I was born a grandson of Alfred Kurth, the Swiss watch manufacturer (Certina watches), and president of the Protestant community, in Grenchen, Switzerland. My mother, like a Protestant first lady, agreed to enroll us three boys in parochial school, once we had immigrated to these United States.
We were welcomed and accepted almost immediately. My first best friend was Patrick McNulty, and the IHM nuns, many of them Irish, taught me English so well that I later became an English teacher and author.
My mother, largely through the influence of the Catechism we boys brought home, converted to Catholicism, but her father had departed long ago. With the welcome we received from American Catholics, he would have approved.
Civilization 