During her research, Dr. O'Brien said, she watched a grandfather jump in to explain building principles to his granddaughter, who was playing with the Barbie.
Gurtha Cole, 80, lives with her 38-year-old granddaughter in a building across the street from the home of Mr. Franklin, who the police say worked as a mechanic for the city's Department of Transportation.
She loved Tolstoy's simple Moscow house, kept by his granddaughter, but hated the new Bolshoi building ( "too gilt, too much, too glaring").
"So he went with his friend who lived across the street and shot at the tenants who were sitting in front of the building and at our windows," Mr. Jacobs told his granddaughter, his voice gravelly, matter-of-fact.
The writer and activist Helen Pankhurst, great-granddaughter of Emmeline Pankhurst, said the building held symbolic significance.
Leaving the school building, I came across a man waiting for his granddaughter, sheltering in the rain.
Sabancı was the granddaughter of Hacı Ömer Sabancı (1906 66), who started building what would become the Sabancı Group by investing in a small cotton textile concern in Adana; her father, Ihsan Sabancı (1930 79), was the eldest of Hacı Ömer's six sons.
When I was my granddaughter's age, a plane hit the Empire State Building in the fog, by accident.
When the academy took over the building, "it was really a big slip downward," said Carla Paterno Darlington, a granddaughter of Dr. Paterno.
"It's not the building," said Evelyn Clay, 67, a 1961 graduate of Nichols High whose granddaughter Ebony is a student at the elementary school.
Lula Williams was so scared she stayed out of the building for days, and was planning to return Thursday night, her granddaughter said.
