William & Mary

Interviewees: Anne A. Madden, Joanne M. Deaton, Laura E. Kottkamp

Interviewer: Kim Sims

Interview Date: September 9, 2016                    Duration: 01:06:16

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Kim:                My name is Kim Sims, and I’m the university archivist at the College of William & Mary. I am interviewing three generations of alumnae from the same family. In the center is Anne Armitage Madden, a member of the class of 1943, on her left her daughter Joanne Madden Deaton, class of 1972, and on her right, her great-niece Laura Edge Kottkamp, class of 1996. Today’s date is September 9, 2016 and this interview is being recorded inside the Quirk Hotel in Richmond, Virginia. So starting with Ann, why did you decide to attend the College of William & Mary?

Anne:              Well, my uncle, for one thing, graduated from William & Mary, and I heard a lot about it off and on. And the boy I was dating was going to William & Mary, so we decided to go together. [Laughter.]  

Kim:                And your twin sister went with you?

00:01:00

Anne:              Who?

Kim:                Your sister?

Anne:              Yes, my twin sister. Yes, she stayed for two years and she said I know what I want to do. She said I want to be a secretary, she said, so she quit and became a secretary.

Kim:                And Joanne?

Joanne:            I had always wanted to go to William & Mary, probably because Mom went there and we would make trips when I was a child to the college, and she talked about it a lot and her experiences there, so it was always my first choice. What about you?

Laura:              So I’m like the bad egg in the family. I didn’t know where I wanted to go. [Laughter.] And I loved William & Mary because it was beautiful. And then actually I went to a governor’s school program the summer before senior year and then I fell in love with the campus. It’s pretty hard not to. And I don’t think I knew that y’all had gone to William & Mary. But we’re a nice family. Y’all didn’t put any pressure on me to go.

00:02:02

Joanne:            No, no.

Kim:                So what are your memories of your first days as a student at William & Mary?

Joanne:            I’ll start. It was exciting moving in. The first time I had lived away in a dorm, and just meeting all the gals in the dorm, and just getting oriented to the campus, and unpacking. And, you know, Mom and Dad brought me and dropped me off and, I mean, I didn’t shed a tear. I was ready to be involved. [Laughter.]  

Anne:              We were talking about when I went…?

Joanne:            What was your first day like at William & Mary.

Anne:              My first day, I have a twin sister, and we had to always turn and curtsy so the statue that was in the middle of the walk, you know. And we got there and both of us had on the caps.

Kim:                The duc caps.

Anne:              And—

Joanne:            The beanies.

00:03:00

Anne:              And one was T and A on both of them. And we ran into this…what do you call them?

Joanne:            Professor.

Anne:              Professor, yeah, down there and talked to us. He says now who is Anne? Because we both said—I said I’m Anne. And he says, well, ‘tis Anne, ‘taint Anne, the cap, the TA that we had. [Laughter.]  

Laura:              I actually remember that statue and the…you had to rub. Did you rub the…? Something had to be rubbed.

Anne:              No, we didn’t. I don’t remember rubbing it.

Joanne:            We didn’t do that.

Laura:              Oh, for luck or something. But I remember Carolyn calling me up to tell me, to wish me a good first day.

Joanne:            Oh, that’s funny.

Anne:              Did she?

Laura:              Yeah. I always—anyway, I remember her calling to tell me that there was a statue that brought, you know, that was like good luck.

Joanne:            Right.

Laura:              But you know, we had rush. I don’t know if they still do. We did rush for sororities that, like, first week or—

Joanne:            We did our second semester.

00:04:00

Laura:              Okay, see, so we did our—so like my whole time was just, I have to say, it was fun parties and meeting really smart women and fun, you know, going to all these different houses. And I went Kappa, so…

Joanne:            Right.

Laura:              You know, I knew—

Joanne:            You know, that was one of my…in high school—I don’t know what it was like for you, but in high school I didn’t want anybody to know I was smart because generally speaking, the really smart kids were the really nerdy kids. And it was wonderful to go to William & Mary and meet these gals that I thought were just personable, and beautiful, and I was like wow, I’m at home. It was just great.

Laura:              You still keep up there with that group of your sorority sisters.

Joanne:            I have…there’s six of us that get together every year and go somewhere. It’s great.

Kim:                Women that you met—

Joanne:            Women that I lived with all through college.

