This is what I think of when I think about The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Woman.
Women Inspire Innovation through Imagination;
Celebrating Women in Science Technology, Engineering and Mathematics
22 March 2013
Women inspire. Women inspire Innovation. Women inspire motivation through imagination. When I was a young woman in the mid 20th century the prevailing culture expected Innovation to be the primary contribution of women. Very few realized that the Innovation inspired, would be to change the role of women in the culture.
In many respects I have lived out the changes in the culture broadly titled “the Women’s Movement.” The 19th amendment of the United States constitution, allowing women to vote had only applied to three presidential elections when I was born. Women’s rights were exercised largely at the discretion of their fathers and husbands.
I was born on my father’s mortgaged farm the oldest of three children. My college educated mother had left her public school teaching job because when she married, married women were not allowed to teach. My daddy farmed with horses and milked cows by hand. He did have a tractor and a truck. One of the five memories I have of him relate to my running down the lane to catch him and go with him to the creamery as he took the milk. We ate what the farm provided; fruits and vegetables from the garden; meat from our cattle, hogs and chickens. The chickens my mother kept. She kept house; she kept a garden; she kept the chickens. My father kept her and also provided for his two unmarried sisters. The younger sister was crippled from childhood polio. We were a typical happy prosperous family.
When I was five years old and my sister was three my father died. He died of double pneumonia the year before penicillin was uses on patients. Gone! Gone was our income; gone was the farm; gone was our food source; gone was our passport into the pre-Second World War society. Five females; two little girls; a spinster; a cripple; and my mother two months pregnant. We became the women’s movement! The older sister got a job as a church visitor. The younger sister became the house keeper and loving child tender. My mother got a government contract sewing gas masks at home for a growing army (show the gas mask bag). She of course could not work outside the house during the terms of her confinement, which the culture used to call pregnancy. When the baby my brother, was weaned my mother got a job as a mail clerk at the army chemical center, Edgewood Arsenal, now a part of Aberdeen Proving Grounds, Maryland. If we were poor I never knew it. I walked to school, walked home, did my homework, made good grades, took piano lessons, rode my bike, wandered through the woods, went to church and Sunday school, played the church organ for services, played high school field hockey and basketball, and played either piano or drums in the school orchestra. I learned to drive my mother’s 1938 Plymouth and my boyfriend’s 40 Ford coupe which he let me drive on the local quarter mile race track. In my senior year in high school I won the National Grange essay contest which included an all expense trip for mother and I to beautiful downtown Minneapolis Minnesota.
As I graduated from high school, our minister’s wife loaned me money to attend college, Asbury college, Wilmore, Kentucky, her alma mater. In order to attend college I had to work. My first job was in the scullery of the college dining hall. The second quarter of my freshman year I chose to take a course in library science and got a job in the library. Working in the library is better than working in the scullery. An individual’s quality of life is largely determined by the choices one makes. Many factors impact our choices. The culture where one is born; the expectations of family and community; a realistic evaluation of our capabilities; our value system; and our inner voice. At this point the temptation is to preach a sermon, however I leave the preaching up to my Presbyterian minister husband. Suffice it to say that the spiritual component of my life has been primary in all of my choices. I am a Christian. My expression of Christianity has largely been through two nominations, the Methodist Episcopal church of my youth and the Presbyterian church of my majority. But I assure you that I have no allusion that I have God in a box. God is revealed in infinite ways and through many denominations and groups. So if you will stipulate that every choice, every relationship, every day of my life is based on a underlying spiritual component; I will not continually refer to it.
Asbury college was either a crucible or an incubator for life. The 1950 rules were No! No smoking, no drinking, no dancing, no movies, no mixed bathing (no swimming with the opposite sex), no public display of affection (holding hands), no shorts, no slacks, (except as appropriate to a particular activity), no skirts above the knee, no bare legs, (hose were required), no leaving the campus without permission, no being out of your room after 10:00 PM, no lights on in your room after 10:00 PM, no being with a member of the opposite sex after 2:00 PM on Sunday. Chapel attendance was required three times a week, Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. (You will have to guess which rule got Ted and I suspended the second quarter of my junior year.) I loved college. I loved studying. I particularly loved my science courses. And I took great satisfaction in studying organ, and playing the magnificent five ranked organ in the main auditorium. (I had played the small electronic organ in our local church all through high school.) I was taught by a small dedicated and brilliant faculty that I respected then and to this day. I studied. But, I worked in the library, I was a cheerleader I played basketball in the fall and softball in the spring. I practiced the piano and organ and many weekends played for the evangelistic services held by various student preachers. Occasionally I played the piano or the organ for Chapel Services. In the summer I worked for the government at the Army Chemical Center back in MD., gathering together just enough money to go back to college for another year.
