To John Adams and his wife Abigail, children were a gift from God and were, in turn, to be polished and presented to the world in kind. This prescribed mindset was so ingrained and so edge-bound in their minds that they were willing to do whatever it took to educate their progeny — even risking their lives!

On a cold winter’s day in 1778, John Adams took his eldest son, John Quincy, barely 10 years old at the time, across the most dangerous ocean in the world, in the midst of the Revolutionary War. John Adams had been appointed Minister to France, and his young son was now to accompany him on the journey. The elder  Adams was singled out by Great Britain as a traitor to king and country, a crime punishable by hanging.

On the ocean voyage, they came under fire and were hounded by the British Navy, and escaped only to be caught in a harrowing storm. The storm pummeled the ship as it twisted and roiled upon the wrathful waves. The storm was so violent that lightning struck the main mast, splitting it in two.

Another bolt had seared a hole in one sailor’s head; he would die later, “raving mad.” Twenty more were injured. Luckily, both of Abigail’s Johns were shaken but otherwise unharmed. John wanted his young “Johnny” to be exposed to the great centers of learning in Europe, but to get there, he knew he would have to first expose his life.

So great was the importance of their children’s education, both to them and to the world, that they, in a paradox which confounds the modern mind, would risk Johnny’s very life in order to enrich it.

And so it would be. John Quincy Adams is considered by many to be rivaled only by Thomas Jefferson as the most brilliant man ever to occupy the White House.

That is not surprising, as John Adams and Jefferson himself were one of “Johnny’s” teachers.