
My husband stands at the entrance to the inner quad of Stanford University (our alma mater) as dusk falls. Students are probably hurrying to dinner and no longer scurry across the quad from class to class. In the background is the magnificent Stanford chapel, disassembled in Italy and shipped to America stone by by stone and tile by tile. It was reassembled as part of the original campus of the university founded by Leland Stanford, the railroad magnate, and his wife, as a tribute to their son, Leland Stanford Junior, who died too young to attend a university.