In terms of school, I always had lots of friends. I always had fun, which was good. I thought that was great, and then in my neighborhood I was on the football team and on the baseball team, but it meant that I had to have a lot of training from my brother.

I had to learn to throw not like a girl. I had to learn how to really crash into whoever I was trying to knock down and I became a very good – I was a little girl but I was a very good football player. I was a very important member of the team.

Then one of the big deals in the family was whether I would go to private school or public school. I did well in school and there was no way I was going to go to private school. I mean, I just wasn’t going to do that so then that was sort of becoming an issue.

In junior high I don’t remember much. You know, my books getting carried home from school and studying hard and doing a lot of horseback riding. Earning money by going down to the local stables and shoveling out the manure and then I’d get an hours’ lesson.

So, a lot of independence. I mean, we got our bikes and went. We didn’t watch television or - Yeah, it was neat! It was perfect. Fun! So, we got home and it was dark and filthy and no one worried about us. No one worried about any of us. We were at someone’s house. Yeah, fun!

Junior high I remember mostly because…you know, I was very popular. That was kind of a mystery. I remember the boys made copper bracelets and they gave them to someone. It never crossed my mind to get 16 of them or something. I had them all over. My arm was green with these bracelets.

So there was a lot of innocence and innocent dating and it was fun. People walked you home and you held hands every now and then. It was certainly not high sex the way it is now! I mean, it was very innocent and we went to the movies and had sodas afterwards. It was the Norman Rockwell paintings. But, we worked hard and we studied hard and, you know, played. We still had our neighborhood gang that was outside all the time. It was good. It was really good.

My mother was great. She was beautiful and gracious and kind and very shy and was very dominated by my dad. My Dad was very funny and he still is very funny. I mean he is very – but, also has kind of a bent…kind of like Jon! (My son in law). I mean, they have this sense of humor, I mean, Dad is apt to be very unkind, and Jon is not.

My mom I think was just kind of flattened in the background. I mean, she’d lost this child. They never talked about it again. She lived in terror of having another child because it would have so thrown my dad. I don’t think my dad could really handle it very well. I don’t think he could kick in and get with the program. I don’t think that was the way it was.

So, she was lovely but we had help so I didn’t see a lot of her. I mean, we had family dinners and that was good. But I was a tomboy and she was very lovely and always beautifully dressed and I was in jeans and a sweatshirt. We were very different.

I was much more impacted by my dad who from the time I can remember gave me books. I mean, he would – I got when I was six, he’d come home on leave and say, “Here are four books I think you might enjoy.” So, that was much more of a thing in the family.

I was kind of the favorite child and my dad and I had a very strong relationship and my mom and I didn’t really until I got married. I mean, she was wonderful but she’s not in the forefront.

For high school and there was a discussion about my going to private school. There was a lot of pressure for me to be first in every way; academically first, socially first. Somehow they had an interest in my doing really, really well.

My brother had struggled in school and he was older than I and I had kind of a lark through school. High school, I mean again, it was fun. I studied hard, I worked hard and I was cheerleader and all that. Men back then were just clean cut, little Peggy Sue, you know, with the - yeah, megaphone and little things.

So, high school…I always loved to read. I loved science. I had some very good friends. I didn’t have a lot of women friends. I wasn’t part of the group of women but I had four very good friends and we were down at the stables or riding bicycles with the guys or doing something like that.

I mean, I was aware in high school for the first time that there was difference. That I was different – my dad I made him start dropping me off from school about two blocks from school because I didn’t want them to see the Mercedes or whatever kind of car it was. I had cashmere sweaters and this kind of stuff and I remember not wanting to wear them to school, taking them off and then leaving them in the car and then going to school.

So, I was very aware of social differences and the huge economic difference. Now, there was nobody poor in Summit, New Jersey, but as a cheerleader I was always with the different races and the different minorities because they were on the teams and that was a magnificent experience. I didn’t want to go to private school I had all these different kinds of friends. All different and they’d all come over to our house. We had a kind of tennis court thing and they could play basketball on that and it was kind of the 50s high school. That was that.

Then I went to college. That was fun! I wanted to go to Smith and that was a huge disappointment. I was on the wait list, but I had gotten into Wellesley Connecticut College and decided to go to Connecticut College and I loved it. I worked hard. Girl’s school.

Yale and Brown and those schools were all around, but it was the first time I really had women friends, a group of women friends, and it was just terrific. The academics were very hard and I worked very hard and I loved it. I was in a singing group, a small acapella group in a chorus – which I also was in high school – lots of music, lots of fun!

I was not a grind like Doug (Laughter). Doug was very obsessive. I went out with him in college, I don’t know, not very often. I’d go down and he was All American Lacrosse and big athlete and everything and he’d be in bed at 8:30 or 9:00! I think, whoa! So, I would go back to the party!

He had to get up for practice and he didn’t have a beer or anything. When we got married our friends thought it wouldn’t last a month and a half. They just thought here’s Doug, very straight, very serious, very goal-oriented, and I was just kind of the way I am. You know academics and stuff but he was – I was always a little out of control.

Fun, I mean – there’s a friend of mine and we still do this- not now because we are both too old - but he would come in a room and see me there – this is at parties or wherever we were- and he would run towards me and I would flip him over my shoulder and that was just always a stopper. We thought that was very funny. Doug thought this was…Oh my God! Who is this woman who does this kind of thing?

But I went through college and majored in English which I just loved. I just loved it! I did a lot of writing. I was very serious about my school work and again, lots of dating, lots of going to Princeton or Yale or someplace for the weekend.

I mean, we didn’t have sex! We all went out in groups and we all did things, you know? We were little virgins so it was a very different social dynamic. You could go out with different people and not get all tied down. It was very different. It was just before the 60s, just before everything let loose, so we were that group that you watch in the movies!

I had one very true love who’s ended up a billionaire, multi billionaire, “Damn!” as Doug says!

But lots of good friends. Lots of good experiences. Very hard work. I thought, as most of the women had gone to private school and they were just so much better prepared than I was. So, my first year I needed up with a few D’s and I was on probation. It’s not like they just knock it down, you have to work to get those D’s up, so I spent the rest of my college trying to pull these darned grades up. I worked very hard. It was fun! Fun!

I met Doug – actually I think I met him my senior year in high school. We were at Martha’s Vineyard and he was with his parents and I was with two friends and we were walking down the street and they were having dinner and he ran out and he knew one of the girls, women, girls, and that was that. I mean, I thought he was good looking or whatever, but then as time went on we saw more of each other. But, he was not big in my life in college even though we knew each other.