Thank you very much! Now, here's a twist: When we went in to change the True to False in the $CFG->dbpersist line, we discovered that there was NO line for it. It was just an empty line! A line break was there as if a line should have been there, but nothing.
So, we inserted the line but went ahead and left it at true based on the theory that the missing command was causing the problem instead of the persist being on. What do you think of that idea? Could the absence of that line be responsible for the apparently large connection numbers?
Tony
PS. Since we fixed it by setting it to true, moodle is noticeably faster.