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He lives well, travels, learns and helps students do the same
By Amy Welch, Managing Editor, Florida State Times
Herb Rand, 79, was in a "happy glow" as a child. He says the sun in the morning was "just great to me."
The same size as in high school (175 pounds), the tall, white-haired, bearded and cheerful soul still has a flair for living that many people search for their whole lives.
And Rand wants to help them find it. Though he managed to do very well with education, work and marriage, he is still not happy that he had no career counseling. So he gave FSU $100,000 to help produce counselors for the next generation.
As for himself, "when I was in high school, no one ever suggested I go on to college."
Rand finished college anyway, though not immediately. He studied at four universities from Iowa to Florida, rose to commander in the Navy, went on to real estate, was a career consultant at Florida's Department of Education and now is growing pine trees near Monticello. He was an aviator and a world traveler. He earned a master's and a doctorate in counseling from FSU.
But at times he felt frustrated, trying to find just one guidance counselor who would steer him toward the right university, the right career.
Now, to save others from that frustration, Rand's gift goes to the Center for Technology in Counseling and Career Development in FSU's College of Education.
Rand's trial-and-error method of choosing a career took him through some outstanding errors before he landed in the Navy, and succeeded.
He started with a football scholarship at Drake University in Iowa. The scholarship ended with Rand - a bit smaller than his teammates - on the sidelines, unconscious.
"Suddenly I wondered, 'How did I get here? What day is this?' ... I decided football was not my thing," Rand explained with a hearty laugh.
So he transferred to the University of Missouri, planning to be a forest ranger. But two years after, he found out the university offered no forestry major.
Then came World War II.
Rand decided to be an aviator, and began a string of successes.
He started training as an aviator cadet in Jacksonville, Fla., and was then transferred to Pensacola, where he and two other cadets soon heard of the Florida State College for Women.
They went to Tallahassee and stepped into the Sweet Shop where a "beautiful" girl was studying. She looked up only when the juke box played the song Blue Daniel. So Rand and his friends played the song over and over.
They got to talking, and Josie Kinsey lent them her car to go down to Wakulla Springs. She and Rand were soon married, illegally by the Navy's standards at the time, when cadets were not allowed to marry.
So Herb and Josie sneaked off to the courthouse in Crawfordville for a binding and meaningful, but secret, ceremony. When they walked in, they saw a pig in the courtroom, and the judge delayed the wedding until he could get the animal out.
"You can't have a girl in every port because I'll be in every port," Rand says his bride told him soon after their wedding.
She handled Navy life just fine, teaching music and playing accordion and piano for the Navy guys.
She wanted to change education, fight racism and solve integration problems, Rand said. She taught for 10 or 12 years, and they had a son, Herb Rand II. She earned a B.A. and an M.A. in music education from Florida State.
Together, they traveled to California, Alaska, Bali, the Greek islands, Scandinavia and many other places.
In 1962, Commander Rand retired from the Navy.
He and his wife attended the University of West Florida together the year it opened in 1968. He received a bachelor's degree in English that year, often telling classmates that he was the slowest student there because he started earning his bachelor's in 1936.
After graduation, Rand still searched for what he wanted to do in his life. He enrolled at FSU in 1969 and earned a master's degree in less than a year. He wanted classes in vocational counseling, but mostly found psychological and emotional counseling instead.
Rand went to DOE as a career consultant, and soon decided to go for a Ph.D. That's when he found a professor who guided him through difficult times.
Joyce Puckett would not let him give up on his doctoral degree. He was dragging his feet, he said, because he had a full-time job. She told him, "You've started this and you're going to finish it."
In 1978, at age 60, he got his doctorate in counseling.
Rand still wants to help students decide what they will do with their lives. His donation to the university is doing that - giving scholarships to students preparing to be career counselors. "I can't help everyone," Rand said. "But this is one thing I want to do to help because it's the right thing. And I feel good about it."
In 1993, Josie Rand died.
He describes her as a beautiful person who would frequently comment, "It was a very good year."
Rand hasn't given up on life or lost the happy feeling he had.
He wants to become computer literate. He plans to drive across the country with his 83 year-old brother-in-law, and he recently climbed a mountain in New Zealand with his granddaughter.
He expects he has a good 20 years left on him to travel across the country, again. And climb mountains with Stephanie, who is 13 and probably has to run to keep up with him.