About 1900 my parents came to the United States as children from what was then the Polish area of Russia.

Going to school and working for good marks, indeed working for very good marks, was a serious business.

It was good fortune to be a child during the Depression years and a youth during the war years.

About 1900 my parents came to the United States as children from what was then the Polish area of Russia.

Their educations ended with high school - my father going to work as a clerk and then salesman in a company dealing in printing and stationary, and my mother working as a secretary and then bookkeeper in a firm of wool merchants.

My parents regarded school teachers as higher beings, as did many immigrants.

Whatever the course, whether the course was boring or interesting to me, whether I was talented in mathematics or not talented in languages, my parents expected A's.