| Summary: This is an interview of Patricia
Higgins. Ms. Higgins was born in Little York, New York on December
1, 1947. She grew up in a working-class family in East Syracuse with
her mother, father, and four siblings (two brothers and two sisters).
She started school in kindergarten at Park Hill School, a public school.
In first grade she moved to a Catholic School, St. Matthew’s, and stayed
there through the eighth grade. She went to St. John the Evangelist
High School after that. She went to a two year college after high school,
against her father’s wishes, and then taught for three years at a Catholic
school. After she quit her teaching job she decided to return to school.
She attended the University of Missouri at Columbia and then took a job as
director of a program for battered rape victims at a YWCA. This job
started a career in the social services sector. Ms. Higgins got married in
1982 and had one daughter. In her interview Patricia Higgins discusses education(1) and opportunities for higher education, her mother's work experiences as well as her work experiences, motherhood, gender relations, the feminist movement, gender discrimination, and Vietnam. Transcript of interview by Quinn Gardner of Patricia Higgins Little York, New York March 6, 2004 Quinn Gardner (QG): When were you born? Patricia Higgins (PH): I was born December 1, 1947. QG: So, that makes you 56? PH: Yep. QG: You are a baby boomer, then? PH: Oh yes, I am. QG: What were your parents like? PH: Um…my parents were married right after the war. They met during World War Two. My father was from a farming family in Central New York, and my mother was a city girl. She was, uh, born and brought up in Philadelphia. So, they were very different in their backgrounds. But they, they met during World War Two and married in 1946. 1945, actually. 1945. QG: How many siblings do you have? PH: I have two brothers and two sisters. QG: You grew up with four other kids running around the house? PH: Yes, I did. Um, we were like many baby boomer families. Uh, fairly close in age, at least the first, three, four of us. Fairly like most of the other families in the neighborhood. And it was a small house. So, I look at it now and I can’t figure out how we did it. But yes, we did. QG: Was your house crowded? PH: It was very crowded. It had…When my parents were first moved in that house, they already had three children, and I believe my mother was pregnant for the fourth. There were only two bedrooms. Now, eventually they converted another room into a third bedroom, but it was small. All the rooms were very small, um, so yes. It was very, very crowded. QG: Did most of your friends have large families too? PH: Yes, absolutely. In fact, we weren’t considered a particularly large family. I mean there were families in the, uh, school, that we went to that had eight, eight kids. You know, five was not considered a particular large family at the time. QG: Where did you go to school? PH: Um, when I first started school in, in kindergarten, I went to the public school, which was Park Hill School. But by the time I was ready for first grade the Catholic school was built, Saint Matthews. So, at that point I went to Saint Matthews for grade school. Up through eighth grade, that’s how it went. And I went to St. John the Evangelist High School, which was actually not in my neighborhood. It was located in downtown Syracuse. QG: How did you get there? PH: Initially, it was the city bus. We lived, actually, almost right on the corner of where the city bus went. And…they were very interested in having people go to the Catholic High School, so I think we even got some kind of a subsidy for our tokens to take the city bus. By the time I was a senior we had school buses that would pick us up and take us to St. John’s. QG: Was it expensive to go to Catholic school? PH: Um, it was, it did, there was a tuition. It certainly wasn’t like it is now, but it wasn’t as inexpensive as public school. I think we paid some small tuition, not for grade school, but high school. Grade school there was not a tuition for grade school but there was for high school. It was also, um, competitive to get in the catholic high schools, because they didn’t have the large catholic high schools like they do now. These were basically neighborhood schools. And they were located…um, maybe nine or ten of them located in different places around the city. There were all very, very small and um you would actually take a test to get in school. So, some of the people from St. Matthews that were in my class that graduated in eighth grade wanted to go to one of these catholic high schools but couldn’t get in. It was just very competitive to get in. QG: Where did you grow up? PH: I grew up in East Syracuse, which was originally a railroad town, but when we grew up the main manufacturing, uh…place was Carrier Air Conditioning. They were then based in Syracuse. And many of the people that I knew had families that worked for Carrier. My father did not at that time. But, uh, it was a manufacturing, manufacturing town, basically. QG: Would you say you were a middle or working class family? PH: Oh, definitely working class. Definitely working class. And, and everybody knew it was working class. I don’t think I knew anybody whose, uh, whose family would have been considered middle class. There were some folks, but most of my friends were working class. QG: Did all your brothers and sisters go the Catholic school? PH: Um…except for my brother David, who is about twelve years younger than me. Um, the four of us, the first four of us all went to Catholic grade school. But in high school, my sister Carolyn and I went to Catholic