Nana Biography

15 months.

Oh.  

So it was Leonard‘s first year at law school and Sam was a senior at Stanford. So anyway, we had that marvelous year in Italy and then we got a sabbatical leave two years later, because the other one didn’t count as a sabbatical. Well, John worked, he went to the office every day, he was learning comparative law in Italy, he made a lot of friends there. I had one of the most restful years of my life, because I had a full-time maid that came with the apartment, so if I wanted to have a dinner party, I didn’t even, fix the flowers.

Oh, how neat.

She would say, “Facciolo, facciolo”.  She would do it all. I learned to speak Italian because she couldn’t speak English.

Is this the first time, I think you said you studied Italian at Stanford.

In order to cope.

Did you know any languages before?

I could cope – yeah, I went to a school where only French was spoken.  I think I told you that.

In high school.

Yes. A boarding school in Warrington, Virginia, and the minute you walked on the campus was the language of the campus.

No kidding.

It was an honor system. Only 87 girls in this five-year high school course, very tough school. We were uniforms and bloomers and all that. There were three people in my fifth, I mean, it was a five-year high school and in the top grade. I had three people in that French class so we did good things.

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