Remembering John

I’d like to say that John Mowinkel was a friend, but I only saw him a couple of times. I had been in the Rome Olympics and decided to stay in Europe and learn some foreign languages, starting with French. He was the active “cultural affairs” officer in our embassy (also was in CIA) and I asked him how I could learn French quickly. He said that the Sorbonne University in Paris had a program of teaching foreigners how to teach French, and this could be a good way to learn French because the students would probably not yet be fluent so would also be “improving” their knowledge of the language, but at a fast pace. I took his advice and it worked. Years later we were living in the same neighborhood in France and I ran into him. (That’s a rather funny expression, isn’t it?) And I was able to meet him and get his advice on another subject.