A father and daughter go from principal and student to graduating together

Interviewer: Can you tell us about your childhood?

Francine: I went to school in Brookline. My father was a school principal, my mom was a teacher, and my maternal grandparents lived with us. At different times, different uncles lived with us, so we have always had a full house. I had two brothers, and we had a lot of fun. 

The only odd thing in my life was that I went to a school where my father was the principal. He was the kind of guy who would go around to all the classrooms every day and say hello to the kids. He got to know them very well, so that was kind of odd. Sometimes I used to pretend I didn't know him, but everybody already knew that I knew him. 

We didn't live far from the school. I remember one Halloween, lots of kids came to the door, and my dad would answer the door, and this one kid was astounded. He looked at him, and said, “I know you. You go to my school!” And my dad got a big kick out of that. 

After high school, I went to college in New York State, a small women's college called the College of New Rochelle. I graduated from there and had a wonderful experience. There were about 900 to 1,000 undergraduates. So it was a small school, relatively speaking. 

That next year after I graduated, I thought I'd like to be a teacher. I had been a psychology major, but they didn't have any education courses, so I went to Boston University. Now talk about going from a small school to a big school! 

I went to Boston University for a year and got my master's degree. 

The very strange thing about that was, I had my picture in the Boston Globe among all those thousands of graduates. Because my father had gotten his doctorate in education on the same day, at the same place, there we were in our caps and gowns together. A father and daughter graduating in the same class, even though we never took any classes together.