High School, and we were the only ones that went to Catholic High School. The other, actually the other three went to East Syracuse Minoa, which was, uh, a public high school. QG: How come? PH: Um, when we first went, when Carolyn and I first went to Catholic high school, the, the public high school in the area was terribly overcrowded. It was so overcrowded that, in fact, you had to go, you had to take a morning or an afternoon session. There would be a session from seven in the morning until one, and then another one until five or six or something like that. And, and, the Catholic High School were considered much better educationally and academically. They put a lot of emphasis on preparation for college. So, they were considered better. Now, by the time my brother, who is younger than me, went to school, that was the first year that East Syracuse Minoa was built so it was bigger school and there was a lot more offered. And I think, also, that he just didn’t want to go to. Neither did my younger sister. They didn’t want to go to Catholic school. They wanted to go to public school. QG: Which brother? They are both younger than you? PH: Both of them wanted to. Butch and David both. And Marilyn. Definitely wanted to go to the public school. QG: Is there anything you want to say about your family? PH: I think my family was in, in, like a lot of families at the time. Still being influenced World War Two to a great degree. I can remember one time when I was young they had another couple, maybe two other couples sitting around the kitchen table. Of course they all had a lot of kids. And the kids were mainly playing with each other. But I can remember being downstairs sort of listening, like kids do, listen to their parents when they talk. And I can remember, uh, one of the other guys that was there saying something, they were talking about, uh, bombing, and that they were sure there would be another war, and I remember distinctly when one of them saying “well, Syracuse would be a target to be bombed because of Bristol,” which was actually right up the street from us. Bristol Laboratories. And I remember really being … sort of shocked at that. But I think, you know, that they were still, most of them had been, uh, in the service. The men had been in the service, the women had been influenced by the war. Uh, some of them, you know, going with them and totally different places than they had grown up, and, uh, you know, I think that was an influence on them. You know, my, it was definitely an influence on my father. He, he had a lot of problems in terms of drinking problems and things like that as he got older, and as I look back I think a lot of that was related to his experiences in, in World War Two. My mother, of course, was totally taken out of her context. I mean that she grew up a city girl in Philadelphia, and, uh, when she first moved to Central New York with my father, the first place they moved didn’t even have indoor plumbing. It was a huge, huge shock to her. She had never had, I mean she didn’t cook or anything like that. Her mother did it all, so she comes to live in a farm family where all the women are, you know started cooking, cleaning and all that, when they were probably five years old. So, she was definitely a fish out of water. And I think that impacted their relationship which of course impacted everything that happened. QG: Did your mother work? PH: When we were young she didn’t work outside the home, but, um, I think I was probably I don’t know, twelve, or thirteen, and this was again, during recession time, and my father lost his job and that’s the first time I remember my mother working. She got a job with an insurance company, and did start working then. She did that for a few years, and then she got pregnant for my young…. Well, I must have been younger than that, because she got pregnant with David and quit work then and I was twelve then and David was born. And she didn’t work then for a number of years, I think for maybe three or four years, and then went back to work and worked for New York State Compensation Board and continued working there until she retired. QG: So, she was working when your dad wasn’t working? PH: Yes, yes. He was not working and, uh, she got a job and you know, he eventually did get other jobs, but uh, there was a little while where she was working and he was not. QG: Did your friends’ mothers work? PH: Again, when we were little nobody did. Absolutely nobody. It was just not considered to be a good thing. At all. I mean, women were supposed to be home taking care of these kids and there were so many kids, and they were supposed to be involved in the PTA and, um, all of those things that, that kind of go on. But they all had stair step kids. One right after the next. But I can remember there being just a kind of attitude that they shouldn’t be working because if they were working they were taking jobs away from men. QG: So, then your mom just started working at first because your dad wasn’t working? PH: Right, absolutely and I can remember when she went to interview for the job at the insurance company she had to take a test. My mother was pretty intelligent. She didn’t go to college but she was, you know, is a very intelligent woman. And, uh, my father drove her down and she went in and took the test. When she came back out, you know, he of course, didn’t expect her to have gotten the job because he had been looking for other work and hadn’t found anything and she just got the job immediately. And he, you know, she walked out and said “oh, I got the job.” He was just shocked. Just shocked that she just went in and took that test and got the job. Now, it didn’t