Way back in the early 1920s, my father was the superintendent of schools in Hempstead. He was very interested in all the seniors and what they were going to do.  There were no student counselors in those days.  There was no guidance department, so my father and the principal did that job.  He realized that there were many people who wanted to go to college and who simply couldn’t afford to go to one of the historic institutions at some distance from Hempstead.  So he decided that the thing to do would be to start a college of Hempstead, this being the hub of Nassau County.  My father suggested to Mr. Brower that within the conditions of the will is that a college would be a marvelous thing and would be a tremendous asset to Hempstead and to the community at large.  One of my father’s sayings was something to the effect that you should always be ready when your opportunity came.  Well, I’m quite sure that he felt that was his opportunity, and he took it.  And the college came into being with some of the same men that he had been working with for quite a number of years.  I think that he died right after graduation.  He had a heart attack right here in his office.  I think that he had the heart attack in the morning, I believe.  I think that he died the next morning.  We had the funeral at home because that was his wish. We went down to the cemetery.  And we asked the funeral director if he would drive us to the college on the way home.  It was a summer day, and there was a real summer shower. And as we turned to leave, we looked up the southern sky over Calkins Gym. And there was the most beautiful rainbow.  We stood there just without saying a thing. And it seemed awfully prophetic because my father had loved rainbows and he felt that rainbows were something special.  We really and truly felt that when we saw that rainbow, it had really meant that Hofstra would be a great university.  We all had the same feeling.