As I have said, life is a series of choices. In the 1950s for me, the most important choice one would make is, “ Who will I marry?” In our college most of the men were planning careers either in the ministry or in medicine. I choose the ministry. Marrying the right person is pretty much a result of blind luck. What 20 years old knows enough about people or living to choose the right one. Once Ted had proposed and I had accepted, we began planning. Ted would go to seminary, four years. I would teach school to make our living and pay for his seminary. When he graduated he would take a church. I would keep house and we would start a family. We almost made it; our oldest child, Mark was born three days before Ted graduated AND [I attended the graduation.] There was another component to our planning. We agreed that our careers would be of ministry and service.
Ted had graduated from college in December and I graduated the following June. He got a job as a truck driver. I went back to the Army Chemical Center as a clerk typist. The money I made, provided for a very nice wedding. The money he made bought a 23 foot house trailer and a three year old Plymouth station wagon. We were married in August. Driving the Plymouth, loaded with wedding gifts we honeymooned in Niagara Falls [years later we went back and saw the falls]; we drove across Canada to Detroit where we hooked up the trailer and headed for Dallas, Texas and Ted’s first year in seminary. We had a nest egg of $200, so we were unconcerned about money. I had the promise of a job starting September 1st in the Dallas school system. I showed up the third week of August in the offices of the school board and stopped to get a drink of water at a fountain that had a sign posted, “Whites only.” I left and did not interview, the only time I have deliberately not gone to an appointment or meeting to which I was suppose to go. Hence I had no job! I began looking. I found a job as a clerk typist, typing bank drafts in an investment company. I told Ted “If I’m going to work in office I want to do more than just type.” So that evening I enrolled in SMU’s evening program to learn Greg shorthand. About two months into my new job a very subtle but important incident occurred. It was about 4:45 PM, I was typing away not realizing that I was the only one typing. The other girls were packing up, filing nails, discussing what ever. When the president of the company dropped in. He asked, “Why is Betty the only one typing?” Someone replied, “We were getting ready to go.” He said, “Then go.” Slowly they got up and left. I continued typing, head down until 5:00. By April I was the president’s, similar to a private secretary. I thought, I was on my way to being an investment banker!
Ted had decided to change seminaries. By September our trailer was birthed in Louisville Kentucky. This time I got a job teaching high school in the first year of racial integration. There is a Chinese curse that goes, “May you live in interesting times.” Is that a curse or a blessing. I have lived in interesting times. During the first couple years in Louisville, I played basketball for the city, golfed, and volunteered for the Court System as a mentor for abused children.
Ted graduated from seminary and got an appointment to the First Presbyterian Church in Louisville. We moved with a newborn baby into a manse on Eastern Parkway. No furniture. But…. By September I had convinced my crippled aunt to come and live with us as baby sitter and I went back to teaching school. We were set for life. But life had a set a course for us. Two years and I was pregnant again, but miscarried. Two more years a successful pregnancy, and our second son, Teddy was born. But! Ted had joined the naval reserve and in December was involuntarily called up to active duty. Gone was a church, gone was the manse, gone was the furniture we had acquired into navy storage, gone was my seniority in the Louisville school system; gone was the prestige of being a successful pastor’s wife. I was now a navy wife. In the years to come I would say, “A proud Navy Wife.” I found myself living in three furnished rooms in a farmhouse in Middletown Rhode Island. I was the wife of a Lieutenant JG making half the salary of a Presbyterian pastor. Two months later we moved to San Diego. Six months later we moved on to San Francisco, a permanent duty station. That was just wen Tony Bennett’s song, “I left my heart in San Francisco,” came out. Ted was on Sea Duty. You know what our song was for awhile. The twist was just becoming popular. North Shore with all it’s excitement. What a city! I got a babysitter, actually a whole Guamanian family of babysitters and I got a job teaching high school in the Alameda school system. We added a baby girl, Lee, to our family. In 30 months we moved to Corpus Christi, Texas. In 19 months moved to Los Angeles California, and Ted left for Vietnam. I joined the Fountain Valley school system teaching fifth grade.
Many things happened for me during the tour in Long Beach. We actually lived in Huntington Beach. I joined an amateur theatrical company. A producer saw me and offered me a movie role in an educational production. I realize that I could write a better script than was being produced and my offer was accepted. So I wrote scripts and acted the part of the teacher in several educational films. In the meantime I was teaching and my progressive principal offered the challenge of designing a special education program for students who were identified as “Special Education.” Special education was a new concept in those years and what I did came out of my experience and imagination. I only had five to seven students who at times were main streamed, but the program was so successful, it was showcased by the principal. (popcorn, bike, taping government lesson for one eighth grader) I got an offer to teach special education at UCLA. But I couldn’t do one more thing. I was considering an offer to write and act for a production company for about twice what Ted was making as a Lieutenant Commander when I got a call from the Chief of Chaplains; Ted is ordered to Meridian, Mississippi.
