Issue link: http://ihouse.uberflip.com/i/703833
63 where there were five men for every woman! I knew Nanny Nowell [Brewer] and the other four girls from Vassar: Candy, Nancy Lawson [later Gould] – I don't remember the others. The group from Vassar was so unique, and so outgoing, that I quickly got to know them. One of the good friends I made was from Canada, Dagmar Herzberg. She was Joan Obidine's roommate. Talk about outgoing – Joan Obidine was really a bright light who attracted us all! She had been in I-House in the fraternities, so she knew people already in '46. And she had lots of energy! Bill [O'Regan] was Victor Shick's roommate, and I met him on a blind date. Vic was going with Dagmar, but Vic had a bit of a reputation, and so Dagmar said she would not go unless he got some people together. So Vic asked Bill – in his British accent, he had been in Shanghai and so spoke with a British accent – if he would go with him. "Are you asking me to go on a blind date with you?" asked Bill. "Yes, I am," answered Vic, "It's part of a roommate's duty to go on a blind date." So we went. Bill and Vic remained such good friends. Vic and his wife Dodie [Eisenberg] moved all around the country, but we kept in touch with them – such lasting friendships were formed! Vic came to I-House with some money and immediately bought himself a huge car – a Lincoln, I think. Every Wednesday they would have a symphony concert [in San Francisco], and he would gather up a lot of people – in those days they didn't have seat belts – and he would just cram lots of people in the back! He was game to be in anything – skits, plays, folk dancing…. Vic had been born in Harbin. His family went across Russia on the train to Harbin and then ended up in Shanghai. He was very good at languages, but later mostly dealt with Europe – he was in steel. There was a huge gang of people from Shanghai – the Shanghai Gang – and they remained friends. A few years ago they were still meeting. No, they weren't Chinese, they were French, Russian, a Czech – I dated him. Were they Jewish? Not all – just people who had fled the war. I don't remember anybody asking, "Is he Jewish, or is she Jewish?" That wasn't the question. It was, "Are they interesting? Nice? What am I going to learn?" There were some interesting marriages, some interesting couples, some of which worked, some of which didn't. There was Stan Nichols-Roy – he married an American girl [Helen Randolph]. They lived in India. In that year, 1946-1947, there were a lot of interracial, intercultural marriages. When I look around, it seems most of them worked. I guess that's because by the time we got married, we knew each other so well; we had seen each other bleary-eyed in the morning. It wasn't just dating. Then there was Lottie. Lottie was such a delightful person! She was so outgoing and upbeat and full of ideas about what to do. What you really admired about those people was that they had risen above and managed to stay positive. Even the Scandinavians had been through four to eight years of hardship, but when they came here, they were so upbeat. They were here now! Partly it was the release from the war: "Here we are!