On 5/15/2018, at the request of Kelly McDonald (since our planned speaker could not make it), Charles Schultz told the Magnolia Rotary Club a little bit about his life. Pictured above is Charles Schultz.
Charles told everyone that he was born in Toledo, Ohio in 1941. His father was an airplane pilot that was actually licensed at the early age of 16 which made him the youngest licensed pilot in the United States at the time. Because his father was a pilot for Panagra at the time and he regularly flew between the United States and South America, Charles grew up in Lima, Peru which was a good half way place between the southern tip of South America and the northern part of the United States. He attended the University of Florida and graduated in 1964 as an Electrical Engineer.
Because his research had been in Artificial Intelligence (AI), Charles was limited in finding a job in that field because at the time, computers were entirely too slow to create a neural network and in addition, no one was really interested in AI. Therefore, he founded his own company that built specialized medical equipment. At the time, a professor he knew had developed a program using linear regression techniques to predict if someone had brain damage or not. The professor's program proved to be accurate 60% of the time. Charles built a program that was able to achieve an 85% accuracy. It would have achieved a 95% accuracy but doctors at the time did not believe that the 10% difference was actually considered brain damage. However, 20 years later, Charles was proved right when doctors agreed with him. The company that Charles started also built a Stimulus Generator that was able to cure a girl who had been sneezing for 150 days. This allowed his company to build more and grow.
Charles is now retired but told us that his son is the CFO for Lexicon Pharmaceuticals and his daughter is a cashier at a local movie theater. Charles also told us that he joined the Rotary in 1983 and was a member of the Gainesville, Florida Rotary Club until he moved to the Spring area with the birth of his first granddaughter.
Charles then answered several questions from the audience.
