"My Background as a Self-Made Person"

Part I

Ben Yehuda Street Bombing - February 22, 1948

I have had to fight for survival since the age of four, when I was wounded in a bombing in Jerusalem where fifty-eight people died. My father, who was in the street looking for me, checked all the casualty lists and eventually saw my name on one of them. Because I was thought to be mortally wounded with a fractured skull, they didn’t think I’d survive the night. They therefore put my name on the dead list that was posted in the street.

I had a difficult childhood, having to work at my father's tailor shop delivering merchandise to his clients. At the time, we lived in a large house in Jaffa. My father had turned it into his workshop, while his clothing store was 5 miles away in Tel Aviv. Every day, after delivering big boxes of merchandise tied onto my bike to his store in Tel Aviv, I stopped at my secret hiding place in Manshea on the way home. It was a ruined Arabic town on the Mediterranean Sea. I walked my bike between tumble-down, stone houses to a large bolder near the water's edge. Because I was just a child, I was not aware of the unexploded mortar bombs that were scattered all over. After I leaned my bike against the bolder, I climbed on top of it and sat, looking at the sea. The tide came in and covered my bike above the pedals. It didn’t recede for the next few hours.

I didn’t mind at all. I just sat there and gazed at the big, orange ball of sun that drifted into the sea, painting the sky and sea orange-red. I was hypnotized and for a brief moment in time was able to forget about my unhappy reality. When the water finally receded, I walked my bike back to the black-top road, not realizing I could have stepped on an unexploded mortar shell and gotten badly hurt.

“Where have you been for the past few hours,” I was asked after I arrived home. I didn’t respond and my family, who felt I was a dreamer who wouldn't get far in life, got used to the fact that I would disappear every afternoon for a few hours.

When I graduated from elementary school at the age of fourteen, my father felt I should work in his shop rather than go to high school. In fact, my family felt I should eventually be apprenticed to a carpenter or plumber, feeling I needed to learn a trade. One day my eighteen-year-old sister-in-law got into an argument with my father, telling him that she had to go to work at the age of twelve because her father, who went to fight the Nazis, died in a prison camp. She didn’t want the same fate for me, so she offered to pay for my high school tuition. The compromise was that I would go to vocational school and learn a trade.

After school, I had to work in my father's shop, ironing coat seams with a five-pound iron and cutting the material with an electric scissor instead of doing my homework. In the mornings, on my way to school, I had to deliver the merchandise to the store in Tel Aviv, which caused me to show up at school an hour late every day.

Part II

1962

Israel aircraft patrolling the border 

At the age of eighteen I was drafted into the army like everyone who lived in Israel. Because I had lost vision in my right eye as a result of a broken skull I suffered in the 1948 bombing, I was given the option not to serve in the Air Force. I opted to stay and serve like everybody else. I became a sergeant and ran the office for the aircraft hangar. My job was to monitor the hours the Pipers flew and to determine when it was time to bring them in for maintenance. The Pipers had two 50 mm machine guns mounted under their wings and two large spot lights. At night, they patrolled the long borders looking for terrorists.         

When it was time for me to be released from the Air Force, my Sergeant Major, who had taken me under his wing and took care of me like a compassionate, older brother, asked me to extend my service and attend the university located across the river. When I told him that I would rather leave the country after having an unhappy childhood, he responded, “Dani, you are a dreamer. The streets in New York City are not paved with gold. You’ll be better off staying in the Air Force, going to school, getting married and having a family."

It was an endless discussion that continued for the last six months of my service on the Air Force base.

Part III

 New York

I couldn’t wait to leave Israel and ignored my older brother's advice to study at the University of Tel Aviv. He still lives in Israel and today is an international lawyer. I told my mother, eldest brother and sister who lived in New York that I planned to go to Yeshiva University, which at the time had a special scholarship for Israeli students who had served in the army. My family in New York had a different idea about what I should do. They rented an apartment for my mother and told me that I had to go to work and give my salary to her so she would be able to bring my father and younger brother to New York. When I asked them to share the cost, they told me they couldn't because they had children. 

