Sugar said being roughed up provided an invaluable experience that became useful as he climbed up the corporate ladder.
"You certainly learn how to deal with adverse situations and you learn how to handle yourself," he said. As the smartest kid in school, Sugar was voted the "most likely to succeed" and later was the valedictorian for the graduating class of 1965.
According to his high school yearbook, Sugar was not only the youngest graduate that year but also was a consummate nerd. The 1965 "Pylon" lists Sugar as having been a president of the school's geekiest groups, including the math club, the band and the scholarship society, and he was captain of the academic quiz team.
There seemed to be only one other student who could rival Sugar academically, a sophomore from Hawthorne who would later become his wife. Valerie Higuchi would graduate two years after Sugar, also as a valedictorian.
Valerie's father, Tamotsu "Tom" Higuchi, had served with the famed "Go for Broke" U.S. Army unit, the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, during World War II. The Japanese American unit was the most decorated during the war.
While her father fought in Europe, Valerie's mother lived in an Arkansas internment camp. After the war, the Higuchis returned to Hawthorne.
"We grew up in a blue-collar neighborhood. But his parents and mine were very bright people, and in today's world they would have gone to college," Valerie Sugar said.
The couple had met when Valerie was in sixth grade, and according to Valerie they officially began dating when she was in ninth grade.
After high school, Sugar attended El Camino College in Torrance because his parents couldn't afford a four-year university.
But Sugar would excel, and he was offered full scholarships to Caltech and UCLA. Figuring Valerie was likely to go to UCLA, he gave up Caltech for Westwood.
"We tell everybody that if our children made a similar decision, we would have been all over them." Valerie Sugar said.
The couple married in 1971 shortly after Valerie graduated from UCLA. They have two grown children; the older one, a son, graduated from Princeton University, and their daughter is a Dartmouth graduate.
There was little doubt that Sugar was among the brightest even at a time when the industry was attracting the nation's best minds as the Cold War ratcheted up the development of sophisticated weapons.
