Robert L. Latta:  

Life I was born at Mercy Hospital in Rockville Centre, New York on January 27, 1945, 189 years to the day after Mozart. My earliest memory is of my first house, in Valley Stream, two or three months later. Soon my parents moved to Prince's Bay, on Staten Island, and in 1947 they decided to move to Lynbrook. After heated debate, they took me with them. We lived on Stevenson Street. But my father found work in Cumberland, Maryland, and I spent my last preschool year there. In Cumberland I saw a photograph of Ginger Rogers on a record sleeve and fell in love with her. My parents moved back to Stevenson Street and I fell in love with a girl on Fennimore. The fickle male! She was my age, four, so I stood a much better chance with her. I went to West End Elementary School from kindergarten through seventh grade, 1950-58. I remember that period with great fondness. I hope that Mr. DiRubbo, my viola teacher, isn't angry that I quit suddenly. I sneaked into his office, put the instrument on an upright piano, and sneaked out , without telling him a word. That was an big mistake on both counts. In the summer of 1958 my family moved to Basking Ridge, New Jersey. I attended Ridge High School there, and so, unfortunately, know nothing of Lynbrook High. In my mind it's a mysterious place, paradise missed, though my life in Basking Ridge was very pleasant overall. After high school, I attended Duke (BA), Yale (MA), Wisconsin (HK - hard knocks), Tennessee (JBLI - journalism but lost interest), and Washington University in St. Louis (PhD in philosophy). I was divorced in 1977 in Knoxville,Tennessee, having been married in 1968 in Manhattan. The next year, I mo...Expand for more