My family moved from Virginia Beach to Fairfax County, Virginia, in the summer of 1966. That fall, I entered seventh grade. Being so close to Washington, D.C., the National Gallery of Art is a place for school trips. I started Spanish that year and continued with it in college. I’m sure it was in my senior year that our teacher took our small class to see Spanish art at the National Gallery. El Greco’s painting of Saint Martin and the Beggar, depicting the story of him cutting his cloak in half and giving it to a man in need, is one of the National Gallery’s treasures. That would have been in 1971 or 1972. I was in a public high school. Religion wasn’t entirely absent from history and literature classes.
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