Shimer College and my life

As a junior in high school, I became enamored of Shimer College in Chicago. It was a 'great books' school, like St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland, which was Mimi's second choice to the school she chose, Bennington College in Vermont. Shimer is now a part of North Central College in Naperville, IL.

Here was the problem--Shimer required at least one year of a foreign  language for admission. Gary High School was very small--99 people in my graduating class--and only offered two foreign language classes. My senior year it was French 2, which I obviously couldn't do, and Latin 1.

Latin 1 was mostly 9th and 10th grade students, except for me. Miss Sargent, a stern woman, was the teacher.

But here's the thing--if I hadn't had that class I would have never met 9th grader Bernadine Pisano, who became my girlfriend and then my wife when we were 23 and 20 and first lived together in Cambridge for my second year at Harvard Divinity School.

I didn't go to Shimer College, I went to WVU instead and Bern came for my senior year as a freshman. But without Shimer I wouldn't have taken Latin 1 and wouldn't have met her.

And our two children and four grand-daughters would have never been born.

Ponder, if you want to, the decisions that have shaped your lives.

If you hadn't done 'a', the 'b' and 'c' and 'd' and all through the alphabet wouldn't have happened.

Amazing how one decision can completely change and enhance your life.

Amazing how undoing 'a' would have made your life a totally different journey.

Amazing.

Truly amazing.

Thank God for Shimer College and Latin 1 all those years ago.

Really, thank God. My whole life rolled out from taking that Latin class for a college I never attended!