AC_1965_Web

63 AN T I OC H CO L L E G E C L A S S O F 19 6 5 5 0 t h A N N I V E R S A R Y B O O K A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z G R E N E L L GRENELL BARRIE DALLAS THEN AND NOW 4 Antioch 4 B.A. Philosophy and Government, Boston University FAMI LY 4 Husband, Peter Grenell ‘61 4 Son, Alexander ADDRESS 4 4340 25th St., San Francisco, CA 94114 CONTACT sercle@sbcglobal.net 415 862-5391 or 415 652-1038 I G R E W U P in Yellow Springs, ar- riving there in 1945 when I was two and leaving in 1962 when I dropped out because I couldn’t follow the lectures or discussion in my classes and panicked at having to declare a major. Sadly, I didn’t know how to ask for help.What I did follow, barely, was the fascinating history of sci- ence that Ollie Loud and Al Stewart described so well and which I con- sider almost daily. On dropping out, I moved to Boston where I lived with co-ops Lynn Howe and Charlotte Eakin. Thanks to departing co-op Alfred Karlson, I met Peter Grenell, class of ’61, who was a Ph.D. student at MIT in planning, an interest he devel- oped when he was on AEA in India and read Garden Cities of Tomorrow by Ebenezer Howard (1899). He had been visiting K. Viswanathan at the suggestion of Arthur Morgan who had inspired Viswan to return to his home in Mitraniketan, Kerela, to cre- ate a sustainable community. Lynn Howe and I worked on a women’s psychiatric ward at McLean Hospital and, when our swing shift was over, Peter would pick us up and listen while we unwound on the way home to Beacon Hill. (Peter continues to be an excellent lis- tener.) When Lynn and Charlotte re- turned to campus, Peter moved in and we were married four months later at the home of family friends in Littleton, Mass., with Stan Hirson and Diana Reed in attendance. When Kennedy was shot in 1963, I was working as the library assistant at Shady Hill School in Cambridge where several of the children had parents in Kennedy’s cabinet. In the fall of 1964, just after “Hard Day’s Night,” Peter and I went to Bhubaneswer, Orissa in India, a new state capital that was the sub- ject of Peter’s Ph.D. thesis. During that time, I taught English and math at a local convent school, fell in love with geometry and decided to become a math teacher when I re- turned to the U.S.One day on my way home on my bicycle, I saw Hickory Hurie, another townie-cum-Antioch student. During that period when I was idle much of the time, I became a reader, learned guitar and wrote letters home that people seemed to enjoy. India provided a hodgepodge of experiences and nonsequiturs that included dinner every Monday night at the home of J.B.S. Haldane’s widow, Helen Spurway. We moved to Calcutta in 1966 where Peter worked for the Ford Foundation which was consult- ing on West Bengal urban develop- ment. I had one Sanskrit lesson but dropped it and studied Autocoder and Hindi. At one point, we were visited by Peter McGregor and Joan Goldsmith. Back in Boston, after“Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” I resumed my education at Boston University, but calculus was too diffi- cult so I dropped plans to be a math teacher. Instead I enjoyed a variety of classes in philosophy and politi- cal theory and took my degree in philosophy and government. After graduating, still having no drive or direction I held a variety of jobs that included research grant manager, receptionist, bookkeep- er’s helper and typist. In Boston I be-came a daily lap swimmer at Massachusetts Mental Health where I was a grant manager. I learned to compose correspondence for my boss once I dis-covered that as long as I used the word, “delighted” the letter captured his “voice.” Peter finished writing his thesis but took a job with a consulting firm with headquarters in San Francisco and no longer had an interest in ob- taining a Ph.D. Shortly after mov- ing to San Francisco at the very end of 1971, we were sent to Dallas, Tex.,where Peter was part of the team planning Flower Mound—his charge being the housing element. Just before going to Texas, however, and an hour or so after I dreamed that a friend from MIT was