The Road Back to DLI


By Richard Mayer

remember walking to class in the "New Russian Village" back in 1968 or 1969 when someone pointed out an instructor going by. “He’s an American” he said. “Wow,” I thought to myself, “that would really be something if I could do that someday, but my Russian would really have to be good…”

That someday is now. I am currently living my E-3 dream, from the looks of it. And I am having the time of my life to boot!

One day, in the mid-1990’s, I came to Monterey on vacation with my family and looked up one of my old teachers who happened to still be alive, living in Pacific Grove. I went to her apartment and spent a delightful couple of hours chatting in Russian. At the end of our visit she asked me if I was interested in working at the Defense Language Institute (DLI). I was shocked, and said, “Of course,” but the idea seemed rather far-fetched. After all, I had been a computer programmer for the University of Texas for the last 10 years… Nevertheless, curiosity got the better of me and after our conversation I went to the DLI Civilian Personnel office and picked up an application. I didn’t hear from them for over a year… and then suddenly, I received a barrage of phone calls, interviews, language tests, and finally a job offer! Pinch me - I’m really here…

So what happened between that DLI daydream and my return to the School House as Assistant Professor Mayer? Piles of Russian books, handouts, diktanty, reels of tapes (“You Are an Interpreter!”) and dialogy, filtered through my hands. I attended a second Russian course at the DLI, right after the first, followed by a summer in sunny San Angelo. I was then shipped off to West Germany and Outstation Gartow for the next year-and-a-half, where the fog was thicker than Russian borscht. At the end of my tour of duty in Germany I took an early out, and returned home to rest and recuperate and rededicate myself to the language that had become a part of my nightly dreams in the old wooden barrack on Soldier’s Field.

Before long, I was taking Russian classes at the University of Minnesota and trying to figure out how to improve my language skills and apply them in the “real world.” One thing seemed to lead to another. A summer in the Middlebury Russian Language School inspired me to apply to an “exchange” program with Leningrad State University. Soon, I was flying off to the Window on the West. Being a highly proficient musician made me a popular man in the Venice of the North (Leningrad) and I ended up playing the flute in one of the leading underground rock groups of the city.

After my Russian studies ended, I found myself in another “real world,” The Big Apple, working as a Russian interpreter for Columbia Artists. In fact, I may have visited your town sometime during the mid-1970’s, with one of the Soviet entertainment packages I escorted throughout the U.S. It was quite a colorful bunch, often traveling in a bus-and-truck caravan, from Georgian dancers to Cossack folk ensembles, conductors, violinists, and the like. We performed in every state of the Union, shopped at many a Wal-Mart, and strolled the narrow streets of Greenwich Village. There was never a dull, or free, moment, for that matter.

My next adventure was in Texas, where I was hired to translate Soviet database research. The problem was that I had never logged on to a computer in my life, and really didn’t know the difference between hardware and software, even in English. But the two years of “plucking” Russian out of thin air at DLI had convinced me I could do anything. Before long I had mastered the terminology, and had even begun a career as a computer geek. This, of course, led me out of the field of Russian linguistics, right into the thicket of bits and bytes. Eventually, this new career provided a retirement pension and allowed me to go back to my true love - Russian. My destination - to a place south of San Francisco and east of Europe, where I had left my heart… Who would have thought!