My Mother, The Plagiarist?

Two women in my life share connections with the late George Steinbrenner, however it should be made clear, for tax purposes, that neither was a shipping magnate, nor contributed to Nixon.

My wife grew up, in and around Columbus, Ohio, and like the Yankee kingpin attended Ohio State. Nothing earthshattering there. He was a grad student a generation before she arrived - and one in five Americans seem to have enrolled in that vaguely fascist institution at one time or another. I guess, the more I reflect on it, my better half can also be a hard charging, perfectionist pain in the ass. So there's that similarity as well.


Parallels between my genteel mother, seventy nine years today, and The Boss are more curious. He attended Williams College in the sparsely populated, extreme northwestern corner of Massachussets. Just a few miles north, over the Vermont border, my mom simultaneously studied at Bennington. He graduated in 1952, she in 53. They were both English majors. The curious part? They each wrote a senior thesis examining figures in Thomas Hardy novels.