squeak, what I stated is indeed correct. The only academia on ARPANET (which was what today’s Internet was called then) were Universities that were Defense contractors (or sub-scontractors), i.e. the University of Southern California/Information Science Institure, etc. (Perhaps there was even one in the Garden State.) The broader academic community joined in the ’80’s, with the National Science Foundation establishing the NSFNet and connecting it to the ARPANet via the new TCP/IP protocal, effectively establishing the Internet.
Your e-mail account, assuming it was an ARPANET one, must’ve been from an institution somehow related to Defense.