1968 - Ted Kaczyncski                                  Home

                                            The Future Unabomber

    I had already decided that I was going to quit my job at Northrup Nortronics when my friend Jim came out to LA in early August. I asked Jim if he could wait two weeks until I could quit my job and then I would go back with him. Before we went back Jim said he wanted to spend a few days in San Francisco at the Berkely campus. This resulted in me having another encounter with someone who would later become nationally infamous.

     Jim grew up in Chicago and said that the older brother of a childhood friend was living there and he wanted to visit him. After we were there a few days Jim must have talked to some people about my being one of the protesters burning their draft card in front of the Pentagon last October and that I had just quit my job in protest of the war because he told me that there was a math professor on campus who heard about me and wanted to talk to me.

Jim must have told him about my degree in math also. That night this young man named "Theodore" who reminded me of the 'Jaws' character out of the James Bond movies who had the powerful teeth came over. He seemed interested in hearing about my job and education and my decision to quit my job. I told him about it and we eventually got around to mathematics and I told him that the U of Ill offered a five year program with a BS in electrical engineering and a BA in mathematics. I told him that when I got to my senior year I really didn't want to leave school yet with the draft and the war and I only needed a few classes to get a BA in math so I decided to go for the five-year program.

I asked him what area of math he was into and he mentioned that he was into "boundary functions." He explained a little about it but it was over my head. Then Jim talked to him for quite some time. Jim was more anti-technology and anti-business than me and was giving his radical ecological terrorist rap which Theodore seemed in agreement with. Jim was always talking about ways to hinder the economy such as a nationwide human blockage of highways – that type of stuff. There was no way I wanted to get in the way of a truck driver needing to support his family. My main concern was just with stopping the war and legalizing marijuana. I asked Theodore when he was going to drop out and he said that he didn't like supporting the war either and that he would be quitting and dropping out soon.

     A few days later, (August 29th) the night before Jim and I left for Champaign-Urbana Jim and I and Theodore watched the 68 Democratic National Convention in Chicago on TV at someone else's house. It got pretty emotional as the Chicago police were rioting. The next day Jim and I left to go back to Champaign-Urbana and I wouldn't hear of Theodore again till many years later.



(See Ted Kaczynski-2)