P: It was a one-year stay?

M: That was all we could afford. Then I came back to West Palm Beach for
 my senior year.

P: As you were growing up in West Palm, was there any contact between people
 in West Palm and the rich folks who lived across the bay in Palm Beach?

M: The people who lived in West Palm Beach were primarily the service
 people--lawyers, accountants, caretakers, firemen, policemen, yard
 maintenance people, etc.

P: Of course, that is what Mr. Flagler had planned right from the very beginning,
 that the "good" people would live out of Palm Beach, and the second-class
 folks would live inside.

M: It was always at the forefront of everyone's minds; that rich people lived in
 Palm Beach and the rest of us lived in West Palm Beach. There was no
 particular animosity because of that. That is just the way things were.

P: You did not mix? Their children did not go to your schools?

M: Not until high school, and the main children from Palm Beach who went to
 our high school were children of the staff that the people brought down with
 them if they had children. I know in particular that about ten families in
 Palm Beach had their own tennis professionals that they brought down, and
 several of the children of the tennis pros went to school with me. I know
 that because tennis was my sport, and I competed against the children who
 had top-flight playing fathers.

P: What were your strengths in school? What were the areas in which you were
 doing the best?

M: I do not know whether it was the relatively low standards of the school or
 if they graded on the curve and I just happened to be in classes where I
 looked better than the rest of the students, but generally I was at the top of
 my class, and I received two half-year skips.

P: Were the sciences particularly strong for you, or math?

M: There were no sciences. There was arithmetic.

P: Basic courses, then, were what was available for you in the school?

M: That is all that there was.


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