assar College. The headmistress of her private high school (alma mater of among others: Ted Kennedy (even then you did not want to be his dance partner), Deval Patrick, and, of course, James Taylor) claimed Johanna only got into Vassar because her mother was on the board. In the winter of her first semester, she transferred to UVM — her mother claimed she was “boy crazy” and the captain of the ski team on his visit was just the hunk-a-junk to capture her attention — her father, a co-Freudian with her mother — praised her for bucking her mother’s influence and celebrated the diminished tuition. However family lore is embellished, Johanna loved and thrived at UVM. She settled into an English major, formed a life-long friendship with her English professor (to whom she introduce me, shortly after our marriage, maybe a touch-back for my having my English professor from the Naval Academy as my best-man). It was her English professor, a native of Fall River, and graduate of Brown, who nominated her for PBK.

Johanna was enormously proud of her “fye-bait” — as she called it — but was not boastful and was chagrined on a visit to Annapolis where the impresario of a summer Shakespeare happening (production of play on the rooftops to no or any audience, a hangover or sixties make art accessible) flaunted his key about his neck on his tanned, shirt unbuttoned, chest. Not only was she proud, but receiving her key had deep emotional significance.

Johanna’s father was dying of cancer when she graduated. No one really seemed to know that he had cancer, as an MD perhaps he downplayed it, nor its scope or stage of the disease, markers that have come into vogue in the later years of the last century as survival rates have increased.

Johanna’s father was also Phi Beta Kappa — but, unlike Johanna, he had not attended an American undergraduate college having returned to America in the twenties to complete medical school following being raised in Germany after his father had died in a mining accident in California and his mother, after his birth, committed suicide in San Jose. Johanna’s father was an honorary PBK having been awarded the distinction while a professor at the Johns Hopkins University (where, he met and married his student who became Johanna’s mother).

Johanna’s installation was particularly poignant because her father, as a “fye bait” was able to induct her — keeping the details of the ceremony secret and within the community. A year later, while Johanna was in graduate school in Geneva, Switzerland, her father succumbed to cancer, becoming euphoric in his final hours and speaking only German. On his death, she received her second key.

For many years, Johanna had two “fye bait” keys. She sometimes wondered what to do with them, noting in passing they were somewhat anachronistic originally being designed to be worn by men as ornaments to their watch chains. Interestingly, UVM is credited with being the first institution to induct women, which were Johanna aware, never mentioned. Sometime around the early nineties, where her political ambitions were realized with seat on the towncouncil, she decided that having earrings made from the keys would allow her to honor her father, celebrate her own achievements, and signal she was bright as bright could be. Johanna chose her occasions to wear her earrings with great care — often they were at public gatherings, like the awards dinner for Admiral McGrath, or the annual Justice reception for the Roger Williams Law School, or the one time she went to her high school reunion – to excise the ghost of the head mistress as much as to meet surviving (read how you wish) classmates.

Now you know the complete story (although, there are likely more twists turns, imaginings, an real happenings) have the keys and wear them with joy.