Clara Meyer, the heart, brains and soul of the New School for Social Research from 1919 until 1960 hired me as registrar, that is, bean counter, during those early WWII years while I was attending Columbia College and awaiting my call up in the U.S. Army Reserve Corps. She wore her black hair in maiden halo braids and could hardly see across the desk through the thickest glasses; from the first moment of that first interview, I stared wide-eyed at alma mater to the School. She herself had become the institution which thankfully lacked overbearing administrators and comfortable tenured faculty. An institutionless institution!