pay a heck of a lot of money or anything but it was a job and, you know, they needed the money so she did. QG: Was he upset, or anything? PH: I think he always struggled with that. I, I do, I really do. He uh, from when he lost his job, this was the job he had had from when he was young and he went in the service and came back to this job after the war. But, you know, it was sort of his, his self-hood, it was tied up in that. And even though he did work and have other jobs pretty much for the rest of his life. I don’t think he ever really recovered from that. The fact that she could, could just go and get a job very easily, although, again, she didn’t make any money, very little money compared to what he had made. But I think he struggled with it. QG: What expectations were put on you growing up? PH: Umm…. We were a big family, and uh, my mother always expected, in terms of school work, she always expected me to do my best, but she never put any pressure on me, ever put any pressure on me at all. And I do remember whatever my grades were she just thought that was wonderful. She never thought, I never remember her saying to me “you need to do better,” It was like, “yes, you are doing very well.” The same with Carolyn, um, so she was always very, very proud, umm, expected that we would do well in school but didn’t expect that we would, you know, be the best at everything. As far as …my father had no expectations whatsoever in terms of grades or anything like that. Never paid the slightest bit of attention to that, at all. He was very umm, sports minded. He was a great athlete in high school. When he was a freshman in high school he was captain of his baseball, basketball and football team. And, uh, probably, had he gone to college, he probably could have gotten a scholarship to go to college. One of his best friends at the time was Tommy Cahill who eventually became a coach of West Point Football. And they stayed friends really for their whole lives. He was a great athlete. He was also a professional boxer for awhile. Umm, and he was very, very good at that. He quit that because his mother didn’t like it, which was kinda interesting. Umm, she was an interesting person. But she didn’t like him boxing, and he quit even though he was very, very good. So he was very athletic minded. But he really, I think, in his mind, girls… there was no reason to educate girls beyond high school, he expected us to get through high school, because they were just going to get married anyway. He really had no interest in that. QG: Was there any expectations on you because you were a girl? PH: Yeah, yeah, there were. Um, we were supposed to do certain housework that was just, and it was definitely divided over the gender line. The girls were supposed to do the dishes, the cleaning, things like that. My brother was supposed to take out the trash and mow the lawn and you know, very divided along gender lines. Completely divided along gender lines. I don’t know that we ever really did very well though. And since my mother wasn’t a particularly great cook and she was an okay housekeeper, but it was never anything that she ever had any selfhood tied up in. She didn’t ever put any effort in teaching any of it to us either, so, I guess you’d say the expectations were there but not really, not really, big in terms of that kind of thing. QG: What was high school like? PH: Oh, high school. High school, you know, when I think about it and I don’t know if it was any different from high school at any time in terms of the emotional upheaval of high school which I found to be very difficult. There was, umm, umm, it was a small high school and there were kids from different parts of the city that had come to this high school. You had to take a test to get in. And, umm, I think we had 80, 80 kids in my graduating class. And it was very cliquey. It was, you were either the in crowd or you weren’t in the in crowd. It was such a small school there really wasn’t room for a lot of different groups. There was only 80 in the whole graduating class. It was a struggle, I think high school was a struggle, I wouldn’t go back to high school for anything. It was a very difficult time. QG: Did you go to college? PH: I, I went to college, umm, first to a two year college and graduated and then I worked for a number of years and then I returned to a different college later and completed my degree. QG: Were your parents supportive of you going to college? PH: Not really…. My mother was. My mother was. She thought it was great. Um, and she was, you know, she tried the best she could to be supportive. They had really no money. So my first semester of college, I don’t know where she got the money now that I think of it. She paid for my tuition and room and board for one semester. But then after that it was up to me. I had to figure out how to do it. I def, distinctly remember when my older sister, who is a year ahead of me, went to college, it was kind of like the one that was the ground breaker because my father just saw no reason to go to college. And she was bright, she was very bright and very ambitious. At that time much more ambitious than I was. And she had it in her head that she was going to college and she got everything arranged to go and he just didn’t see a reason for that at all. I even, I remember him saying to her “why are we putting her through college?” Not that he was. He really wasn’t putting her through college. She put herself through college. Umm, “She’s just going to get married anyway.” And then the only reason that you could sort of logically say to him that made any sense was, “well, she’ll have something to fall back on if her husband has