Aunt Celia was a remarkable woman. She passed away peacefully in her 98th year. As a child she served as translator and intermediary to the new world when my father's family arrived from the old country with precious little knowledge of English or modernity. All her life she read armfuls of books lugged home from the public library. She boarded a streetcar and two buses each day to attend Los Angeles High School where she could learn Latin, unavailable at her local high school. By the age of 17 she had graduated from normal school and taken her first teaching job in Nevada, too young to be employed by the Los Angeles Unified School District. She contributed hard-earned dollars to help support the family and purchased its first automobile. She was the rudder that guided the ship of immigrants – so able, so strong, yet so fragile and afraid.

Celia spent her life teaching in public schools where few students or administrators recognized her gifts. She never married, never bore children, traveled little, purchased less, and pinched pennies so tightly that she died rich as well as unhappy. How ironic that dear Aunt Celia should be the source of my interest in happiness.

In the early 1960s when I was a graduate student, Celia sent me a copy of Desmond Morris's The Naked Ape. I loved the book, and its sequel The Human Zoo.