There was a certain amount of discipline, I think; my parents wanted to be sure that I was not just sitting around doing nothing.

There was a certain amount of discipline, I think; my parents wanted to be sure that I was not just sitting around doing nothing.

My parents' names were Florian and Mabel Smith. My mother's maiden name was Dersam. They were of German heritage and were part of a family community with my grandparents and uncles and relatives. I was an only child.

In thinking back, not having any experience in any other elementary school, there may have been an advantage of being with different age groups to benefit from what they were learning in a more advanced capacity. With a small group like that, there was a lot of one-to-one teaching.

The Japanese are hard to understand, but once you do the world is your oyster.

I was painting furniture, learning to stencil, and explore all kinds of traditional techniques of decoration. I learned from books that I picked up.

In a social studies class I did a paper on the history of Attica, which ended up being a little book that I created.