International House Berkeley

54 Terje Jacobsen 1946 – 1948 I had a wonderful time in Berkeley. I really loved the place, and I've been back several times. I really loved the place, and I've been back several times. I'll be eighty- eight this summer; I'm no spring chicken, you know....They seem to be long-living in Berkeley – practically all my old friends are still around. Very nice. I arrived at I-House in October of 1946. I had worked my way all the way across to Chicago; I was working on a Norwegian ship and then had come by boat, up the St. Lawrence River and across all the Great Lakes – it was quite a journey. They didn't know what to do with me – I seemed to be the first immigrant who had gone that way. So then I took a train across the country to Oakland. It was such a relief from the war and everything, to get to California and the sunshine. No ruins like in Europe, bombed to pieces.... It was no problem to get a Visa to come to America. I applied to the American Embassy in Oslo, and I didn't have an immigrant Visa, I had a student Visa, and that was much easier to get. I had no idea what Berkeley was. I applied to six different institutions – I think two or three of them were in the Midwest – and also to the University in Montreal, which turned out to be French-speaking. And then, of course, I was accepted to UC Berkeley, and I wanted to go – thinking about California, sunshine and palm trees, and things like that. Yes, Berkeley met my expectations. There were some very interesting people at I-House at the time. One of my friends at the time was an Englishman who, later on, won the Nobel Prize in chemistry – Geoffrey Wilkinson. He kept in touch up until the time he died, a few years ago. Another Englishman, and one of the first ones you noticed when you walked around – he looked like a very studious character – was Al Shipman. When he introduced himself as Al Shipman, I said, "Are you the Al Shipman?" And he said, "I am, but please shut up about it." Because he was one of the most decorated pilots in the RAF [Royal Air Force]. He flew from 1939 until 1945. He was so secretive that he didn't even tell his fiancée. You know, his fiancée, Marie Bernadette, didn't even know who he was. When he left the I-House, they asked her: "Do you know who that character was who you are engaged to?" And she had no idea; he never talked about the war to her. So that's British understatement. Of course, there were people like Lottie, who came out of concentration camps, so it was quite an experience to live at the I-House at the time. I'm not sure how I ended up at I-House. I was advised to go up there when I registered at University. I was very lucky, because that was a wonderful place to be at that particular time. I was at the I-House for a little over two years, and then I moved out and took an apartment on Stuart Street. And the last couple of years I lived up on Shasta Road.

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