Ann Arbor

 The University of Michigan at Ann Arbor was another significant place.  My mother offered to pay for my college expenses wherever I chose to go.  I chose Michigan partly because of its School of Architecture and Design, but also because it was far (but not too far) from home.  I wanted to escape from Mother’s domination, but be able to come home for vacations on the overnight train.  I still remember how excited I was every time a new list of classes was distributed.  I was so eager to learn: Sociology, Anthropology, Psychology, Philosophy, German, Islamic Art, Music Appreciation.  What I learned in Music Appreciation class at Michigan (and previously in high school) has been a source of great joy throughout my life.  Whenever I hear familiar classical or operatic music on the radio or anywhere, I feel I have encountered an old friend. 

I attended University of Michigan during the war years, WWII.  All but one of the men in my German class were drafted.  One young man who was not drafted was my friend Wayne Saari, my first love.  He had contracted TB while hitchhiking across the U.S.  One of his lungs was deflated for medical reasons. He took only a few courses each semester. 

He taught me about Socrates and many other things.  I used to say I learned more from Wayne than from my professors.  Mother and Auntie Rita urged me to get “pinned” or engaged to a more marriagable person, as most of the other girls were doing.  But, I loved Wayne.

I was reading stories and books by Thomas Mann at that time.  Discussing the stories with my friend Carol Rosenblatt (later Carol Anderson) on our walks in the Arboretum.  I was reading the Magic Mountain, imagining myself living up there close to the sanitorium where Wayne might be living. The University of Michigan always remains a happy memory.  “Those were the days, my friends, I thought they’d never end….”