When Paul Jobs was discharged from the Coast Guard after World War II, he made a bet with his colleagues. They arrived in San Francisco, where their ship was decommissioned, and Paul bet that he would manage to find a wife within two weeks. He was an engineer, with a muscular body covered in tattoos, six feet tall, and he somewhat resembled James Dean. But it wasn’t his appearance that helped him secure a date with Clara Hagopian, the kind-hearted daughter of two Armenian immigrants; it was the fact that he and his friends had a car at their disposal, unlike the group Clara had originally planned to go out with that night. Ten days later, in March 1946, Paul got engaged to Clara and won the bet. It was a happy marriage that lasted until death parted them, more than forty years later.
Paul Reinhold Jobs had grown up on a farm in Germantown, Wisconsin. Although his father was an alcoholic and sometimes abused him, Paul had a gentle and calm character beneath his tough exterior. He dropped out of high school before graduating and began wandering the Midwest, working wherever he could as a mechanic until he was nineteen, when he enlisted in the Coast Guard, even though he didn’t know how to swim. He was assigned to the transport ship M. C. Meigs and spent most of the war ferrying soldiers to Italy for General Patton. Demonstrating particular skill as a machinist and fireman, he earned a series of commendations, but from time to time he had problems with his superiors and never received a promotion beyond the rank of ordinary seaman.
