They were local. They tended to be the math teacher at junior high school, Jack Druckman, the math teacher in high school, Irene Finkel, who ran and supported the math team. They tended to be very local heroes. I was never one at those times for distant heroes and truly heroic legendary heroes. They were the local teachers who really made a huge difference in my life.

The early influence in my life I think was my father. That’s the earliest influence. He and his circle of friends. Usually, in our society, children are supposed to be neither seen nor heard. When elders are around, they’re supposed to very respectfully leave them alone. But I was curious. I just loved their debates. They used to get excited over issues, and so somehow I was allowed to eavesdrop, unlike the other children. And I picked up some of the ideas that they had, and I would ask questions. I was known as the questioner. Afterwards, I would ask questions, and my father would indulge me by trying to explain things to me. So that’s one of the reasons I consider him the earliest influence. And also, he had a small library, and I used to go into his library and try and read the books which I found there. Later on, as my circle of adult acquaintances increased, I think the next influence on me was my uncle, the Reverend I.O. Ransome-Kuti, who was another very erudite person, a great educationist. I used to visit them in Igbein, where he lived with his wife and they ran a school. So on weekends sometimes I would go there. And of course it was the usual story. I wanted to listen to them discussing and so on. Don’t misunderstand me. I was also very playful. I loved disappearing by myself, climbing trees, all that I did. But additionally, I was just fascinated by the whole discourse. Exchange of ideas between adults just used to fascinate me for some reason. I was never tired of listening to them. So my uncle was my next great influence.

A very important influence. Now when I look back on it, it was my father who was against the gender constraints of my time. And my mother, she used to be a working woman herself, she joined the National Guards. She was a captain in the National Guards. She was the first woman in Karachi to own a car and to drive, and people used to talk about her because they said, you know, “We’re not supposed to drive cars.” But when I look back on it, it was my mother who taught that a woman grew up to be married and to have children, and she would tell my father in front of me, “Why do you want to educate her? No man will want to marry her.” So all the time, for her, success depended on having a good catch as a husband, and having children. Whereas for my father, he broke free of those constraints, and he insisted that I have an education. He said, “Boys and girls are equal. I want my daughter to have the same opportunities.”

My wife, Nellie, my high school sweetheart. She helped me in so many ways. I suppose people today might say it’s hard to believe, but I was an extremely shy person. Maybe being raised in the country had something to do with it. She got me to go to take public speaking classes, which I probably wouldn’t have done. I know that was of great help to me. And then, in so many other ways. She was a year behind me in high school. I’ve got a picture of us when she was 15 and I was 16. I don’t know why but, when we met, it was just love at first sight. She is the only girl I ever went with. I was a year ahead of her and I went away to college. Then, she graduated from high school and worked, and we didn’t get to see each other that much because times were hard. Even though it’s only 70 or 80 miles from Lafayette to Burnsville, the bus might have been 10 or 15 cents. I didn’t have it and she didn’t either. We didn’t get together much but we knew as soon as I graduated and got a job, we would get married and we did. She was a tremendous influence in so many ways. I’d say that my college coach, Piggie Lambert, is one of the most principled persons I’ve ever known. He had a lot of effect on my life. The head of the English Department at Purdue University, Dr. Creek, took a liking to me and tried to get me to forget sports completely and just concentrate on becoming a college English professor. There was some sort of a scholarship that he could get me for graduate school, but, I wanted to get married and get a job. So, I’d say that my father and mother, I don’t want to neglect my mother, and my wife and Piggie Lambert, my college coach at Purdue, probably had more influence on what I became as a teacher. That’s all I was: a teacher. That’s all I was as a basketball coach, just a teacher.