Kim:                Oh, wow.

Joanne:            It was great. Yep.

Kim:                We’ll get back to that later in the interview. But a point of clarification. Carolyn was Anne’s twin sister, correct?

Joanne:            Yes.

Laura:              Mm-hmm.

00:05:00

Kim:                And the statue that you’re referring to is the Lord Botetourt statue. The original that Anne remembers is actually inside the Swem Library in what’s called the Botetourt Gallery, and that was the one that William & Mary purchased from the city, the town, the tiny little—

Laura:              Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kim:                —hamlet of Williamsburg in 1801.

Joanne:            Right.

Kim:                And then he had to be put away because he was damaged so much that it what’s now in the Wren Courtyard is a replica, of course.

Joanne:            Cool

Laura:              Okay, yeah.

Kim:                And I forget what it was, well…I think his foot because I don’t think you could get much higher than his foot. [Laughter.]  

Laura:              Yeah, Probably as the fraternity boys. They’d probably get higher. [Laughs.] We’re probably stuck with a toe.

Kim:                Yeah, there’s some great photos of the freshmen always having to bow to Lord Botetourt—

Joanne:            To Lord Botetourt, yeah.

Kim:                —wearing their duc caps.

Joanne:            Yeah, right.

Laura:              Yeah.

Kim:                So you mentioned being smart and hiding that in high school, and that actually leads me into my next question, which is I’ve spoken with a number of alumni who have all said pretty much the same thing, which is while they were the top of their class in high school, or one of the brightest in their high schools, they weren’t completely prepared for how challenging the academic studies were at William & Mary. They said they realized that they weren’t as smart as they thought they were.

00:06:16

Joanne:            This is true.

Laura:              Yes, this is humbling. [Laughter.]  

Kim:                Yeah, because…

Laura:              This is a bad thing.

Kim:                So what can you say about the academic challenges you experienced at William & Mary?

Joanne:            Do you want to start?

Anne:              You know what? I really can’t understand everything she’s saying, but…

Joanne:            It’s when we were all in high school, we thought we were the smartest ones in the class.

Anne:              [Laughs.]

Joanne:            But when you got to William & Mary you realized that maybe you weren’t so smart. [Laughs.]

Anne:              Oh, yeah. Well, that’s true. I mean, I didn’t have any problem in high school, and I didn’t know what was going to happen when I got to William & Mary. But things worked out pretty good. When I went to William & Mary, it was just around the sunken garden. That’s all the larger it was.

00:07:00          So we had our chemistry class and the work we did. Then I went to the library and read until my next class. I ran to the library and got caught up on all my history notes and stuff like that. So things worked out real good the first year.

Joanne:            I remember thinking I wanted to major in math, which was pretty unusual for a female anyway, but my first class in school was calculus. [Laughs.] I gave up that idea really quickly. [Laughter.]

Laura:              What did you end up majoring in, econ?

Joanne:            No, elementary education.

Laura:              Oh, elementary education.

Joanne:            And taught school for years. But ironically, math came back around. I left teaching in 1985 to become a certified financial planner, so it came back around for a long time.

Anne:              You know, I loved history. We had such a wonderful history teacher. And I can’t remember his name to save my life, but he recently passed away. I don’t know if you remember that.

00:08:02          Anyway, and I went—all the history classes that he taught I went, and then I’d just go to the library and read till my next class. But I can remember looking forward to going to one of his history classes. He could lecture history so well. And that’s what I majored in, history, just because he was such a good teacher.

Joanne:            Right.

Laura:              So I majored in history. That was the same thing. I majored in history. I minored in French. But the history was so interesting to me and they did such an incredible job, right? I mean, just…and you were in it, you know. I mean, the Civil War was sort of where I wrote my thesis, and you were right there with like Robert Carter, and the plantations, and just what had evolved with Virginia.

Anne:              Yeah, well, in history we started way back, through rivers down there. I can’t remember what it was now. But it wasn’t over in England and wasn’t over in the big part of Europe, it was way back over there for the whole year.

00:09:04          And then we went on in through Europe and we went in England, you know, went through it that way. I loved being at William & Mary.

Kim:                So how did attending William & Mary influence your life?

Joanne:            You want to start?

Anne:              I can’t understand the question.

Joanne:            How did attending William & Mary influence your life?

