In the fall of '31 I entered Parsons School of Design in New York. It was Glad who helped me choose Parsons and found me accommodation: the Three Arts Club, a residence for young women who were studying Music, Art or Drama. It was located on West 84th Street, and close to Parson's as well as to a subway station. It was only half a block from Riverside Drive and a short walk to Central Park.

The courses at Parsons were stimulating, but I felt that the emphasis on "dynamic symmetry" was extreme. Even figure drawing was supposed to be based on diagonals and right angles. I just did things my own way and sketched in the silly lines later!

There was a big studio on the top floor of the Three Arts Club, and that is where I did my assignments. One evening I met a young woman up there who had designed some handsome wallpaper. She was fighting tears of frustration, because she couldn't figure out how to arrange her lovely patterns so they could be printed in a repeat design on the giant presses of a wallpaper factory. I knew how to do that, and between us, we got her presentation ready to show to a manufacturer the next day. She got the job, and she never forgot my helpfulness.

My homework at Parsons was easy and fun, and left me plenty of time to explore New York. Suddenly I found myself free of boarding school rules and restrictions . . . free to explore that exciting city. When I wasn't in class or working on an assignment, I would take a bus or subway for one nickel! New York was safe in those days, and I could spend an evening on 5th Avenue, studying the artistic window displays in those elegant stores. I discovered everything from art galleries and museums to exclusive shops and sleazy bargain basements. The throngs of people fascinated me . . . always hurrying and pushing . . . each focused on his or her personal objective.

That big studio room at the Three Arts Club was used for meetings as well as art projects. Professional artists would come to give talks to the art students. It was a thrill to meet well-known artists and illustrators whose work we admired in current magazines. One evening, the famous muralist, Diego Rivera, came with his tiny wife, dressed in her native costume.

There were other cultural advantages to living at the Three Arts Club. Sometimes we received free tickets to Broadway plays or concerts. The theater managers wanted to keep the seats filled. The tickets might be just for a dress rehearsal, or they might be in the topmost balcony, but we didn't care when we could see stars like Helen Hayes in Victoria Regina and Mary Martin in Peter Pan! That year of living in Manhattan was a marvelous experience for a young girl just out of boarding schools.

One Saturday, I was window shopping and saw a small sign that said, "Gallery." I went up some narrow stairs and opened a door, and there, before me was the most amazing display of paintings I had ever encountered. They were giant flowers, rendered in a decorative style, like nothing I had ever seen before. I was enchanted and awed by those huge paintings. The artist was Georgia O'Keefe, and the gallery was the Stieglitz Gallery. In my youthfui ignorance, I had never heard of either, but the experience made a lifelong impression.

What a time that was to live in New York. There was no fear of crime, although I was told to avoid dark streets and places like Harlem and the Bowery, but I could walk up 5th Avenue at night, alone, studying the brightly lighted window displays of the great department stores., with never a thought that I might be robbed or mugged. Nobody carried much money. No one had much. It was the Depression.

I was still rather dissatisfied with the art courses at Parsons. I had heard that the best commercial art school in the United States was Pratt Institute, and my ambition was to learn to be the best artist I could possibly be. When I mentioned that to my father, he was more than happy to help me switch schools, because he didn't approve of the young man I was seeing in New York. Pratt was in Brooklyn; too far to commute from 84th Street in Manhattan. But Glad was resourceful. She learned that a friend of a friend knew a lady who lived in Brooklyn. She had a spacious apartment in a funny old building where she kept house for her son and daughter and another young woman, all close to my age. Mrs. Stephens needed extra income, so she was glad to take in one more boarder.

The next challenge was to get me into Pratt Institute. It was a big school, highly endowed, so the tuitions were low, and in those depression years, hundreds of students were trying to get in. There were courses in architecture, chemical engineering, and library science, as well as two art courses: one in illustration and the other in advertising art. Illustration for magazines required lots of figure drawing which I didn't enjoy. I leaned toward advertising because I loved creative design, so with Glad's help, I sent an application.

The school's answer was that there was a long waiting list and that they could only select a limited number of students. They would send me an entrance examination, which was to be completed within a certain time limit, and then I would be interviewed before acceptance.

