She was born in Izmir, Turkey. Her younger brother was sickly so she was sent to Istanbul to live with grandparents. Her parents and brother moved to Istanbul later.

She was accepted into Robert’s College, which, despite its name is a 5 year high school. The first year is intensive English and the remaining 4 years are taught in English, except for a Turkish history class. She already spoke French (spoken in the house), Spanish, Turkish and Italian and as I learned many years later, about 200 words in Greek.

She went to work for the manager of the Pan Am station at Ataturk Airport and in 1948/49 a Pan Am radio-officer/navigator asked her for an appointment with her boss. She asked the reason and he said he needed an advance on his salary. She suggested that he budget better and sent him away. On the next trip he had he asked her out. Their first 5 dates were chaperoned by her aunts.

About a year later, they married in three ceremonies, one in a Catholic Church, one Turkish civil ceremony and one ceremony at the American consulate.

She went to live Queens, New York with my father and had a job as a simultaneous Turkish/French/Spanish/English translator until my older brother came along.

My father was by then flying for Aramco Airlines before Aramco offered him a significant new role in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, which is where I was born.