Anne:              Well, I did a lot of things at William & Mary, extra things. I was president of student government and I was athletic, and head of the athletic—[laughs]—you know. So I decided I wanted to go to the Navy during World War II, and I had to go take a test. I had no fear of going and taking that test because I felt like I had a good education at William & Mary. I mean, I really did. I didn’t mind taking that test.

00:09:57          And I passed the test and I went on up to a college up in Massachusetts, went to school for two years, and got ensign in the Navy, and that’s the—

Joanne:            Speak up, Mom.

Anne:              I became an ensign in the Navy and came and got started in Washington for two and a half years during World War II.

Kim:                And going to William & Mary kind of just gave you that confidence to—

Anne:              Yeah, William & Mary, yeah. I didn’t fear at all going to take the questions and to apply to go to the Navy school. You had to take a test. And I told my sister, I said, I’m not afraid to take a test, I went to William & Mary. [Laughs.]

Joanne:            And you know, I think that’s true. I mean, you know, you said you go to William & Mary and you find out that there are a lot of smart people out there, but still you make it through it, and you have this…I think it gives you a sense of confidence that you are smarter than the average bear, maybe.

00:11:08          And I think it teaches you leadership skills. I mean, we…I think we learned a lot of things that…you know, I tell people I try not to join organizations anymore because I invariably end up being president. And I attribute a lot of that to, you know, the training we received at William & Mary, I really do.

Laura:              Mm-hmm. And it’s the truth, yes. You know, it’s nice, though, what you all said about feeling like you could be a smart woman at William & Mary. I went to St. Catherine, so I had gone to a female school where you were expected to be editor of the newspaper, you were expected to be captain of the team. You know, there wasn’t a question. But what’s interesting is that I got to William & Mary and I expected the same thing, and I don’t think that was necessarily the case.

00:11:55          But I’d had that…I had already had that thought, right, that it was equal footing. And I think that’s really nice training, though, for the real world because I will say that William & Mary never, ever—well, at least I never got inflated grades, right? And there was never a—

Joanne:            [Laughs.]

Laura:              Let’s not delve into that too much. But they never inflated, or they never gave false opportunities. I mean, if you were going to be president of the student body it’s because you had to earn that, right?

Joanne:            You had to earn it. That’s exactly right.

Laura:              And so I feel like that was the real world, like nobody ever—I still have friends that say oh, I went through—insert school whatever—I never had to work hard.

Joanne:            Oh, yeah.

Laura:              You know, and I was working hard.

Joanne:            Oh, yeah.

Laura:              You had to work hard at school—

Joanne:            There is no question.

Laura:              —you had to work hard at your organizations, and nobody expected you to be a slack president of your sorority or, you know—

Joanne:            Right.

Laura:              —whatever group you were leading. You had to really do that well.

Joanne:            Right.

Laura:              Because everyone else’s expectation was that you were going to do well. And I feel like that was what the real world was like.

Joanne:            Right. Oh, yeah. And, you know, I can remember I took biology freshman year.

Laura:              Oh, yeah, me too. Golly.

Joanne:            I mean, we were in a lecture room with 200 kids. There was no…there was no way there was preferential treatment. I can’t imagine the professor knew anybody’s name.

00:13:00          I mean, you were there to listen, learn and go home and study and work. I mean, it was… Not that…I mean, there was plenty of time for parties and social life as well, but there was no question at William & Mary you were there to get a good education. No question.

Laura:              Mm-hmm.

Anne:              Right.

Kim:                So I’d like to hear about your experiences regarding relationships among women during each of your time at William & Mary. So if I understand, Miss Anne, I know you lived in an all female dormitory because that’s all that was available. Joanne, did you live in female, women housing?

Joanne:            I did. I did. I had an interesting four years because my freshman year—we had dorm mothers, house mothers. We had…if a guy was going to call on you, they went out to the central station, so to speak, checked in with the house mother, she called you and then you went down to meet them.

00:14:03          Women were not allowed to wear pants unless we were participating in a sports activity. And we had 10:00 curfews on week nights, 11:00 curfews on Friday nights and 12:00 curfews on Saturday nights. Four very short years later there were no more dorm mothers, there was 24/7 visitation in the dorms by men, and we had no curfews. You could stay out all night if you wanted to. I mean, it was quite a major change.

