A Daughter's Memories

A Daughter's Memories Susan E. Hough (bio) Every childhood comprises thousands of days, out of which some number of moments crystalize into indelible memories. In 1970, when I was nine years old, a family friend of my parents told me that my father was really very important, "more important than the mayor." I did not reply, but I do remember thinking to myself, "What's the big deal, he's just a teacher." Such was my schoolchild's understanding at the time, when my father held a professorship at the University of Toronto and continued to pursue the research described in this theme section. It would, of course, sink in over time—in retrospect an embarrassingly long time—that my father was in fact a leading scholar, his work focusing on the overarching political issues of his time. More obvious to me, even as a young child, was the extraordinary dedication that he brought to his work. A small white scar on one forearm reminds me of an early childhood run-in with one of the black metal bookcases that held his growing collection of books. In my parent's modest house at the time, the bookcases were in our living room. By seventh grade, when my bedroom was on the third floor of a larger house, and across the hall from the room he used as a proper study, I fell asleep most nights to the steady, fast-paced rhythms of typewriter keys. By tenth grade, I knew that when he commuted weekly from New Jersey to Durham, North Carolina, he would prop a ruled notebook on a Styrofoam cooler in the passenger's seat and work on his latest chapter or essay, longhand, always with a Parker pen, as he drove at highway speeds. From my teen years onward, I came to realize the extent to which my father was sought out for his expertise by the news media and corporate executives, eager to hear his insights on the Soviet Union. But mostly I knew my father as my father. Here too, though, full appreciation came in time. As a little girl in the 1960s, I had no way to know that he was unusual among his generation of fathers in seeing no reason why little girls should be raised any differently from little boys. I had no way to know [End Page 557] that not every little girl of my generation was encouraged to get dirty, explore the world, throw a respectable (American) football pass, and pursue her interests in math and science. I had no way to know that not every child went on family road trips that included stops at every single historical landmark along the way, and some that were not entirely on the way. My father was the original quality-time parent. Although he worked a lot, he brought the same dedication to parenting that he brought to his work. He wanted to show his three children everything, and teach us everything. I am told that by the time she was two years old, my older sister could identify the members of Kennedy's cabinet. As the kids grew older, the lessons changed. My father first introduced me to archival research when I was in ninth grade, tasked with writing a report on the robber baron era. He brought me to the dusty archives at Duke University where the original newspapers from that era could be found. My father was fascinated by astronomy as a child but was persuaded by his parents to study law instead when he went to Harvard in 1951, at the age of 16. My grandparents were very intelligent and extremely hard-working. Both graduated from high school in Asheville, North Carolina, at a time when few Americans, and even fewer born to modest means, finished high school. My grandfather was offered a scholarship at Trinity College, the forerunner of Duke University, but turned it down because he felt obligated to support his family. His own father, a railroad conductor, had been killed in a railroad accident before my grandfather was born. My grandparents began their westward migration in the early 1930s, moving to Kansas, where the brother...

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