Nana Biography

No, what‘’s…

When John and I were married, and he was teaching at Santa Clara University, as a law professor, with tenure, property, and we went on a three day honeymoon. We came back – it was all in the papers – I might add. 

What was?

The news of the marriage. I was slightly well-known down here at the time, and the divorce had been in all the newspapers. It was on the front page of the Examiner.

How’s that for notoriety?

Yes, I’ll say it was awful. But anyway, “Peninsula Matron Marries Doctor ".  Everybody thought I was marrying a medical doctor. Anyway, we went down there for three days, and when we came back, he went back to his teaching on Monday morning, and called me up, and said he had been fired from his job, for having remarried. He had been divorced, I have been divorced, and he was the non-Catholic, the token non-Catholic on the university, a Catholic university, and this was against their principals.

You’re kidding!

This wouldn’t happen today, I think, but it did happen.

Oh my God.

And he legally thought that he had a case in court, because he had tenure, because he hadn’t done anything against his principles. But his dean, Dean Owens, was so incensed, it was the president of the university that had fired him, he didn’t like John. Dean Owens came up to Stanford, and went to see Carl Spaeth or somebody on the faculty here, and said this great friend was down here and he told the reason and told him the circumstances, and that Carl had to grab him. And sure enough, there was a two-year appointment offered him. Well, this was a big step down, except it was a big step up in university, but a step down in his tenure.

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