a problem.” You know. So that was the only thing. But she was the ground breaker, I wasn’t. I think because she did, and because I was in this Catholic high school where the emphasis was on going to college, I decided I’d go, but I really didn’t know what I wanted to do. No clue, none whatsoever. QG: What was your college experience like? PH: I went to college in, I started college in 1965. College in 1965 and graduated in ’67 from my two year college. That was the time, really, it just seemed like the world was changing. In so many ways. The music which of course was always a big part of uh, any, any teenager’s life, was changing radically. I remember distinctly when the Beatles came over and all of that. It was a real hard rock and umm, people’s looks changed radically. And then of course there was the Vietnamese war, and that was just a huge impact on, on college experience in those first two years. I can remember a friend of mine who went to high school with me, umm, she went to Lemoyne College, she was there six months I think, and immediately, the first time I saw her she just didn’t looked like the same person. Not even the same person. Everybody grew the really long, straight hair, and ironed it and wore, umm, eye-liner and really, really short skirts. Just, uhh, bellbottom pants and so it was just, it was one of those times when things changed really, really rapidly. QG: When you were younger what did you see as your future? PH: Umm…I really didn’t know. I really didn’t. I remember when I was probably … oh gosh, probably in like eighth grade or something having a conversation with my sister, Carolyn. And, you know, about what we were going to be when we grew up. And I think I said something like maybe I’ll be a hairdresser. And I remember her saying to me it was one of those things that I distinctly remember, “A hairdresser? That doesn’t take any brains to be a hairdresser.” I think that was the first time I even thought about that. You know, thought about something. It just didn’t click with me. I had no idea what I wanted to do. None. QG: Did most of your friends feel like that? PH: Umm…I think as we got older, and we were in high school most of my friends wanted to do the same things that every other, they wanted to go to college ‘cause we were in this school where everyone went to college, but they wanted to be teachers and nurses. That was basically what people wanted to do. QG: Did you feel pressure to marry? PH: I didn’t feel pressure to get married from my parents or anything like that. I certainly felt it from society. I mean, especially when I first started college, that was still the time where…uh, you know, what you really wanted to do when you went to college was by the end of it get pinned, get engaged, and get married. That’s just, that’s just how it was. And I just wanted to do that too because I just thought that was what I was supposed to do. I didn’t feel any pressure from my parents or anything like that, but myself, I think felt like I wasn’t going to be successful unless I was able to do that. QG: Did you know anyone who served in Vietnam? PH: Yes, I did. I knew…there was one young man who went to grade school with me. And he was…he was the first person I knew that got killed in Vietnam. I think up to that point, even though it was in the news and everything, I… I never paid any attention to it, I didn’t know what was going on. And when I heard that he had gotten killed I remember just being sort of shocked. And then afterwards I knew two, actually three, three other guys that I knew that I had dated on and off were in Vietnam at different times and it was…it was pretty scary. It was a very scary time. QG: How did you feel about the Vietnam War? PH: I think in the beginning, like a lot of people I really didn’t pay much attention to it. I didn’t think, I didn’t think about it. I remember when I was in high school, and again remember this was a small Catholic high school, they had a speaker come in, and I think I was maybe a junior when he came, and his name was Anthony Bouscaren, I still remember his name. And he was like some head honcho in government and he was talking about Vietnam then and it must have been at the very, very, very beginning and someone asked a question of well won’t they, meaning the world, say that we’re being aggressive if we go to Vietnam and, and, you know, have a war there. And I remember him saying well they’re saying that anyway, so why not just do that. And at the time, that made a lot of sense. I just thought, oh yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So, I think probably at the beginning, I was probably thinking, if I thought about it at all, which I really didn’t, but if I did I thought oh well, yeah, that’s, that’s, and besides our government knows more about this that I do. What do I know? That’s probably okay. But of course as the war progressed, umm, I thought differently of it and was, was one of those who, who felt it really should end. QG: How did the feminist movement affect your life? PH: The feminist movement affected my life a lot. Although not when I was young. Again when I was young, I just didn’t get it. I mean, for me, it was of course I just want to get married and have kids and, you know, I didn’t think much of it at all. But when I went back, actually, let me think about this. I went…I did two years of college and then I did some teaching and then I moved to Indianapolis. And, I think I was in my mid twenties, then. And that’s when, and I was by myself there. And that’s when I started doing a lot of reading. I can remember going to the library every Friday and just getting books, and books and books, and reading