And my husband, who at the time would come and spend—he was not at William & Mary—and he would come into town and spend nights in the fraternity houses. Well, the year after I graduated, we spent the night in a sorority house together. [Laughter.]  So it was a big change.

00:14:57

Anne:              You know, I sit here listening to Joanne, and I know all of what I’m going to say next time, and I get so listening to her I forget what I was going to say. [Laughter.] When you get old you don’t work like you used to when you’re young. But I always had somebody to be with when I was at William & Mary because I was dating this boy. He played basketball and baseball, and I played, as I said, hockey and basketball and tennis.

Joanne:            And an interesting tidbit that she’s not telling you is that boy was Lester Hooker, who was the athletic director at the college for many years.

Anne:              Yeah, that’s right. It was Lester Hooker. And he stayed at William & Mary forever after me. He left early and he wanted me to get married, and I said I just can’t leave school to get married. And because I was president of the student government I just didn’t feel like it was right.

Joanne:            That’s enough of that story.

00:15:54

Anne:              So anyway, he came back to see me after my husband died. [Laughs.] And that was kind of nice to see him. And he had all this experience at William & Mary, and then all the rest of us have. I never got a chance to tell him the history of what I’d done in the Navy and all that kind of stuff. [Laughs.]

Joanne:            How about you? Did you live coed?

Laura:              Yes. I was in Yates in that, like god-awful…you know, that was right across from William & Mary Hall. I mean, it really was kind of a kooky place.

Joanne:            Yeah.

Laura:              But I think we had girls in one end and then the boys were the same. I mean, it was an intermixed dorm. I had a nice option. I was a Monroe scholar and they gave us the option to live in Taliaferro, which was kind of right over, you know, the newer dorm. And I said no because I was worried I was going to not be able to have intelligent conversations with the rest of them, so I was like, well, I’ll pick Yates—

Joanne:            [Laughs.]

Laura:              —where they said a lot of the fraternity and the football players were. So I could, you know, hold my own in conversation in the dorm. And then…and I ran cross country, so I was right across…you know, it was really easy to be close to the William & Mary Hall.

Joanne:            Right.

00:17:03

Laura:              And then I moved off campus. But I never lived in Kappa. I moved off campus for the rest of the years.

Joanne:            Yeah. I lived there my senior year. There was no room for…

Laura:              Right, it was tight. I mean, you had to…yeah.

Joanne:            Right, right.

Kim:                So then Laura, since you lived in coed housing, do you feel like you had an easier…or, well, more challenging time, I should say, establishing relationships with women? Do you feel that maybe you were at a disadvantage because you had the opportunity for coed housing?

Laura:              No. I loved being part of a sorority. And then, you know, it was women’s cross country, so there was a whole set of another group of great women. And actually my husband and I, he also went to William & Mary, and we didn’t start dating until the second part of our junior year, so I always say this lovingly to him. I’m like you didn’t really ruin my college experience. [Laughter.]  Because I had all these great women around. And those were really the basis of my relationships for, you know, really for four years.

00:17:58

Joanne:            Right.

Laura:              I mean, he was kind of an add-on. He’s been a good add-on for 20 years, but he was a tack on, you know?

Joanne:            Right. Yeah.

Laura:              And I don’t…I didn’t mind. But I will say that the level of what I now see some of the kids living in is great. I mean, ours was like we had no air conditioning. It was August. It was so hot.

Joanne:            Oh, yeah. Geesh. Yeah.

Laura:              And I just remember thinking are we really supposed to be living like this? [Laughter.] Isn’t it horrible to say? But it was so fun to have just these relationships. I had gone to camp, and I’d been a counselor at camp, and at an all girls camp, and I just thought that’s what you did, was really enjoy, you know, smart company of other women. And they definitely, whether it was coed or not, I think it was by floor.

Joanne:            Actually, if we tell the truth, I don’t think the women were being very smart in dorm life. [Laughs.]

Laura:              Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joanne:            We weren’t doing, necessarily, the smartest things. [Laughs.]

Laura:              Yeah, mm-hmm.

Kim:                Do you think that contributed—I mean, the women that you mentioned earlier that you still are connected with and you lived with during your time at William & Mary, is that where you met them, was in the dorm, or were these sorority sisters?

00:19:01

Joanne:            I met them at the dorm.

Kim:                At the dorm.

