My aunt Virginia was still living with her parents when I was a very young boy. It is one of my earliest memories. I was about three and a half when she gave me my first book in English, The Little Prince. I was born in 1943, and the book was a first edition, 1943 publication. I remember at that time Aunt Virginia encouraging me to learn to read. I still have the book, and after a career of 42 years in education, I have become a published author, like Aunt Virginia. She encouraged all whom she met to strive for excellence. She was indeed, a brilliant and great lady. Richard Craig Hurt

When I was in college, I flew home for a spring break, and my father picked me up at the San Francisco airport late in the evening, arriving at our house at about 11.30 pm. My mother had already gone to bed, but she got up to greet me since it had been many months since we had seen each other while my father went to bed.

At 7.00 the next morning, my father walked into the breakfast room surprised to find my mother and me still intently engaged in conversation, having stayed up all night chatting away. I have such fond memories of her wit and sense of humor, and that one all-night conversation exemplified for me my extraordinary good fortune to have been raised by a mother so interested in connection that she would spend all night catching up, with both of us oblivious to normal patterns of daily life. Because of interactions like that, I always had the sense as an adult that if she hadn't been my mother and I had just met her in the course of everyday life, I still would have found her a fascinating and interesting person and hoped that I would get to enjoy further such deep and satisfying conversations.