Interviewer’s Note

The excitement that this anonymous speaker has when she talks is rare. Excitement for her family and their future as well as her own future to continue learning and growing. We don’t have to stop at school. We really can always keep growing and keep improving. I think that’s a powerful sentiment.

Growing Up and Finding My Way

I grew up on Long Island, right on the water. So, I grew up being used to the beach and living in a small town there. I was the youngest sibling: my older siblings were 16, 13 and 10 years older than me, and I was born after World War II was over. Growing up at the tail end of a family in a small school in a small town was not the best thing for me, really. I always felt sort of shy and a lot of times lonely, but by the time I got to college, I was over that, really. I didn’t have to be lonely anymore.

I went to boarding school for my last two years in New York because I was tired of being in a small school and a small class, and I just wanted to be someplace different. Then I went to college for four years, and I loved it there. I have good friends still from there. I majored in economics; they had a very good program there. It was a beautiful campus, and my classmates were really good, so I enjoyed it. I was finally someplace different, no longer stuck in the same place that I had been in my early school career.

Love, Marriage, and Early Adventures

I met my husband on a blind date at Halloween, senior year of college. We saw each other all the rest of that year and got married that summer in August after graduation in 1966. He was in the Army then, because that was during Vietnam. We spent about two and a half years in Texas at an army post, and our first child was born there. My husband was in charge of a group of enlisted men who delivered meat to all the mess halls, which was just fine with me and fine with him, too, hehe.

Those were interesting times. We lived in a little thing that was kind of like a trailer in Killeen. My husband would get up at 4 o’clock in the morning and go deliver meat with his squad. If there was leftover stuff, they were allowed to bring it home, but he had no idea of scale, and we had just gotten married, so I had no idea how to cook anything. So, he would bring home these insane things like a whole tub full of lard or this big piece of meat that I had no idea what it was or what to do with. We managed to get through two years in Texas.

Family Life and Work

We moved back to Baltimore. I didn’t work for a few years because my two boys were two years apart, and I was taking care of them. I always loved children, and I loved that I finally had my own children.

Later, I worked in an environmental group as an office manager for a Chesapeake Bay group.

Then my husband got into publishing, and we published a series of books about Baltimore and Maryland and history and architecture. I helped him distribute them and sell them and manage the publishing company.

After that, I did financial things for retirees, bookkeeping for people in retirement communities. I would pay their bills and whatever they needed. I really enjoyed the years that I was working because I didn’t want to be sitting doing nothing. I don’t consider taking care of children nothing, but I was happy to be doing something in addition to them. When I was working with retirees, I enjoyed working with them because they were usually very intelligent, and they had good life stories to tell.

My Sons and Their Paths

I’m very proud of how my sons have grown up and what they’ve done with their lives. My older son is an attorney in New York City, head of the international part of a French investment firm. He’s also a musician and directs a big choral society in New York. He’s had two concerts that he’s conducted at Carnegie Hall. It’s pretty exciting. The last one was sold out, which was amazing to me.

My younger son lives with my daughter-in-law, who’s an art teacher, and my granddaughter. He built timber frame houses for a while, and he likes anything to do with wood and being outdoors. He’s the barn specialist for his county now, so he helps people restore old barns. He doesn’t do that himself, but he tells them what’s historic about their barn and why they should restore it and how they would go about it.

My Granddaughter

My granddaughter is eight, and she’s in second grade. She’s very tall because her dad and her grandfather are both very tall. She loves to sing, and thankfully, at age 8, she can sing a lot better than when she was age 2, when she was basically screaming Frozen, you know. She’s sweet, smart, friendly, and outgoing.

She calls me once a week, and I’ll say, “Oh, hi, how are you?” She says, “Fine.” I say, “Did you do anything interesting this weekend or this week?” “No.” “Are you gonna go out in the woods this weekend, do something fun?” “Yes.” So, you have to do a little detective work to find out what’s going on with her right now, but that’s going to change so much when she gets just a little bit older.

My Father’s Legacy

My dad was a doctor, an internal medicine guy with a small office on Long Island. Basically, an old fashioned GP, which you can’t find anymore. Everybody loved him. He made house calls, and he was very knowledgeable, and he was a very good diagnostician, which is critical. His colleagues who were surgeons or specialists knew that if he said something was the matter with somebody, that was really true. They didn’t have to go into all their own research because they could trust him.

He was in the Army during World War II, in England with a hospital group. He would treat the flyers because the flyers were based in England and they would fly over to bases on the continent. He learned about what they called combat fatigue then. He had a patient who had done so many missions, and he would say, “You can’t send this man back.” But they would say, “If we don’t, he’s going to get a dishonorable discharge.” It was a shame, but that was what it was like then.

Lessons Learned and Resilience

I’ve learned that people should be open to new things and go after them if they can, and not settle for something that they weren’t really interested in. If you decide you want something, go for it.

You’ve got to keep learning for yourself all your life. Don’t just stop learning after school. I read a lot and I try to, if I find something interesting, I try to do research on it. Keep moving. That’s very important, and take care of yourself as best you can. If you have good friends, hang on to them and try to see them and call them up.

I’m 79, which is pretty good. I’ve had my share of medical challenges recently, but I’m getting better. So I just did the best I could.

I think my sons are doing pretty much what they wanted to do, so I’m proud of them for that. They pretty much forged their own paths. I hope (and I’m pretty sure) my granddaughter will do what she wants because she’s very determined and very stubborn. She gets ideas and then she goes and does them, which is very good. I think she’ll find something that she really loves doing and she’ll do it. I couldn’t ask for more than that.

In short, for anyone reading this, I would say: Keep moving forward. Keep learning. Take care of yourself and take care of the people you love. That’s what matters most.