Within two weeks after I arrived in New York my brother got me a job coating prescription lenses, working eighty hours per week for one dollar per hour. It was the wrong job for me. The lenses were coated in a drum bell at high temperatures and after they were taken out they had to be cooled off. If they were put on the table too soon, they would explode. If one of the lenses that exploded had hit my face it could have blinded me since I had vision in only one eye. Nevertheless, at the end of each week I gave my full paychecks to my mother.

  This lasted for three years until my father and younger brother came to New York. Against my eldest brother's advice, who was concerned about the income I brought home, I enrolled in a computer school. After I graduated it took me a full year before I got my first job. When I took the IBM aptitude test I failed because it had geometric figures. I had no visual depth of field because I had a vision in only my left eye, so I couldn't perceive three-dimensional designs. I did excel when I took the NCR test that was a road map and scored ten out of eleven correct answers. I was told it was the highest score. Unfortunately, I wasn’t hired because I had spelling mistakes on the application.

Part IV

Brandy, my best friend

After I got the job as a computer operator I worked twelve hours a day waiting for the slow tape drives to finish sorting the data that today takes milliseconds on a smart phone. Because I had time on my hands I picked up a Cobol Programming manual and studied it. My family and people at work felt was a big joke and that I was wasting my time.

An NCR salesman visited the company one day and saw me studying the Cobol Manual with the aid of an English-Hebrew Dictionary. He asked me what I was doing. I explained to him that I was trying to study programming.

“Dani, practice makes it perfect,” he said.

 “What does that mean?” I asked, not understanding what the expression meant.

“Keep studying and one day you’ll understand,” was his answer.

Fifty years later I can still visualize him standing in front of me with his tailored suit and his perfectly groomed haircut.

Once I mastered the programming skills my boss, who viewed me as a threat, told me that I didn’t know what I was doing. He said the only reason I got the job was because he felt sorry for me.

* * *

     One night the phone rang at 4 a.m., awakening me from a restless sleep. When I picked it up I heard my older sister crying. I assumed she was about to tell me that my younger sister, who had a cancerous brain tumor, had just died. I was wrong.

“Our father just died from a heart attack,” she said, talking through her tears.     

My first reaction was that it must have been a nightmare, but then I realized it was a new dimension to my sad reality. Six months earlier my ex-wife divorced me, saying the only thing that made her unhappy was leaving her dog behind with me. That dog later died in a tragic accident. To add insult to injury, I was in bad financial shape and was receiving eviction notices from my landlord every month for being behind in my rent.

Before my father's funeral took place, I had to borrow money to pay my share of the funeral expenses, even though my older brother drove a brand-new Cadillac, had an auto supply store and owned a $500,000 home in Fort Lee, NJ. He felt we should all pay our share of my father's funeral expenses despite the fact I couldn’t afford it and my sister's husband had just lost his business, wiping out their entire life savings.

* * *

The comptroller where I worked heard about the tragic loss of the dog my wife left behind and tried to convince me to get another. My first reaction was that I couldn’t. He wouldn’t take “no” for an answer and told me that his neighbor in Orangeburg, New York had a six-month-old Cocker Spaniel for adoption and I should at least see the dog. I visited the family and realized it was a beautiful six-month-old Springer Spaniel named Brandy. I just couldn’t imagine taking her home as I thought about the dog my wife left behind. I was ready to leave without her. The decision, however, was made for me when Brandy jumped on the sofa, put her head in my lap and started licking my hand. When I opened the car door ready to drive home, she jumped into the driver's seat and refused to get out.

Brandy became my source of emotional support during the five years of my sister’s illness. I would return every night from Presbyterian Hospital where my sister Sarah recuperated from each of her surgeries, removing the brain tumor that kept coming back. It was a long, sad five years coming home depressed to the empty apartment. My only solace was finding Brandy there, who always gave me a warm welcome.

Brandy was a possessive dog and didn’t approve of the girlfriends I had. At the time, I was only able to have a sexual relationship without being able to get emotionally involved. I couldn’t get over the memory of how my ex-wife left, notifying me on the phone that we were getting divorced while Sarah was in the middle of a six-hour surgery to remove the cancerous brain tumor. The one that kept coming back.

Part V

        Greenwich Village

 I was already a bitter old man at the age of 29 when I met Ellen, my current wife, whom I've lived with happily for the past forty-three years. Brandy resented the fact that she had to share Ellen and her two Siamese cats with me and gave them a hard time. Eventually Brandy learned to accept everybody as her pals. She did, of course, let them know that she was the “best friend” in my life.

