Claudia Logsdon Gay
Athens, OH
Photos - 1968
Information - March, 2004
E-mail - [email protected]
High School Activities:
Secretary, Junior Council on World Affairs; Dramatics Club, Math Club, Geology Club. Had to move due to parents' nasty little divorce-type proceedings. Commuted from Garfield Heights for a while, then moved to Bedford Heights. Finally found a high school where I could graduate early. Once I had to leave Maple Heights (in junior year) it became clear to me that I was wasting my time in schools that didn't have Advanced College Prep, as I had been in since 7th grade at Maple. Graduated August 1968 from Valley Forge High School, Parma Heights, Ohio, in a class of nine students. One other student was graduating early, the rest were making up for lost time by taking one summer school class. I had to take the fourth year of English in summer school, you see.
Higher Education:
Associate of Arts, Ohio University, 1978; B.S. in Computer Science, 1983; One year Certificate in Indexing, Open University, UK (by correspondence); Two-year Certificate in Electronics Servicing from a vocational school, also in 1992.
Publications:
Bibliography on Self-Sufficiency, 1985; Index, Volume II, Women's Studies Abstracts.
Work History:
Too many jobs to mention, working my way through college, but a few: Third Deputy Clerk of Courts, Meigs County Ohio Common Pleas Court (for two years); Library Associate at Ohio University Library Government Documents and in the Reference Department (total 12 years); I've had ten different cottage industry-type of businesses--mostly typing and typesetting, but some remodeling, furniture-making, indexing, chicken crate manufacturing; also worked as a cook, waitress, factory worker, and finally, as a quality control inspector on a prototype, robotic manufacturing line for circuit boards at Hewlett-Packard in Loveland, Colorado. Presently an historical cryptanalyst, writing a book called Decoding Shakespeare, an ongoing project that's been posted at http://www.blogit.com/Blogs/Affil/?9650.
Interesting Rumors:
While working at the Ohio University Library in 1986, I invited a couple of people over for dinner. I mentioned near the end of the dinner how I'd discovered a coded message in Shakespeare's plays in the year 1977. One thing led to another and I told them how I'd gotten started looking for a code in Shakespeare by my mother, who'd introduced me to her hobbies of puzzles and mysteries when I was a kid--specifically, cryptanalysis and reading mystery stories. She also told me she had been a writer, but wouldn't tell me her pen names. She said that the children of famous people end up with inferiority complexes when people find out they are not as brilliant as their parents. She also intimated that she "could do better"--referring to the writing she'd published. I've since found a few of her works.
In this way, she prepared me for the authorship controversy that has plagued Shakespeare for hundreds of years. I told my dinner guests that people had been trying to find coded messages in Shakespeare for hundreds of years. One of them said "That's the Holy Grail!" It turned out that this person was a cousin of George Lucas.
The story of my mother's relationship with me is told by looking at the relationship between Indiana Jones and his father in "Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade." My second husband was a math professor at OU, named Robert Atalla. Sean Connery did a good job portraying his dress and mannerisms. There is a small "bone" that got thrown to me by Lucas. When Indy first met Elsa, the Austrian lady, and they were walking away from the ferry, and Elsa had said "He was as giddy as a school boy" in reference to Indy's father. Indy answered "What? Attila the professor?"