By the time the exam arrived, we were spending the summer at Bay Head, a resort town on the Jersey shore. Glad and a friend with a daughter about my age had rented a big house together. Our days were filled with swimming and bridge games and dances. Meanwhile, back in East Orange, Dad was having an out-of-work carpenter put a big window in the loft above the garage, with stairs, leading up to the room. It was to be a studio for me to use after I graduated from art school. (My father was never so happy as when he was dreaming up a new project, especially one which would add to the value of his properties.)

In the midst of all our summer activities, the examination arrived, and Dad brought it to Bay Head the following weekend. When I opened the packet, I was I was appalled by the amount of work I was to submit. There were several projects to complete. One was to paint a Spanish dancer in watercolor within a specified size. Another assignment was a pen-and-ink drawing of a building with landscaping and trees. There were several others, and all were to be finished before my interview. It was a daunting job, especially when I remembered that I was competing with those other applicants on the long waiting list. But I was determined to do the best I could, and I went to work, forgetting swimming parties and bridge games and dates.The exam was more important.

I spread out my work on the ping pong table as it was the only large flat surface in the house. That rambling vacation house was often filled with guests, and two of the current visitors were Glad's sister, Clara and her likable son, Bill. They had just returned from the Beach Club when Glad called everyone to lunch. On his way to the dining room, Bill picked up a ping pong paddle and took a swipe at an imaginary ball. Over went my bottle of indelible black ink, spilling it on my detailed drawing of a house! I exploded, screaming at him that he had ruined my work and spoiled my chance to get into the best art school in the country!

I was nearly hysterical by the time Glad came from the kitchen. She took one look at my ruined drawing and held up her hand to silence me. Then she said in her quiet voice, "Alright, Virginia, you and I are going right back to East Orange, where you can work on your examination in peace and quiet. The studio over the garage is practically finished and you can work up there, away from all this confusion. I will be nearby in the house, and I'll fix our meals, but I will leave you alone so you can concentrate." I looked at her with tear filled eyes. "But Glad," I remonstrated, "You have all kinds of things planned; bridge parties, and house guests, and . . ." Glad held up her hand again. "They're not important. This is. Now pack up your instructions and your art materials, while I make some phone calls. We can get going in about an hour." What an amazing little lady! No wonder I turned to her with all my problems!

Glad and I drove back to East Orange in time for dinner with Dad, who was delighted to have his family home for a while.

The dignified old house in East Orange. was quite a contrast to the noisy confusion of the summer place at Bay Head. Instead of tangy ocean breezes blowing in open windows, the house was silent, with a faint scent of furniture polish in the still air.

Glad bustled around opening windows before she called Dad's office in Caldwell. Then we went out to inspect the nearly finished studio over the garage. There was a huge window in the back wall, and a solid plank table. The place was blessedly quiet, with only the twittering of birds in an ancient maple tree.

The following morning I redid my pen-and-ink drawing, and it went easily, as I had the preliminary rough sketches. Glad was in the house, doing laundry and phoning friends, and she had lunch ready for me when I came in for a break.

The next assignment was to do a watercolor of a Spanish dancer. I had troube doing the figure drawing, but rendering the skirt was a lot of fun. I penciled in row after row of flamboyant ruffles, and then I flooded each tier with water, and added pure colors of red and purple and yellow, letting the colors run into each other. The result was gaudy but effective, and I felt the joy of creative achievement. That was a great feeling, and the rest of the assignments went quickly. It wasn't long before we could drive back to the coast for the final days of summer vacation.

When it was time for me to appear before the examinining board at Pratt, I traveled via train and subway to Brooklyn. The school was in a large stone building, ancient and bare, but practical for its purpose. I climbed up the worn marble stairs and walked along empty, echoing halls to the examining room, with my packet of art work clutched firmly under my arm. Butterlies of uncertairty fluttered in my chest. Would I be accepted? Was my work good enough?

The teachers were friendly, and they seemed to like my work. When they came to the watercolor of the Spanish dancer, one of them exclaimcd "Oh, look at those colors!"

