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I'd found the exactly right woman, and I wanted to share this with my father, and even I hoped that he would come up, at least this one time, and share the ceremonies with us.

And I got back a letter from this guy that, to me, was shocking. The whole theme of his letter was, “No, I do not think you should getmarried. Your mother has sacrified to send you through school.” I was at Columbia at the time, concluding my PhD-- and by the way, he apparently was very proud of my academic achievements, because my mother -- I wouldn't tell him about it, you know, but my mother probably wrote him every detall, every scholarship I ever won, every honor I ever won. And this guy stored this all up, and threw it back to me, as reasons that I, at this stage of my life, should devote my time and attention to taking care of my mother, and repaying her for what she contributed toward my academic and other success.

I read the letter. And I showed it to my mother. My mother said, “I told you.”

That was the last correspondence we had. I didn't reply to the letter. He never wrote again. And he died about three years ago. I'd been married 30, 35 years.

Now, the other interesting part of this is that my mother corresponded with him, after this thing. I never did, and he never wrote me. Whatever he knew about me, he knew through my mother, and whatever I knew about him, I knew through my mother. And while my mother never said this, I know, and she knows, that this was another indication of our similarity -- that we were pretty much the same kind of people. That's all I'm going to say about that guy.