What is it about me? I’m a perfectionist. Organized. On time. And I found out that I am also really, really good with money.
My first experience was when I was treasurer of alpha Z Delta social sorority at Marshall College. And when I did Wingspread Summer Theater in 1960 with Tad Curry, I was the business manager. We did 10 plays in 10 weeks. I also built sets and played Alma in Summer and Smoke. She’s on stage for the whole time except for one scene in the First Act and one scene in the second act. So, I played the lead in Summer and Smoke, built sets, ran the box office, and was the business manager – the whole caboodle! Goodness, what things I did when I was young.
When I got out of college what did I go into? Something similar to what my dad was in; General Motors Acceptance Corporation dealing with money. My job was with Midland Loan Company, one of those small loan companies and I interviewed people that wanted to get a loan. I was there for about 4 months when Dad found out they had an opening upstairs in his building with the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. For a nice pay raise I went there. I was there for three years until I went back to college, dealing with numbers again.
So instead of being a teacher during that part of my life, which looking back on it now maybe I should have done, I was working as a clerk. The agents would be in one room with their cigars and their cigarettes and the smoke. Harriet Stalder and I had our own office and a window for the people coming up to pay their $5 a month or whatever they were paying so they have insurance. When I could, I’d go talk to the agents and try to find out all I could about selling insurance. When I suggested that maybe I could do it, they’d say, OH NO! Women can’t sell insurance! Well, Heaven forbid that a woman should sell insurance. There were a couple of other places too where I suggested that I could do something and OH! Women can’t do that! That’s what I encountered from 1952 to 1955 in getting jobs and teaching college. You really had to prove yourself. Why are you not getting a Ph.D.? Do you get a Ph.D. or an MRS? Well, I was kind of at the beginning of the feminist movement, and I said Hell Yes! Women can do that!
I did practically get a Ph.D. I took all of the course work at Northwestern University toward a Ph.D. in theater: acting, directing, stage, and costuming. I’m quite sure that maybe another two years I could have gotten a Ph.D. But to get a PhD you had to do two things, one was to write a long research thesis. And two, after you got your job in teaching in college, you had to publish. That’s part of the re-creation versus creation idea. I was always better at re-creation than creation. And I just didn’t feel I had it in me to do the writing and the publishing. I mean years later I could, after I really learned more about teaching and writing, but at the time I didn’t feel like I could. And I just didn’t want to do the academic stuff. I wanted to do the acting. I wanted to do the directing. I wanted to be a doer and not bury myself in a library. So that again is a choice – the tactile – participate in the activity and know what you’re doing. But I wasn’t ready to do the academic research and didn’t know how to do the academic research along with the activity. I kind of knew my physical limits when I moved to Cincinnati to teach high school and some of that was the fact of being 90 lbs and anemic.
For instance, I had to choose between Courter Tech and Princeton High School. Princeton gave three plays a year and you had to teach high school and produce and direct three plays a year in addition to teaching and commute 20 miles one way. Or, I could just drop down off the hill for 5 minutes and go to Courter Tech and do one play a year and a variety show with the band director and have a 5-minute commute to work. Well, I chose Courter Tech and the five-minute commute to work. And Courter Tech being a vocational high school – drawing underprivileged kids from all over the city who are dedicated to getting a high school degree like auto mechanics, beauty school, secretary, and woodworking – made it more like a college campus with a college atmosphere, much more than the suburban high school that I would have gone to. I never regretted that choice. I made wonderful life-long friends at Courter Tech and I think it was so valuable to help the kids there. I have memories of special things and special stories from classes and from the plays that will always be with me. And when I think of Oak Hills High School that I went to after that – which is a Suburban high school – there’s not much that stands out. It was Suburban. It was Provincial. The Cincinnati public schools and Courter Tech subsidized my going to the Speech Association of America conferences every year, bringing back new ideas into the classroom. When I went to Oak Hills they did not want to subsidize my going to national conventions. When I had to write up my trip and give it to them, I know for a fact – from what I was told – that they took what I wrote, stuffed it in a file, never read it, and could care less. Anyway, I went to Oak Hills after Courter Tech, and I kind of regret taking that path. But that’s what I did.
Then in 1991, I joined Phi Beta and in around 1994 became treasurer (there’s that money thing again). By 1998 or 1999 I had morphed into secretary. I was president for at least half the time between 1991 and 2001. Then in 2008 when I was 78 years old I said I cannot do this anymore. But I kept the organization going until then. They’ve sort of kept it going since then, but they’re deciding now whether they’re going to dissolve. Because, well, it was formed in 1912 by women when they couldn’t get into the arts much and they needed to have their own outlet for the arts. It wasn’t until the 30s and 40s and 50s that women started really being able to get into the profession and become prominent. It’s just gone the whole cycle. Now, if you are in the arts professionally you don’t have time for a sorority. And they’ve brought men into it now, too, so it’s just a fine arts organization. You can get into it when you are in college and if you don’t go totally professional, it’s a really wonderful organization and outlet. But if you do go professional, which the organization aims to go that high, you don’t have time to do anything until you’re close to retirement. So it’s kind of a weird situation and maybe the organization’s time has passed.