I repeat words here that I said to one of those who responded to Peggy's Chapter 2. I too am learning considerable from rereading Peggy's autobiography. My eulogy to Peggy is important for this. For it has the theme that ''I rediscovered Peggy was somewhere in my early life'' from an offhand comment from a friend when I gave a talk at the Mathematics Department at UCLA.

Chapter 2 gives an additional sense of that. She was, toward me, replicating what she had done with Judy: She was teaching me to write before I went to Kindergarten. The hidden message here is that it left an indelible mark. My writing as an adult on a blackboard at UCLA on a high level research talk looked to someone who had something appropriate in his background – my friend Peter Trombi – as if it was I, not Peggy, who had spent considerable time in a convent.

To me this shows something about what you get from childhood that you are not likely to remember. Yet, there is nuance in this and later chapters about Peggy's deterioration from my time as her first child. For that it is important to remember it is an adult Peggy, with agendas of her own, who wrote autobiography over a long period of time.

Michael Fried, Grandson
For the Descendants of Taylor Caldwell
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