Kindergarten

Here is a picture of me on the first day of kindergarten, September 13, 1948.

My favorite activity in kindergarten was playing at the large doll house. It had a spiral staircase in the center and lots of furniture to move around from one room to another.

I was so enthusiastic about the doll house at school that my father used some wood scraps to make one for me to play with at home. My mother pasted some wallpaper on the walls and put some leftover linoleum on the floors. And both sets of grandparents gave me doll house furniture and some little people to inhabit the dwelling.

Neither my teacher nor my family ever said, “Boys don’t play with doll houses.” I am so grateful to them for encouraging me to follow my interests! Or, to use the phrase popularized by the great mythologist Joseph Campbell, to “follow your bliss...tapping into the energy that makes you tick.”