After spending almost seven years on the West Coast in San Diego, San Francisco and Los Angeles, Meridian’s Mississippi is somewhat of a culture shock. I imagine most of you have had the Meridian experience. There was no job for a navy wife. So I became treasure/bookkeeper for the navy relief society; the Navy Liaison with the Meridian Symphony Orchestra and the President of the Officers Wives club. I designed and directed the Navy Chapel vacation Bible School which included SB squad tents, helicopter special services demonstrations, Navy Canine demonstrations and scores of hours of fun for bored dependent children. In 19 months and Ted was ordered to sea, out of Norfolk, a ship that he was to join on deployment in the Med.
In Norfolk I got a job teaching school, Life and Earth Sciences at Rosemont Junior High School. Very soon I had an opportunity for Innovation and Imagination. The principal called me and said, “We have in the school 20 boys and two girls who are failing; many of whom have connection with the court system. Many of them are causing severe discipline problems in the classroom and disrupting the program. I would like to form two specials classes and I want you to teach them 2 hours a day, the last 2 hours, when they’ve been the most disruptive. You can teach them in the music room. So I had a record player and a piano. I taught them Music Appreciation. Amazingly their behavior changed and every one of them passed into the ninth grade. On Fridays I taught them how to be disk jockeys and they had to prepare advertisements and play an segment¸ using two recorders on what would be like a radio station. My son had a friend that built a sound system for me. The last week of school when PE had broken down all their equipment I got permission for them to DJ for the school’s PE classes to dance. They dressed in their three piece suits for the occasion and for the first time these bad boys were entertaining requests from the elite of the school to play the songs and they wanted to hear. They were being recognized for the first time for positive behavior. It changed their opinion of who they were. As I worked with a population of the most difficult students to educate I realized I was more than a teacher. I was a social worker. So I went and enrolled in Norfolk State University in their Master of Social Work program. A friend said,” By the time you get that degree you will be 40 years old.” I replied, “I’m going to be 40 years old whether I get this degree or not. Halfway through my masters program Ted got orders, this time to the Senior Chaplain School at the Navy War College, Newport Rhode Island. I intended to enroll in Boston college to finish my social work degree, but my application was rejected because I hadn’t had black studies. I was attending Norfolk State. I found a small school right in Newport, Salva Regina College that offered a master’s degree in criminal justice that I could finish in one year. I enrolled and became the first woman with that particular degree in the New England area. When the year was over Ted was ordered back to Norfolk to be the chaplain for navy housing. I got a job with the Norfolk school system based on a title 10 program that I helped design which was designed to reclaim expelled students who indicated they wanted another chance to get their degree, it was called “Last Chance Program.” The program was an individual prescriptive teaching program based on the students’ Reading and Math grade level. The program was 50% affective. . At this time I was playing the organ for two Chapel programs 10 hours a week ; and had gotten back into Norfolk State. I remember thinking this schedule may kill me. But it didn’t.
Ted is now ordered to the Philippines to be the senior chaplain, Naval Base, Subic Bay and the Area Chaplain, Southwest Pacific. We had been warned that there were no jobs for navy wives in the Philippines. But before I had packed up and flown out I got a call from the commander asking me if I would be willing to take over a fledgling program newly established Family Advocacy Program. I had a wonderful time, learning the navy way and the Philippine culture. In the ensuing three years I establish training for over 200 counselors and had been able to provide for them CEU credits from Coastal Texas College. These counselors then volunteered at FAP as we provided around the clock coverage to go with the police to deal abusive situations. At this time the FAP was under the Naval Medical Department, most specifically the Psychiatric Department at the Subic Bay Naval Hospital. I then became the Lead Social Worker at the Naval Hospital Subic. I was invited to join the graduate school at Saint Thomas University as candidate for a PhD in Clinical Psychology and completed the program during the next 36 months.
That degree and my hospital title set me up for my next job as Ted was transferred to New Orleans Louisiana, which was Director of the Crisis Center at River Oaks Psychiatric hospital. I moved up then to be the Administrative Director of the Out Patient Clinic at that hospital. In about three years I had the opportunity to go into private practice with a psychiatrist in Slidell Louisiana.
Ted retired from the Navy and returned to Pastoring; eventually taking a call in Bay Saint Louis, MS. We moved from Slidell to Bay St. Louis, Ms. and I commuted the 27 miles to Slidell, continuing my practice. In 2005 we lost everything in Hurricane Katrina. We continued in the area 100 days helping with the recovery. In January of 2006 we accepted our older son’s invitation to come the Virginia Beach.
I continued my shrunken counseling practice via the internet for fourteen months. When the insurance companies discontinued payment for internet counseling I retired. I was retired for almost four months when the opportunity present to return to the Navy, to the fleet and Family Service Center, Oceana as a FAP counselor.
This journey has not been a lonely one. I have been aided in every phase by literally hundreds of friends and family.