Joanne:            Yeah. Yeah, because for three years we lived in the dorms and then it was only senior year that we lived in the sorority house. But they were, actually all but one of them, we were all in the same sorority as well. But I think it’s because we became friends.

Laura:              Yeah.

Joanne:            And we had, see, second semester rush, so by then we all pretty much knew what we wanted to do, and…

Laura:              What dorm were you in?

Joanne:            We were in DuPont.

Laura:              Oh, you were in DuPont.

Joanne:            Kind of right across from Yates. [Laughs.]

Laura:              Yeah, it was right across. Y’all had the short showers.

Joanne:            I don’t remember that, but yeah.

Laura:              Yeah. DuPont had short showers. They had all been designed, right, because the architect—this is hilarious—the architect’s daughter…I think they were built in like the early ‘60s, and she hadn’t wanted to get her hair wet, so they’d all, like everyone who…you know, if you were like us, we all, everyone who was anything over five-five, everyone had to—

Joanne:            To duck.

Laura:              —like stoop.

Joanne:            Yeah, yeah.

00:19:58

Anne:              Talking about showers, when—[laughs]—when I went up to get my two months of training to be an officer, eight of us had to take showers at a time and I was so embarrassed. [Laughter.] Then they’d turn on the water for five minutes this way and then they’d turn it on for five minutes to rinse, and then you got out of the shower—[laughs]—and the next group went in.

Laura:              Did you end up—was it you or did Carolyn, I thought…was one of you in the…the house mother for one of the fraternities?

Anne:              Well, not for one of the fraternities. My junior year when I was there, William & Mary had 40 more girls coming in, freshman girls coming. We didn’t have room to put them. They didn’t have anyplace to put them. So they called me in and asked if I would mind being a house mother to ten or 15 girls. So we went on the second floor of the Phi Beta Kappa Building down there, and it was just wide open like this, and we had cots.

00:21:03          And I was the mother. And the first night we were there we heard the thump-thump-thump-thump-thump. Everybody got—what’s that? And I said I think it’s a mouse. So I said it sounds like it’s in the trash can. [Laughter.] So I went over and found something to put—and it was—and I put something on top of it. I said he’s going to thump-thump-thump for a little bit longer, but he can’t get out. He’s going to just get tired. So that’s what he did. [Laughs.]

But I had a lot of good experience and good times with those girls. One of the girls had a brother over in Hawaii when the Japanese came over there and bombed, and he was walking up the way right across from the Arizona, one of the ships that was bombed, and he went running. And he could hear, he said I could hear that thing coming down and I fell flat on my face like this, and it hit, and it bombed and spread stuff all over where he was, but he didn’t get hurt.

00:22:04          Well, she knew he was there and she tried to call. She went down and got $25 worth of quarters to put in so she could call Hawaii. Well, they wouldn’t let her go through to…they said we’re not taking any calls for Hawaii but government. And I said, well, call your mother. I bet you he’s called her. So she called her mother, and he had called and told her what the experience was and that he was all right.

Kim:                So was your role then to serve as like a confidante and someone to help them navigate their freshman year? Did you do it for one year?

Anne:              I did it…we only did it for the time that they had more girls than they had room for them. It was just one semester. Actually, first semester they could spread the girls out. They had them in homes. They had them everywhere.

00:22:58

Joanne:            Didn’t you tell me that your job was to make sure that they were in by curfew—

Anne:              Right.

Joanne:            —and that they were following the rules? It was that—

Kim:                Like the house mother role, just not officially a house mother.

Joanne:            Exactly.

Anne:              Yeah. And I had to turn the lights out at 11:00 just like the girls’ dormitories, and I’d say now I don’t want anybody talking.

Kim:                So did they ever try to get you to break the rules and let them—

Anne:              No. They were a very nice group of girls, they really were.

Kim:                And I’m going to deviate real quick unless you want to follow up something.

Laura:              Hm-mmm.

Kim:                I feel like I would be doing us all a disservice if I didn’t ask you to speak some more of your role in Navy, if you could go into more detail on that. I mean, you just graduated from college, and then you make the decision to go into the Navy.

Anne:              When I graduated from college, my twin sister was getting married that year. So I worked for the year, a temporary job, and then we drove to California.

