There I am listening to my mother describing Admiral Rickover as that really nice old man because she happens to be very old friends with Admiral Rickover's hospice nurse who described him as just the nicest man and then my mother describes going to deliver a lesson at the house of another Admiral at Newport and finding him out in the yard dressed for yard work and raking leaves and says he greeted her, came into the house with her, shucked his shoes, put on some inside shoes, washed his hands and made a cup of tea which he carried into the room where all the ladies were meeting and in the nicest way asked if he could join them. She related this to my father who was teaching at the War College and who routinely described that admiral as a savage beast unfit for human company and told us how all his subordinates quaked in fear at his slightest frown.
Funny how different reality looks when you shift the lens through which it is perceived.
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