over the whole weekend. And, I picked up some, some book having to do with feminism or women’s rights or something. And I started reading that, which got me to read a whole bunch more on that. And…it was just all of the sudden it was one of those experiences where it just sort of all clicked. I read a lot. I remember reading The Feminist Mystique, I can remember reading, uh, umm, I can’t think of her name now. The other woman that, I mean there were two or three at the time that were best sellers, and I just absolutely remember thinking, my god this makes so much sense. And, um, really started considering myself a feminist. So, that was sort of myself doing that I guess. Umm, I wasn’t necessarily at that point involved in the movement, but I remember starting to identify with what I was reading and what I was seeing. And then when I went to back to college at the University of Missouri, and um, started taking courses, and, again, started getting more involved in issues and I think I was part of the Women’s Political Caucus, there, and really considered myself a feminist. First and foremost. It was probably how I would have identified myself at that time. If you asked me to identify myself I would have said I’m a feminist. QG: When did you get married? PH: I got married, um, in 1982. And I was thirty…four years old. QG: Why so late? PH: I was always sort of a little off-cycle. When all my friends were getting married and having kids, I was going back to school. And then, after I went back to school and moved back here to New York I started getting involved in a lot of things. I met somebody and, um, decided to get married and that was right when all my friends were getting divorced. So, I was always single when they were married and then I was married when they were all single. But I really didn’t think that I wanted to get married. You know, once I sort of said I really don’t need to get married, I kind of got past that I really don’t need to get married, I thought I really don’t think I want to get married. And, uh, it just so happened that I met somebody and we decided that we wanted to have a, a child and that is something that I didn’t want to do without being married so we got married. QG: Did you feel like you had to get married? PH: Before that? I wouldn’t have considered myself successful if I hadn’t gotten married. That was just, I mean, I mean, we’re talking way back now, the only women who didn’t get married were people who couldn’t get a man. QG: Did you have children? PH: I had one daughter. QG: How did motherhood affect your life? PH: Wow. Motherhood affected my life hugely, because I was thirty-five when I had my daughter. I knew I would go back to work. It was really never…a consideration that I would stay home. And, I, you know, wanted to go back to work. Plus, we needed it financially. But I would have anyway, because, I just, I had, you know, worked my whole life. I couldn’t imagine staying home. So, but that was extremely difficult. I don’t think, I think I totally underestimated how difficult that would be. In terms of, um, you know, having a child and caring for a child, but also working in a professional capacity. Um, my sister, my other sister and I were pregnant at the same time and had our children roughly at the same time, and we used to say how the biggest problem was that you never felt like you were doing anything right. You weren’t putting enough time into motherhood to do it right because you couldn’t and you weren’t putting enough time into work to do it right because you couldn’t. So, you know, you felt like you were just not doing anything how you wanted to do it. That was probably the most frustrating thing. It was very difficult. Very difficult. QG: Do you think that your husband felt the same way? PH: Umm, it was a little different for him. He, he owned a restaurant so…the interruptions to work cycles or whatever fell to me. Umm, my daughter had ear infections a lot and had to be taken to the doctors and things like that on a regular basis. But he owned a small restaurant and he had to be there. It was open 12 hours a day and if he wasn’t there it was closed, which meant there was no money. So, there really wasn’t any choice, so I had to be the one to do that all the time. Umm, I was, I was fortunate that I had a job that I could, most of the time, accommodate the time, but it was hard on me then. I had to figure out how to get all the work done some other time. I don’t think he felt the pressure the way I felt the pressure because it just felt like…I mean I had to do it. He couldn’t so I had to do it. And…even if…I don’t know how to explain this. It was just I always knew that I was the one that had to take care of her. I knew that, so it was just always there. QG: Did he ever make you feel like you had to do certain things because you were the mother and the wife? PH: Oh, no. Never, never, never at all. No, he wouldn’t. Remember, I was thirty-four when I got married and he was thirty. He knew exactly what he was getting. I kept my own name when we got married. There was no…He knew I didn’t cook, he knew that I didn’t do that kind of stuff. He knew I would work, so no, he never. He never said you do this because you are the woman, that would never be in his vocabulary, except in a joking kind of a way. He would never do that. QG: What jobs have you held? PH: Umm, when I, when I first graduated from my two year college I did some teaching and early child care. I worked in a day care center for a while and that was in Indianapolis. And it was at that point that I realized that I really needed to go back to school if I ever wanted to, you know, go any further. So, I