John with his “two best friends”, a basketball and a bass.

John Pokoski

by Richard Messner

John Pokoski was born in the midst of the depression in 1937. He was a miracle child from the start having been born to his mother who had St. Louis Encephalitis. She had survived but was an invalid for 30 years. John’s grandparents were all from Poland. He was born of parents with great pride in family. His father only had a 3^rd grade education because he had to go to work to help the family survive. His mother had only an 8^th grade education. John had no relatives who had ever gone to college. In fact, he did not even know anyone who went to college, with the exception of the family doctor. John grew up poor by today’s standards, but for the thirties they had a lot. They had food, a phone, and an old car. He had one pair of shoes which served as snow boots, basketball shoes, and his Sunday best.

John is, to say the least, a sports a baseball and outdoors nut. He lived a block from the ballpark, and being the fan of  baseball that he was, he became one of the "knot hole" gang. This gave kids free entry to the St. Louis Browns games. However, he had to pay the regular 70 cent bleacher price to see the Cardinals. He saw 50 games/year. He saw Musial, DiMaggio, Mantle, Mays, Robinson, Williams, and Aaron to name a few. He also had a favorite pastime of fishing in the Mississippi River (although he did not do that during baseball games).

Although he was not aware of it at the time, John attended the first school in St. Louis to be integrated. He was a good student, working hard and becoming valedictorian. John was a BIG kid and very competitive. He became captain of the football and basketball teams. He had various football scholarship offers, but he won and accepted a competitive non-sectarian academic scholarship. John attended the awards ceremony even though his father was being operated on for a brain tumor. He took the bus from the luncheon to the hospital and arrived to see a blood soaked surgeon say that it was malignant and that his father had only six months to live, and that the bill was $1,000.00 dollars.

John chose engineering at his high school career day by process of elimination. He was good at math, he wanted a career, but not as an accountant or lawyer. He thought that he would make a good doctor, but he could not consider it because of the cost. So engineering it was.

John attended St. Louis University, a Jesuit school with a strong philosophical base. John was a good student but was under constant pressure to retain high grades to maintain his scholarship. John got interested in computers from an IBM interviewer in his senior year . During his college days John supervised an IEEE student computer competition with other engineering departments. After graduation John accepted a position at IBM in Endicott, NY. He spent four and one half years as a development engineer, a time he recalls as very exciting for him personally and professionally. He helped develop the early computers that evolved into the ones we use everyday.

In 1962 he married his wife Jane. Their first child, Jennie, was born in 1963 in New York. John went to graduate school in Arizona and obtained his MSEE at Arizona State University in 1965. During this time John and Jane’s second child, Johnny, was born in 1964. To obtain his Ph.D degree, John moved to the outback of Montana. He attended Montana State University and earned his Ph.D. in 1967 with a dissertation on sampled data control. The Pokoski’s third child, Andy, was born in 1966. John has some good trout fishing stories from his wild days in Montana, so if you get a chance to talk to him about it don’t forget to sit down for a spell.

In 1967, John started another facet of his life, that of an assistant professor at UNH. The Pokoski’s fourth and final child, Joe, was born in New Hampshire two weeks after driving from Montana with three children who had chicken pox. They bought a farm in Durham where they still live today. John was more a "city-slicker" than a farm hand and had to learn it all the hard way. But he can now raise farm animals and tend a mean garden that would rival many a New Hampshire Yankee.

John taught and researched in control systems for the first six years. He worked quite a bit with Professor Charlie Taft of the Mechanical Engineering Department. But computers were in John’s head and he switched back to his major interest largely due to the teaching needs of the ECE Department. John has an impressive set of accomplishments and contributions to the Department. He initiated and first taught 10 courses, and was the instigator for the Computer Engineering Option and the Department’s name change to the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. During his tenure here he has been advisor to 22 MS students and 3 Ph.D students. He served as department chairman for nine years. John says that his main enjoyment in teaching is seeing students work hard and learn, especially average IQ students who do their best.

Of course not everything is peaches and cream in one's career. John's biggest frustration is not Money or Bureaucracy at UNH but seeing some talented smart students underachieve and waste time and money by being unwilling to work. Also he is extremely disappointed by the lack of personal responsibility and accountability in some people (especially younger people). John's big fear is that this is being fed by "political correctness," where the emphasis is on self-esteem and ANY criticism is bad. This is compounded by the government’s and establishment’s emphasis on minorities, quotas and an overall "passing the buck" mindset when it comes to accountability. This trend is counter-productive to everyone, but is being "bred in" to our society. It is something John thinks should be dealt with before it becomes irreversible.

John will be retiring within the next several years and it is this author's hope that he will continue to stay on and offer his wisdom and advice for many a year to come.