Jennifer (Linn) O'Connor

Hi Pamela, I'm Susan Linn's sister Jenny. I have some recollections of Mike that are quite clear, like many memories I have from when I was a kid. Mike is a special guy. My first introduction to him was in the late 1960's, when I answered a knock at our front door in Oswego, NY, in the dead of the winter. I was about 9 years old. I opened the door and looked up at a tall man with shoulder length dark hair standing in the doorway. I took one startled look at him, turned and ran to the kitchen, yelling: "There's a Beatle at the front door!" I really did think he was one of the Beattles. Dad invited him in; I'll never know if it was a surprise visit from his former Connecticut student or whether they were expecting him. In any case, that cold winter evening became much more interesting after Mike arrived. As it turns out, Sue said Mike remembers driving with me on a road trip. Our trip together is the most potent memory I have of Mike. Mike happened to be in Oswego at the time our family was preparing for our drive from upstate NY to the home our folks kept in Connecticut. I'm not sure if Mike planned to drive with us; we junior members weren't consulted. Some discussion must have preceded the trip because I ended up driving with Mike on that 6-7 hour trip from upstate NY to the middle of Connecticut on that sunny day in late June. I felt special because I was Mike's only passenger. Perhaps my parents chose me to drive with Mike because I would get ornery on the long trips and probably got to arguing with my sisters and brother. But I prefer to think it was because I was a special 11 year old. It was a fun trip. I think we drove in a big black car that had a lots of room. Mike asked me if I wanted to play a word game; I agreed. Normally I wasn't the most agreeable pre-teen but Mike had a knack for making it sound like it could be fun. The game, he said, would be for each of us to come up with a word for each of the letters of the alphabet. It would get harder, he said, because we would have to recite all the words we came up with as we went further along through the letters. Mike went first: "Albatross" I'd never heard of the word. He explained that an albatross is a big white bird that came from an island (perhaps a set of islands) somewhere far from where we were. I was an impressionable kid and a whole story started to form around this big white bird who lived in a distant location. Perhaps there was a castle on the island, who knew? My turn. I had a somewhat limited vocabulary. "Beer?" I offered. So on it went. I don't remember any of the other words we came up with but I know I learned a few more from Mike. Albatross is the word I learned that day, but more than that. I learned that there was a far bigger world than the one I lived in; Mike told me many stories during that trip about some of the places he'd been. The trip flew by. One last memory was a meal Mike made for our family after he came back from a trip to India. I was older then, perhaps 16 or so. We were going to have curry, Mike said. We Linns never complained about a meal, but I had my doubts about the curry. First of all, the rice was a bright yellow, and then Mike sliced up fresh bananas and put them on top of the rice. And somehow, he convinced me to eat the curry. I've had a lot of curry since then, after moving to San Francisco not too many years after that meal that Mike cooked. Mike is a special guy, fun, creative, humorous and so very interesting. And very gifted in making a shy, insecure and anxious kid feel at ease on a long road trip on a sunny day so long ago. Love you Mike, Jenny (Linn) O'Connor