The sailing season is upon us, and I can’t resist sharing a favorite family story. As a Princeton undergraduate, Jack Moffly (Class of ’49) was Commodore of the Princeton Yacht Club, a fancy name for the sailing club that had an old broken-down tin shed and four dinghies on Lake Carnegie. At that time, Albert Einstein was teaching at the Institute for Advanced Study, separate from the University, and lived a short distance off campus.
Our daughter Audrey recorded her father telling us (complete with German accent) how the two met.
Said Jack: “It was rather unusual, because nobody saw much of him. In any event, coming back from class one day, I passed my roommate who said: ‘By the way, Jack, Albert Einstein called and wants you to call him back.’ I said, ‘Yah, yah, I know.’ His nickname was Joker, so I didn’t take him seriously.
“But later at the dorm he asked me: ‘What did Albert Einstein want?’ I said you gotta be kidding. Anyway, he convinced me it was actually Einstein’s hausfrau who’d called, and he had the number. So, I called, and sure enough, Dr. Einstein would like me to come for tea because he understood I knew all about sailing on Lake Carnegie.
“My roommate said, ‘Oh, my God, a chance to meet Einstein!’ He was an Engineer and tech-oriented, so I immediately appointed him Vice Commodore so he could join me.
“So, we knocked on the door and were warmly greeted by the fraulein. ‘Oh, you were so nice to come. Let me take you up to meet Dr. Einstein.’ And she led us up a long flight of stairs into the sunroom. Every surface of every table was covered with heaps of papers and books, and emerging from this cacophony of paper was this great gray mane. You’d know it anywhere.
“We were served tea, and Einstein said: ‘I had a terrible time finding you so I could sail on Lake Carnegie and hoped you could tell me how.’ I told him we’d certainly try.
“ ‘How do I get there?’ Well, I said there’s a bus, but they’re not very frequent. Or you could take a cab if you don’t drive.
“ ‘Well, I have sails, you see. What do I do about them?’ Well, we have an old tin shed, but I wouldn’t trust it. People might get in and steal the sails.
“ ‘I see. How about a boat. Can I launch a boat down there?’ Well, we keep our dinghies on shore and drag them down. ‘I guess I could drag one, too.’ We have a dock, I said, but frankly we’re afraid to use it. It’s a little wobbly. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘maybe I could launch it from there. But I have to get there. Maybe I take my bicycle?’
“Well, maybe not. You’ve got your sail bag in one hand and riding a bike, I don’t think so. ‘Maybe I could take a limousine?’ I thought he might think this was a yacht club and we’d have a limousine. I told him we didn’t.
“To make a long story short, he was most gracious but beginning to get the idea that these two clowns weren’t going to be helpful at all. (Chuckle)
“Finally, we parted company; but as we were leaving, he turned to me and said, ‘You know, I wanted to sail on Lake Carnegie, so I called the Crew House, then the Sports Department, then I called this person and that person, and finally I get YOU. It’s just like Chain Reaction!!!’
“I almost fell down the stairs.”
So there ends the story, except for Jack’s final comment after the videotape ended: “It was such a pleasure to talk to somebody with the same love of sailing that I have.”
May the wind be at your back this summer and always.