Growing Up in a Changing America

I was born in early 1945, just months before World War II came to an end. Of course, I remember nothing of the war itself, but I grew up in the world it left behind—a modest, stable America that was beginning to prosper. My earliest years were spent in Northern Virginia, first in an apartment in Alexandria and later in another nearby small town just across the river from Washington, D.C.

My father was a lawyer. We lived comfortably but never extravagantly. With three children and a single income, every dollar had its purpose. In 1963, the year my father died, our family income was about $15,000—just enough for a family of five. We all lived in a small two-bedroom, one-bathroom duplex. The three children slept in the master bedroom; my parents slept in the smaller room on what we then called a double bed. When I hear people talk about hardship today, I often remember how narrow the differences in affluence were back then. No one had very much, and no one expected to.

My childhood world was small—both geographically and socially. In the 1950s, neighborhoods revolved around two-parent families, stay-at-home mothers, and clusters of children who filled the streets. We played only with kids who lived within walking distance. Nobody drove children across town for activities; a child’s world was only a few blocks wide.

Technology played almost no role in our lives. There was no internet, no smartphones, not even color television. Kitchen knives dulled quickly, so a man in a sharpening truck would drive down the street ringing a bell, and all the housewives would step outside with their knives in hand. It sounds unbelievable today, but it was completely ordinary then.

Eating out felt futuristic. I remember the local Hot Shoppes restaurants, where you parked your car, pressed a button, and someone brought dinner out on a tray that hooked onto your window. To us, it felt like a glimpse of the future.

As we grew older—especially when my sister reached adolescence—we needed more space. My parents bought a modest brick house for $27,900 at a fixed 3% mortgage rate. Today, the land alone is worth over a million dollars, and most of the original homes have been torn down and replaced by enormous new ones. But in my childhood, it was simply an ordinary, unpretentious neighborhood.

That small town was strictly segregated then. Black families lived in two other communities, and their children attended the town’s only Black school. I never knew a single Black student. They lived elsewhere, went to different schools, held different jobs. We thought nothing of it—it was simply the world as it was.

That world shifted in February 1959, when our area became the first place in the state to integrate peacefully. I was there that morning, watching history unfold without fully understanding it. The event led the national news on CBS. It wasn’t explosive like Little Rock, but it was historic. Years later, I met some of the students whose families had filed the lawsuit that made it possible.

Following Brown v. Board of Education, the state’s politicians resisted desegregation for more than a decade—sometimes even closing schools rather than integrating. Looking back, I know many people like to imagine they would have taken the enlightened position in those days. But norms were powerful, and most of us simply drifted along with the currents we were born into.

The Cold War rarely touched my daily life—except once. In October 1962, I was a star basketball player, and a university invited me to visit the campus. It would have been my first airplane flight. But that week happened to fall during the Cuban Missile Crisis. That was the moment when the Cold War suddenly became real to me.

My high school was one of the strongest public schools in the nation at the time. One class produced 45 National Merit semifinalists—second only to Bronx Science. The area was full of highly educated families, and that concentration of academic ambition shaped us.

I first saw Princeton in 1962 during a family road trip. The campus stunned me, but what amazed me most were the black squirrels—I had never seen one before. I was eventually admitted to Princeton as an engineering student. I also had full athletic scholarship offers from several universities, but my father insisted I choose Princeton, despite the financial burden. A month after I graduated from high school, he died. Only years later did I understand the depth of his sacrifice.

I eventually switched from engineering to English because I lacked the prerequisites for other majors. Many years later, both of my sons would also attend Princeton—a rare multi-generational path.

When I look at teenagers today, I’m struck by how different the world has become. In my youth, career choices felt narrow—law school, medical school, business, academia. Most people worked at the same company for their entire careers. Today the landscape is fluid: multiple jobs, portable 401(k)s, new industries, startups, constant reinvention. My advice is simple: never let your skills or résumé grow cold. Stay flexible. Keep learning.

I do miss the family stability of the 1950s, even as I acknowledge the flaws—racial inequality, limited opportunities for women, a narrower social imagination.

Two losses shaped my life more than any others: my father died the summer I finished high school, and decades later, my wife died the week my older son graduated from high school. Those parallel losses taught me something about grief. When you’re young, you can’t imagine being able to carry it. But life moves forward with its own demands, and eventually you learn to bear what it gives you.

Looking back, I feel mostly gratitude—for my family, my community, and the education I was fortunate enough to receive. I see both the strengths and the flaws of the era I grew up in, and I hope younger generations understand history not as abstract lessons but as real lives shaped by the norms of their time.