[Mick]

Granddad was taking a Japanese Economic History class that met at 8 a.m. on Mondays, and that's how he found out about Pearl Harbor. 

That would be like not knowing about 9/11 until 9/12 !  Obviously no TV and probably no car (with radio). I can imagine he got no newspaper on Sunday night or Monday morning. I can imagine not listening to the radio at all on Sunday. But someone around where he lived or shopped (most stores would be closed) or studied or worshipped would be talking about it on Sunday. Did he say why he was so insulated that day?

I have never attended a reunion of my college but did attend a couple of my high school. That doesn’t mean for me that there was anything wrong with the school or the time.

No television, and he was studying for the upcoming week on a Sunday. Basically sequestered himself. Lifelong habit of his. Said he first heard of of the Pearl Harbor attack from his next door neighbor early Monday morning. When he arrived at the JEH class, there were 100+ people in a classroom set up for a dozen. The professor, a Japanese national (who was in an embassorial capacity) arrived five minutes late, clearly shaken. He said "yesterday, the Empire of Japan declared war upon the United States of America." Then went on to say that, while he felt Japan was in the right with respect to the dispute over rubber, oil and other commodities, he felt that they had chosen the wrong way to express that difference. And then, the biggest MP Granddad had ever seen before or since, entered the classroom and took the professor away in handcuffs.

With respect to the reunions, I do think it says something if you attend literally every single high school reunion for 60 years in which the high school is three states and nearly 1,000 miles away but you don't attend any college reunions during that time when the college is 25 miles away.

I leavened my comments with my own observations after knowing the man for 40 years. He was clearly fond of Stanford and well remembered his time there. At the same time, I don't think he felt nostalgia for that time period, and I know that my grandmother didn't. She felt that the time period didn't represent America's best or future. She didn't like the lack of a social safety net, the lack of medicine (she lost her sister at a young age when the sister fell, skinned her knee and it became infected), the omnipresent smoking, the Great Depression, WWII, the casual violence of rural America, the persistent local political corruption and a variety of other things, all of which she opined on to me.

[Mick]

Granddad was taking a Japanese Economic History class that met at 8 a.m. on Mondays, and that's how he found out about Pearl Harbor. 

That would be like not knowing about 9/11 until 9/12 !  Obviously no TV and probably no car (with radio). I can imagine he got no newspaper on Sunday night or Monday morning. I can imagine not listening to the radio at all on Sunday. But someone around where he lived or shopped (most stores would be closed) or studied or worshipped would be talking about it on Sunday. Did he say why he was so insulated that day?

I have never attended a reunion of my college but did attend a couple of my high school. That doesn’t mean for me that there was anything wrong with the school or the time.

No television, and he was studying for the upcoming week on a Sunday. Basically sequestered himself. Lifelong habit of his. Said he first heard of of the Pearl Harbor attack from his next door neighbor early Monday morning. When he arrived at the JEH class, there were 100+ people in a classroom set up for a dozen. The professor, a Japanese national (who was in an embassorial capacity) arrived five minutes late, clearly shaken. He said "yesterday, the Empire of Japan declared war upon the United States of America." Then went on to say that, while he felt Japan was in the right with respect to the dispute over rubber, oil and other commodities, he felt that they had chosen the wrong way to express that difference. And then, the biggest MP Granddad had ever seen before or since, entered the classroom and took the professor away in handcuffs.

With respect to the reunions, I do think it says something if you attend literally every single high school reunion for 60 years in which the high school is three states and nearly 1,000 miles away but you don't attend any college reunions during that time when the college is 25 miles away.

I leavened my comments with my own observations after knowing the man for 40 years. He was clearly fond of Stanford and well remembered his time there. At the same time, I don't think he felt nostalgia for that time period, and I know that my grandmother didn't. She felt that the time period didn't represent America's best or future. She didn't like the lack of a social safety net, the lack of medicine (she lost her sister at a young age when the sister fell, skinned her knee and it became infected), the omnipresent smoking, the Great Depression, WWII, the casual violence of rural America, the persistent local political corruption and a variety of other things, all of which she opined on to me.