Rosa was a bit disappointed, though also proud, when I decided on Stanford for college. She had hoped I would commute from Trout Lake to the University of Washington, which certainly would have saved money. Failing that, she favored Swarthmore. I liked the idea of Reed, far enough to be out of the parental eye and close enough to come home often, but she had heard bad things about the atmosphere there. I don't remember Murray voicing an opinion. (Probably my main reason for choosing Stanford, about which I knew basically nothing, was that my high school guidance counselor had told me not to bother applying there, and I wasn't about to take that lying down.)
Once we agreed that I was Palo Alto bound, she took note of the several students there whose fathers were officials in the Johnson Administration. She said if I happened to meet Dean Rusk, or Robert McNamara, or Melvin Laird, I was to explain to them the folly of the Vietnam War. Looking back, I'm pretty sure she was joking. As a very earnest 17-year-old, however, I felt burdened by the responsibility of reversing U.S. foreign policy.
For her part, Mom did her best through letter writing. This response from Sen. Warren Magnuson strikes me now as a relic of a bygone age. Though he was wrong in his support and his predictions, he actually engaged with the topic. Though he was a Democrat defending a Democratic president, he did not disparage the other party. And at letter's end he left open the possibility that his views might change.
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