Word: mother
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Cevennes Mountains of southern France, Jacques Soustelle has been what the French call "a competition animal." Born with a double handicap-his family was poor and of France's Protestant minority-Soustelle early decided that "I had to succeed, and quick." With the encouragement of his mother (who at 70 recently retired from work) and his mechanic stepfather, he won a lycee scholarship at eight, relentlessly mastered Greek, Latin, English and mathematics, at 20 placed first in philosophy among 250 candidates for France's highest scholastic competition, the Agrègation. In 1932, with his gifted bride...
Liston is one of 25 children born to an Arkansas farmer and his two wives. At twelve, Liston had an argument with his father, ran away to live with his mother in St. Louis. He later landed in jail after helping to hold up a restaurant. There Liston learned to read, met a chaplain who interested him in boxing. Liston studied Joe Louis' My Life Story by the hour, soon was prison champion, emerged to win the intercity Golden Gloves heavyweight championship...
Cotton Cloth. The tunic tradition goes back to Flavia Helena, wife of Roman Emperor Constantius Chlorus (he is said to have picked her up in a Balkan tavern during one of his campaigns) and mother of Constantine the Great. Converted to Christianity about 312, Helena later journeyed to the Holy Land, went to Calvary, and (wrote St. Ambrose 70 years later) "had excavations made, the debris cleared away and unearthed three crucifixion trees huddled together and covered with mud . . . She also set out to look for the nails which had pinned the Lord to the Cross and found them." Chronicler...
Until he was 14, squat, jolly, Texas-born Felix Tijerina could not speak a word of English. He was like thousands of other Mexican-American children: his mother taught him to read and write in Spanish only. And had he gone to school, he might still not have learned English. At the time (1920), Texas segregated Mexican-American schoolchildren on the basis of language-a discrimination usually as enduring as skin color. According to the odds, Felix seemed doomed to stagnate behind the language-discrimination barrier for the rest of his life...
...grade, after failing the first and second a couple of times, he finds that he's eleven and the other kids are eight. He rationalizes by saying his skin is darker and that's why he's being failed. He doesn't blame Daddy and Mother. He doesn't ask why they didn't teach him English. He quits school and blames you, because your skin is lighter...