Issue link: http://ihouse.uberflip.com/i/703833
45 How about the effect of the war itself? I think we were all so happy to be out of the Service, back on campus – that was contagious! Maybe that's one reason they called it "The Golden Years," because everybody seemed so happy. Any political tensions? The only tension I can relate was the Norwegian boy who married a Turkish girl. She was glamorous! She and her sister – the Sunel sisters, Esin and Suzie. Well, they were both glamorous-looking, and one was an architecture major, and one was a math major. The architecture student, Esin Sunel, married a Norwegian boy – Paul Olson was his name, I think. After they were married here, they tried living in Turkey, and he didn't feel he was accepted in Turkish society. So then they tried living in Norway, and she didn't feel accepted in Norwegian society, so they came back to the Bay Area. Yes, that says something about the Bay Area, and it says something about people with ethnic differences who get along famously at I-House but don't always find it easy to go home, particularly if they bring home a remnant of an I-House romance. Yes, there were there other couples like that – Randy of course, of the Vassar girls, married Stan Nichols-Roy, one of the singers, and they went off to live in Shilong [Bangledesh]. And they stayed there until he died, and then she came back to San Diego County, where her parents lived. Previously, I had designed a house for them in Shillong. Nancy and I had a wonderful trip around the world, and we visited Pilu and Vina Modi in Bombay. That was another I-House romance. Vina Colgan was a red- haired Irish Catholic from Oakland, another architecture major. So was Pilu, who was from Bombay, but Oxford-educated before he came here – wonderful sense of humor. His father was Governor of Bombay State, so when we visited them, that was a grander visit than when we visited in Shillong – that was much more of kind of a missionary experience. Yes, Stan's mother came from a missionary family; she was from Visalia, and his father was Indian. Back to Pilu and Vina: she had no idea what awaited her, because Pilu was a little mysterious. He had said, "Well, we'll have a flat at the top of my parents' house" – because the youngest son is always supposed to return to the parents' home – "and we'll have a shack at the beach." Well, the shack at the beach was akin to the houses at the end of Stinson Beach and very, very nice. We went in sort of a carpool one day from Bombay to "the shack": I was riding with Pilu, and he had a Cadillac convertible. Nancy rode with his sister in her jaguar convertible. So they were definitely well-to-do. But Vina fit in beautifully; she took up wearing the sari and collected Indian antique jewelry. That first night, we said: "We can't come to your house; we have reservations at the Taj Mahal Hotel." And he said, "Nonsense! We expect you. And not only that, we've invited twenty of our friends to meet you!" So we got there, and Vina proceeded to dress Nancy in a sari and lent her some of her antique jewelry to wear. And the compliment was: "Oh, Nancy, you wear the sari so well!"