Thomas Powers was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 1971 together with Lucinda Franks for his articles on Weatherman member Diana Oughton (1942-1970). I was not at all surprised knowing Thomas-who I have not seen in decades. We met when I was waitressing at Shelley's on lower 5th Avenue. Thomas, was taking a year off from Yale and working at Doubleday bookstore next to the restaurant. I remember that he had a grilled cheese sandwich every day for lunch. We must have gotten lots of talking in pretty fast as a friendship grew. Our topics were politics, war beginning in Vietnam and books. Thomas wondered why I was not in college-and that was a first for me. After a bit i met some of his friends, one I remember as being very eccentric and would come flying into my apartment with all kinds of theories about Big Brother. One weekend Thomas invited me to the Hamptons with a girl named Jane who he may have been dating. This was my first time there and certainly the first ever Skeet shooting. Time passed, I got ready for Berlin and I believe Thomas finished up at Yale.. we wrote for a bit and once he asked me to travel with him to Mexico as I was the only person he knew free enough for that adventure. Time passed, Thomas wrote books, lots of an area of interest we talked about at Shelley's- politics, racism, disenfranchise. When I think of him it is with great fondness-as an encourager--and as for college--that waitress now holds 3 degrees from the Ivies..."Why aren't you in College, he asked"...
