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My father, William P. Lear, Sr., was also the father of the Learjet. Its original design was based on a Swiss fighter plane. He had this romantic idea of the Swiss commitment to precision, so he figured, “Let’s build it in Switzerland.” When I was a year old, he moved our family to Geneva to do just that.
We lived in rooms at Le Richmond (a luxury hotel) while our home was being built — a sprawling ranch house in a suburb of Geneva called Onex. It sat on a big piece of land surrounded on two sides by a forest. We had a pool, a two-car garage, and a guest house on a hill, near the entrance of the driveway. This is unreliable, sixty-year-old information, remembered by the lonely child I was during those years.
In the corner of this property was my playhouse. The way this playhouse was built, you (even I, as a little girl — with some help) could push it around in a circle so that it faced in whatever direction you wanted. It was divine. It had a little play kitchen and a bed, a little table and chairs, and I never went there. I don’t remember much about it except that I would see it off in the distance, so far away from the house, and remember it was for me.
I had one friend my age. Chantal Bodinoli. She lived down the road a six-year-old’s bike ride away. Her family had a plot of land where they grew…