And so I was accepted and assigned to the 2nd year class. I hadn't expected that, even though I had a year of art school at Parsons. Perhaps I would have turned out to be a better artists if I'd had the preliminary year of training at Pratt, but then I wouldn't have met Phil von Phul.

A week or so later our classes started. There was a lot of good natured bantering among the students as they got reacquainted after the long summer's holiday. I felt a little awkward not knowing any of them and found that Pratt was a lot more busnesslike than Parsons. It was more like trade school, training the students in all phases of the commercial art business. My classmates were a mix of ethnic and economic backgrounds, with most of them coming from low income families in the Brooklyn area. A lot of them were Jewish, and I had a new understanding of the term "melting pot." We had all passed those competitive entrance requirements, and we all had a common goal: to become well-trained graphic artists in the exciting business of advertising.

I was quite impressed with the Jewish boys. They kept up with their homework in spite of holding down part-time jobs, and they were amazingly knowlegable about the arts. They would get cheap tickets to concerts and operas, and the next day they would be singing arias in class.

One student caught my eye because he was so different. The first time I saw him, he made me giggle. He was unusually short, with horn-rimmed glasses, and thick black hair. He wore a stiff new smock which stood out in contrast with the tattered, paint-stained outfits worn by the other students. Besides his odd appearnce, he seemed terribly serious, as he labored over his drawings. No wonder I giggled!

"Now there's an odd character!" I said to mysef, as he set up a brand new drawing board on one of Pratt's decrepit easels.

Then he lettered his name, Phil von Phul, in the lower left hand corner.

"Phil von Fool," I read aloud.

"It's pronounced 'von Pool'." he growled. End of conversation.

The other students nicknamed him, the 'Little King," after a popular cartoon character who was short and round and solomn, and was loved by everyone. It was an affectionate nickname, because they admired his gentlemanly manners. His speech was like the people I'd known at home in contrast to the rough twang of Brooklynese that pervaded the classrooms.

We had classes not only in life-drawing and perspective, but nuts-and-bolts courses like typography and layout and package design. One course was in photography, and on a chilly November day, the whole class was sent to Wall Street to take pictures of the architecture and sky scrapers reaching upward. An icy wind as blowing through those concrete canyons, and our hands and feet grew numb with cold. It was fasinating but rigid work, and when the class was finally dismissed, Phil said, "Brrr I sure could use a drink about now!"

"I know a speakeasy!" I answered, proud to show off my new sophistication. Just a week before, some friends had taken me to a place called Geralds in Greenwich Village. And so "the Little King" and I set off to find it.

We took the subway to "the Village," and there was Gerald's, looking just like a residence: a dignified old brownstone house. Phil rang the bell and I gave the password to somebody inspecting us suspiciously through a peephole. Speakeasies were very cautious and secretive because selling liquor was breaking the law.

Finally we were admitted and led downstairs to a cozy room where several customers were seated at candlelit tables with red checked tablecloths. It was a quiet, friendly atmosphere, and we sat across from each other, sipping highballs and getting acquainted. Phil seemed so gentlemanly, pulling out my chair and offering me the menu, so different from the manners of most of the other art students.

He started to tell me how much he missed his family. His eyes were shining, as he described their demonstrative ways, with much hugging and and kissing and holding of hands, and silly nicknames for everyone. I had never met someone who expressed so much love and warmth so openly. My own childhood had been quite different. I knew I was loved, of course, but it was a dignified, restrained sort of love, with little outward show of affection. In my world, it wasn't considered in good taste to hug and kiss and hold hands,and I wondered if I'd been missing something wonderful. I was getting a glimpse of a whole new attitude toward family life, and I wanted to find out more about this unusual fellow student.

"I'd like to get better acquainted with Phil," I thought. "He talks about something I never experienced before."

When it was time to leave, Phil asked for the check, and I told him that I wanted to pay my share. He was surprised, and I explained that I thought fellow art students should "go Dutch." Many months later, he told me that before leaving Seattle, he had been warned about "New York golddiggers." He decided that day that I didn't fit in that category.

Our friendship grew during the next two years while we were art students at Pratt Institute, and the friendship grew into attraction.