?

I would have liked to have tried being a travel tour guide, and I

still would like to do it. I find that it’s an enjoyable way to

interact with people, to see countries and to keep alive and alert as

to what is going on in the world.

What is the greatest lesson you’ve learned in your life?

Acceptance of other people and cultures unlike my own. Tolerance

of people who don’t believe exactly as I do, but have a right to

their own feelings. Well, for one thing, it’s a big wide world that

we live in and to quote a trite phrase, we all should and must get

along. I know that the people of India and the people of Egypt don’t

think and feel the same way as I do, and that doesn’t bother me,

because in relationship I don’t think and feel the same way as they

do.

What do you treasure most?

I’ll have to say, in general, my wife and my kids and my

grandkids. I treasure them because they give me support, they give me

joy, they give me comfort and they give me a sense of being. And the

fact that I live in a great country that I have the freedom to do as

I want, how I want as long as I can afford it.

How did the Great Depression affect you?

How it affected me and most of my friends was the fact that we saw

our parents struggling to get by. Many people were on welfare, and

that was a very hard time for most kids, and it gave us sort of an

idea that not everything was peaches and cream.

What did you like or dislike most about high school?

What I liked most about high school was that it was carefree. It

was a certain time of innocence, where the most important thing in

your mind was whether or not you are going to have a date for the

prom ... What I didn’t like about high school was the fact that there

would be certain cliques of which you were totally out of their

circle, which gave you somewhat of a feeling of self awareness when

you weren’t included in some of these activities of the “in crowd.”

What was it like being a young person and hearing that Pearl

Harbor had been attacked?

I think I was a freshman in high school, maybe a sophomore in high

school. You didn’t grasp it as fully. You just said, ‘Wow what’s

going on?’ And then you went to school and everyone was asking the

same questions: what and how and why? It was a state of pretty much

confusion and apprehension throughout the school.