Feeling that I missed something in life, I convinced Ellen to take 5-week camping vacation with Brandy in Canada and the National Parks in the West. While on vacation I had to call my boss once a week and explain to him how to make changes to the programs requested by the managers.

* * *

We lived in Greenwich Village when Ellen convinced me to enroll in Empire College, a part of SUNY, even though I was afraid of school because I didn’t have a formal education. The program I attended was like a “university without walls,” studying on a one-to-one basis with a mentor. For the next two and a half years I took literature courses with Dr. Stern, who was the Dean of Literature at Brooklyn College, and read twentieth century classics. Each semester lasted six weeks during which I had to read six books like "Crime and Punishment" by Dostoyevsky and write three compare-and-contrasts papers. Dr. Stern, pleased with my work, always told me that if he had to grade my work he would have given me an “A.”

Because the Dean of Empire forgot about me, I accumulated fifty credits in literature. When she realized this, she required me to take at least two business courses and write an essay of my work experience as a computer programmer. I wrote a paper on how to modernize an out-dated computer system like the one my company was using. It was sent for evaluation to Dr. Flynn at Brooklyn Polytechnic University, who evaluated it and awarded me fifty credits for the knowledge I had acquired reading computer manuals. When I met him he told me that I had better leave my job because my boss, who was using out-dated computer techniques, was holding me back. If I didn't leave soon I’d miss “the last technology train.” 

The New York Jewish Theological Seminary, where I had an evaluation of my Jewish studies, awarded me forty credits for Hebrew literature and history that I learned mainly from reading my older brother's encyclopedias in Israel. The photography mentor, who was one of Life Magazine's original photographers, viewed my landscape photographs and offered me twelve credits without teaching me or six credits and three months of private lessons photographing only portraits and developing 10 rolls of black and white contact sheets every week as my homework assignment. I opted to go with the private lessons and graduated from Empire with 156 credits.

* * *

After ten years, I finally left that company where I was working. It took me three years working twelve-hour days at Service Bureaus to catch up with the computer industry by reading the IBM Manufacturing and Distribution manuals and modifying the software code. This resulted in enabling me to open a computer consulting firm https://www.smcdata.com/, which helped companies modernize their outdated computer systems. It was modeled on the Empire College essay I had submitted to Dr. Flynn.

In 1985 I was invited to go to Atlanta and represent the Mid-Atlantic states at the IBM round table seminar. I discussed with top-level executives how to improve their software based on my reputation in the industry as an expert in the IBM Distribution and Manufacturing software. Since then I have received many awards from IBM and VAI, the current company I represent https://www.smcdata.com/awards/.

Part VI

My Current Life

My “other life” is creative writing and photography. My business articles were published by major magazines such as About.com, Global Trade, Sideroad.com and Progressive Distributor and can be found on our website. My motivation articles https://www.smcdata.com/articles/business-motivation-articles.html helped people who lost their jobs to start a new career. Through my large data base of contacts, many of them were able to find new employment.

Early in our relationship my wife and I traveled cross country in Canada and the National Parks, camping in a tent for five weeks with Brandy, our Springer Spaniel.

           Our other outdoor activities included skiing, canoeing 12 miles on the Battenkill River in VT, snowmobiling, and biking. The photographs we took attending photography workshops in places like Death Valley, Martha’s Vineyard and Nova Scotia can be found in our photo gallery https://www.smcdata.com/gallery/    

Despite a bad background of obstacles I have experienced, I’m a happy man and don’t feel I have missed anything out of life. A sleep therapist once told me, “Dani, I’m fifty years old. I hope I will achieve half of what you did before I kick the bucket."

• My other life is creative writing and photography. My book ‘My Best Friend’ that can be found on Amazon https://www.amazon.com/My-Best-Friend-Dani-Kaplan/dp/1542885647/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1496067060&sr=8-1&keywords=dani+kaplan describes my wife and me camping in a tent with  Brandy our Springer Spaniel for 5 weeks in Canada and the National Parks in the West. 
• Since 1980, Dani Kaplan has worked with corporate executives to improve efficiencies in the warehouse by implementing new software solutions resulting in productivity improvements and substantial savings. Dani's information can be found on his website https://www.smcdata.com/