Linda Benson:  

I think it takes 50 years to put your early experiences into perspective. I look back on my high school years, growing up in Detroit and going to a big, overcrowded, highly competitive high school such as Mumford in 1959. On a regular basis I dreamed about what it would be like to live in New York--which I considered a real city-- and I felt like a very small cog amongst the 800 or so students that made up our graduating class. Now I recognize what and extraordinary time this was. Detroit was a vibrant city then. I remember riding DSR buses for 10 cents and a student bus card, traveling all over downtown on Saturdays and feeling totally safe, and listening to night-time radio DJs Robin Seymour, where you could hear the latest dance music, and Ernie Durham, where you could hear the "real" music, the beginnings of the Motown sound. The competititve survival aspects of Mumford even had its benefits. When I launched my wr...Expand for more