Heidi Watts

Just ten years ago this month I sat in the audience  at  SUNY  Cortland and listened to my son, Richard, deliver the  Valedictorian's  address  to  6000 people.  I was  overwhelmed  with maternal pride,  heightened by my absolute  conviction  that  I  could  never  do  anything like that.   After all, I failed  Freshman  Speech  three  times  when  I  was  in  college  and  I  always get  collywobbles  every  time  I have  to  stand up in public. Asking a question in Town Meeting is a  rare  act  of  courage,  and  addressing  fifty entering P.D.. students · isn't easy. But learning from our children  -  and  our clients - - and our  experiences;  doing  things  we never  thought we could do - is what this talk is about -- unlocking the chambers of possibility.   In that speech   te n   years   ag o   Richar d   said: W e hav e a dut y t o care abou t · our environment, to care about the nuclear weapons stand-off, to care about seemingly meaningless war

 It’s true that I was born and raised in the Boston area, but I hadn’t heard of Joan Baez when I returned to Boston in the fall of 1957 to get a master’s degree in education at Harvard and, subtext: (catch a husband).  I was returning from Tacoma, Washington where I had been teaching English at a select girls boarding school. A part of that story is on my blog with the title (“A Date with Vergil Peterson.”)  As soon as I got to Cambridge I found an apartment on Boylston street, just a few blocks from Harvard Yard and appeared on Sunday morning to become a regular with the Cambridge Quakers. Since volunteering is a good way to meet people and get drawn into an organization I volunteered to teach First Day School (Sunday school) - after all, I was supposed to know something about teaching and about adolescents. There was another newish member of The Society of Friends who also  volunteered. His name was Al Baez, a mathematics professor of Mexican descent, working at M.I.T.  I learned a l