You said both of your parents were of English background. READ: That was my educational background. READ: In those days we called them BS degrees. SMITH: What was your degree when you graduated? I did the rest of my degree requirements at Syracuse and graduated from there in January of 1958. I’ve always felt I should be on the other side of that mike talking to people in radio. In the back of my head I still, to this day, have a great romance for radio. I was in business for a year and then transferred to the school of speech because they had the major in radio and television, which was my interest at that point. I learned how to become a pretty decent student while I was there.īased on that basic training, I transferred to Syracuse University in 1955. We had our opportunity to get that firm foundation of business. It always felt to me when I first got there like a school for wayward boys. It is now a four-year school, and it is also coed. In those days it was Nichols Junior College. I went out on my own, unbeknownst to my family and got enrolled at a junior college in Dudley, Massachusetts. I felt it was important to get a good, solid, basic business background. As life goes on you have to compete with people. I wasn’t quite sure where I was going to school, at that point, but I knew I better do something. I was a heavy duty, arts-area, hands-on person because I was great at print shop, and auto mechanics I and II, because my dad had service stations. I grew up and went through the local public school system and from there, Great Neck High School. He was running service stations in Great Neck, Long Island, New York, as we refer to it. He had started with Henry Ford way back when he (Dad) first came off the ship. My dad had been in a service station operation. They were living in a town called Great Neck. My parents were both kind of new to this country. I was born in Long Island in a hospital in Mineola, New York. READ: We should mention that Dick Tracy just opened in the movie houses, so if anybody really listens to this they’ll realize at what point in time we are. Would you tell us when and where you were born? Les, the usual procedure is to start at the beginning. This is one of a series of oral histories of pioneers and leaders in the cable television industry that is being done under the auspices of the National Cable Television Center and Museum at Penn State University. Read’s office in the HBO Building at 1100 6th Avenue, New York City. READ: Director of Special Projects and Promotions at HBO. SMITH: This is Tape 1, Side A of the oral history interview of Les Read of Home Box Office.
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