The Latin Hour

I HAD KNOWN Hawk’s father, Cor-A with Cramer, the illustrious navigator and yachtsman, since our school days together from 1939 to 1945. I first met his mother, Ada, in 1968 and first saw him in 1974 when he was scarcely more than a toddler. Time passed, life unfolded in its unforeseeable way, and in 1980 Ada and 1 were married and Hawk became, with his older brother, Willie, a stepson—the youngest of the four fine boys in my life. And he also became, for that one priceless year before he went away to school, my Latin student.

How it happened that Hawk desired to be tutored in Latin before going to St. George’s is another story. Our story starts here, as it started each evening at exactly six o’clock during that year, with Hawk searching me out at whatever 1 was doing at the moment—something with the typewriter, or the piano, or the newspapers—and announcing: “Bill! Time for Latin!” ‘M’ Is for Mother

WR

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William F. Rickenbacker

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I HAD KNOWN Hawk’s father, Cor-A with Cramer, the illustrious navigator and yachtsman, since our school days together from 1939 to 1945. I first met his mother, Ada, in 1968 and first saw him in 1974 when he was scarcely more than a toddler. Time passed, life unfolded in its unforeseeable way, and in 1980 Ada and 1 were married and Hawk became, with his older brother, Willie, a stepson—the youngest of the four fine boys in my life. And he also became, for that one priceless year before he went away to school, my Latin student.

How it happened that Hawk desired to be tutored in Latin before going to St. George’s is another story. Our story starts here, as it started each evening at exactly six o’clock during that year, with Hawk searching me out at whatever 1 was doing at the moment—something with the typewriter, or the piano, or the newspapers—and announcing: “Bill! Time for Latin!” ‘M’ Is for Mother