did, I went back to school at the University of Missouri and when I got there, um, what happens a lot of times. You go back for one thing and then get interested in a lot of other things. And I got interested in women’s studies and human development, a lot of things like that. When I finished I really wasn’t interested in working in child care anymore. I was interested in working in, um, some kind of capacity working on women’s issues. So, I…after I finished I came back to Central New York and worked at the YWCA and did a lot of women’s programming there. After that I worked for Council on Women’s Issues at United Way in Syracuse. I kept my finger in child care. I worked on what’s called a CDA which was Child Development Associate. I was a, a faculty member at Onondaga Community College. And I taught courses in child development to head start teachers so they could get that credential. I work…um…what did I do after that? I got it. Then I started with the PACE program at OCC, Onondaga Community College. Umm, we worked with, umm, women on welfare who wanted to go back to school trying to get their degree and a better job and that got to be sort of a bigger thing with welfare reform. We started the JOBS Plus! Program which was for welfare recipients in the county to get back to work. And then, I was asked to be, umm, Acting Vice President for Student Services at Onondaga Community College. So, that’s what I’m doing now. QG: How has being a woman impacted your career? PH: Umm…I think that being a woman impacted my career probably in the very beginning because I didn’t see other things that I might have been interested in. You know, in fact, when I grew up, you just didn’t see women doing anything really other than being a teacher, secretary or a nurse. So, I probably limited myself … a lot in the beginning just because it didn’t occur to me I could do other things. And, um, you know, when I, one of the things that was kind of interesting to me was, when I went back to school in Missouri, one of the required courses was you had to take one course in economics. And I didn’t take it until I was just about done, I had almost everything almost everything done. And I took it one summer and I loved it. I absolutely loved it. And it was one of those things where I guess you either liked it or you don’t like it. But the, the professor at the end of the class said that I could, I could have been an economist, because my mind thought that way. And, you know, it was that, I think that is kind of one of the examples of, that would never have occurred to me being an economist because I didn’t know what an economist was and certainly there weren’t any women doing that. I think probably in the beginning being a woman limited my, my thoughts and ideas. And then I think also didn’t think I needed a career because I thought I was going to get married and, you know, there you go. So, um, I think as I’ve gotten, as I’ve gotten older…I don’t, because of the field I’m in, I don’t know that being a woman has been, has stood in my way at all, if I fell in a lot of other fields then I definitely think there was a glass ceiling and women can’t get above it. Where I am I don’t think it is. QG: You said that you lived in Indianapolis and Missouri, why did you move there? PH: After I graduated from the two year school I was doing some teaching in Catholic school and I had some friends that were in Albany. So, I moved there and the three of us had an apartment together. I did that for three years. And toward the end of the third year I just knew I didn’t want to be a teacher for the rest of my life. That hit me, even though I liked it and was good at it I knew I didn’t want to do that for the rest of my life. And I had no clue what I wanted to do. I had a friend, a different friend at the time, and she was a teacher also. The two of us decided, and we were like in our early twenties, that you know what let’s just take a year off and take a car and drive around, across country. People did that a lot, then, in those days. We didn’t have to spend much money and it would just be something to do. So, I quit my job and she quit her job and that was what we were going to do. Because she had nothing to do in the summer she went to summer school and then got really involved in her graduate work. She kinda bailed out on me. So, come September, I’ve got no job, actually it wasn’t September yet it was August and I was really in a stew. I was at my parent’s house in East Syracuse and, because I had quit my job, left Albany and I was just kinda in a stew. I didn’t know what to do. And one night I said you know, I gotta get outta here. I had a little Volkswagen. I packed up my stuff and it was at night. And I just said I am just going to get in my car and drive and stop where I stop. And that’s what happened. I drove and drove and drove and for some reason stopped in Indianapolis and ended up living with a little old lady while I worked at a day care center. And that’s what got me interested early childhood was at the day care center. I got to be very good friends with a family there, they had two little kids. And, uh, I was there a number of years. That’s where I decided I really needed to go back to school. Decided, I looked at three places and one of them was the University of Missouri at Columbia, and that’s where I ended up. So, I was out in Columbia for about three years. And then just as I was finishing school a job opened up in Cortland, NY, which was about thirty minutes from my home as a, a director of a program with battered rape victims at the YWCA and my sister sent it to me and I thought well, this is what I have been studying, so I came back. |