Christmas Morning at Einstein's House

I heard about this college when I was a student at Princeton, but I did not know where its campus was. It was not until 2004 when I went there to take this photo. I was gathering materials for my webpage dedicated to Einstein in commemoration of the 100th anniversary of his formulation of special relativity. Here is the Einstein webpage which I constructed in 2005.

It was fascinating to find those young ladies of this small college had a very special relation with Einstein.

The Westminster Choir used to go Einstein's house to sing to make him happy. Every year, at the dawn of Christmas day, the ladies of the Westminster Choir went to the front of Einstein's house and sang "Joy to the World.." to tell Einstein the Christ has come. Einstein, though not a Christian, used to become very happy, and was kind enough to come out and greet them personally. What a joy to see Einstein's happy face!

I am very happy to introduce to you two ladies who attended Westminster Choir Collage and sang in front of Einstein's house.

• Helen Holcombe was a student at Westminster College from 1944 to 1948. She used to sing for Einstein. With her in this photo is her husband Bill Holcombe. When Bill was a young man in 1940, he was in a courthouse in Trenton (near Princeton). It was a special day. Einstein formally became a citizen of the United States. Immigration authorities were nice enough to arrange a special ceremony to arrange a brass band to play American traditional music welcome Einstein. To him at that time, Einstein looked very old with grey uncombed hair.

  I met these nice people in February of 2004 at a highway restaurant at the sourthern end of the Delaware Memorial Bridge connecting New Jersy and Delaware separated by the Delaware River. I was driving from Princeton to Maryland, while they were coming back from their Florida vacation. They still live in Princeton, and are still active in their business.

• Margaret Underwood also went to Westminster Choir College and sang for Einstein. Her father was a missionary professor of agriculture teaching in Korea, and her family had a summer house at a village where I spent eleven first years of my life. Their house was located at a snow-white sand beach, and had a number of white American cows with black dots. Since Korean cows were and still are all brown, I used to look at those American cows with curiosity. She was so happy to hear my cow story because I was the first one to talk about those cows. I was talking about what happened 60 years earlier. I met her and her husband in Urbana, Illinois (October 2003).

  Her husband used to spend summer month in the same beach area. His grandfather was Horace Underwood who was the first Presbyterian missionary to Korea. My grandfather was one of his trusted Korean friends. He did not know this when he wrote me this letter. He saw these photos from my website. Unfortunately, his beach house, as well as my childhood home, is now under the control of North Korean authorities.

His grandfather had an elder brother who was one of the pioneers of typewriter industry in the United States. Until 1960, Underwood typewriters were domineering desktop machines like Dell computers are these days. Underwood used to be a very familiar name to all Americans.
• Einstein liked music. He used to play violin.

  In general, physicists are music lovers. Many of my friends play their own musical instruments. Many of them like to sing. Most of them however enjoy listening music, through electronic devices.

These days, like you, I have to attend conferences. In addition to conference sessions, I am tempted to visit concert halls and opera houses I used to hear about. Let us look at some photos. You are invited to see my collection of photos of those music places.