The time Colin Powell didn’t let me buy his Volvo

Much has already been written on the life and times of former secretary of state Colin L. Powell, who died Monday. As a high-schooler in Northern Virginia, I looked up to him as the kind of leader I was raised to respect, a beacon of honor and patriotism. But he had something in common with my family and me that had nothing to do with politics: We were all aficionados of old Volvos. I drove my dad’s 1964 cherry-red 544 in our homecoming parade.