T HE I MPORTANCEOFA S OUND E DUCATION

Jim Megellas’ parents came to the United States from Greece in 1915, two years before his birth. They spoke Greek at home, ate traditional Mediterranean foods and upheld many of the traditions of their native land.

Megellas said the juxtaposition of his parents’ culture and the American culture helped him to be sensitive to the diversity in people he dealt with and worked with throughout his life.

“My Greek heritage gave me a sense of a multicultural environment and gave me an appreciation for all sorts of people and a tolerance for others,” he says. “It is all a part of your upbringing.”

He is fluent in several languages including Greek and Arabic. “I think it’s a great thing for people to be literate in more than one language. You are a broader person and you see things in a broader light,” he says.

Growing up in the middle of the Depression, a challenging period of personal sacrifice and uncertainty, he says, he never lost sight of one thing: the importance of a sound education.

“Times were hard,” he says. But hardships only made Megellas try harder to make his parents’ dream of a better life for their children a reality. “I had no idea but I knew that with a college degree you had a much better chance of getting a job when you got out of college,” Megellas says.

In between high school graduation in 1934 and entering college in the fall of 1937, Megellas worked to earn money and also trained with the Civilian Conservation Corps, a job he says built character and discipline.

For him, simply going to college and working toward that degree wasn’t enough. When an opportunity presented itself, he grabbed onto it. During summers in the days before refrigeration as we know it, Megellas delivered ice to residents, and he also worked as a construction worker. During the school year in college, he worked in the commons waiting tables and on weekends he worked in his brother’s tavern in Fond du Lac.

He joined the Ripon ROTC program because “it was something else that would help you get a job.” He was commissioned from the ROTC program as a second lieutenant. He majored in mathematics, belonged to a fraternity and lettered in boxing and in football. He recalls a second home-away-from-home in downtown Ripon, at a Greek restaurant owned by a family named Pappas. “I would hang out there, and he’d take care of me,” he says of the owner

Megellas recalls the Campus Cinema, the first of Ben Marcus’ chain of movie theaters, showing Shirley Temple on the silver screen.

But although he had fun in college, Megellas stayed focused on his future. Landing a job weighed heavy on his mind. “Graduating and getting a job was a big thing,” he says. He never lost sight of that and regularly set and attained goals for himself. Like the summer he got his private pilot’s license from aviation legend Steve Wittman, founder of Wittman Field in Oshkosh, Wis.

Later, at the age of 53, while working for the government, he earned his master’s degree in international public policy from Johns Hopkins University Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies.

Today, as an octogenarian, Megellas says his days at Ripon College are far behind him. The list of classmates remaining grows smaller each year. But his fondness for the school remains constant. “I liked Ripon College because it was small and the students were very close,” Megellas says. “It was a very intimate relationship and one that is carried over the years. You got to know everyone. It was a very friendly atmosphere.”