00:23:58          We were at a party, and her brother called and said I’m already in San Diego and I am so bored, and I don’t have any transportation. He said he didn’t know anyone who could drive your car…my car to them…to him. And she said wait just a minute. So she came over and asked me. And we were at the party. And said my brother wishes he had somebody to drive his car. We said we’ll do it.

So we went over and checked the tires on the car because they’d all been recapped. And the man says you don’t go but 45 miles an hour you’ll be all right. So mother and Carolyn and I sat up on the front seat of the car—it was a coupe—and drove to California 45 miles an hour or less. Took us nine days.

Kim:                Wow.

Laura:              [Laughs.]

Kim:                Well, we had more fun—

Joanne:            So tell her—she wants you to tell her about the Navy. What did you do in the Navy?

00:24:57

Anne:              Oh, about the Navy. Oh. Well, I went up and became an officer and then I was sent down to Washington. And I wrote supply corps officers orders. The…over in BuSandA they made the decisions where the officers were going to be put and we had to write the orders for them. Make it you’ll be sent, you’re detached, you have ten days of service and then what you’re going to do, and then you have to report.

Joanne:            Her motivation was that we were at war. So you were in what years, ’44, ’45?

Anne:              Yeah, well, ’44, ’45, and almost ’46, yeah.

Kim:                And the test you took was so you could go in as an officer—

Anne:              Yeah, to go in as an officer, right. Oh, I loved it. I had a good time. I’ve had a good life. I have. [Laughs.]

00:25:52

Kim:                Well, my next question is for you also because you mentioned that you were into athletics, and so you played field hockey, basketball and tennis.

Anne:              Right.

Kim:                And then 1981 you were inducted into the Athletic Hall of Fame.

Anne:              I don’t know when it was, but somewhere around there. [Laughter.]  

Kim:                Well, what are your memories of being inducted into the Hall of Fame? That’s a pretty good achievement, I would imagine.

Anne:              Yeah. Well, of course I did all the athletics down there, and we had a dinner party. And then we went down and was introduced to the gym. It was full of… And when my name came up they said that I was…they mentioned…somehow or another they got the fact that I was at the Phi Beta Kappa Hall. They thought I was there because I was smart. I was there to be the mother. But they mentioned that I was Phi Beta Kappa, and everybody whoo! [Laughter.]  

00:27:01          I got so tickled. Everybody else did, too.

Joanne:            But it wasn’t correct, was it?

Anne:              No, it wasn’t correct. [Laughter.]  

Joanne:            She was not a Phi Beta Kappa.

Anne:              I was a house mother at Phi Beta Kappa Hall. [Laughter.] Keeping mice out. [Laughter.]

Kim:                Since you played field hockey, can you describe your memories of if you had the opportunity to meet Constance Applebee, who is credited with introducing field hockey to the United States?

Anne:              Yes. She came down to William & Mary and taught the hockey. And she lived at William & Mary for the whole time I was in the Navy. I would go down to see her. And when I got out of the Navy and got married, somebody called up and said we’re going to have a hockey game here at Westhampton, and Miss Applebee is going to be there, do you want to come? And I said yeah, I want to come. So I was thinking I’d already told you this because I’ve been thinking of telling it.

00:28:01          Anyway, Miss Applebee, I hit a hockey ball across the field and Miss Applebee went, Armitage, where did you learn to do that, in the Navy? [Laughter.] Yeah, I went to see her when I was in the Navy several times to visit because she’s a really nice woman, and she was over here all by herself from England. I read when she’d gone back to England and that she’d passed away a couple years ago at 113 years old.

Kim:                Wow. So did she provide any instruction to you and your teammates when you were playing field hockey, or…?

Anne:              Instructions, you say?

Joanne:            Yeah.

Anne:              Yeah, because she taught us one semester. She taught the hockey, so she told us all the rules and made sure that we did them just right. [Laughs.]

Kim:                Had you heard of field hockey before William & Mary?

Anne:              No. Yeah, I played field hockey in high school, actually. We had that. And we had all those in high school. And I played them all through high school. That’s why I did in college. [Laughs.] Just carrying on.

00:29:08

Kim:                So the social restrictions, which, Joanne, you referred to, with the curfews and dating, the restrictions placed on women drastically changed from when Anne entered as a freshman to when Laura entered William & Mary. So in Anne’s day women couldn’t ride in cars, for instance.

Joanne:            Wow.

Kim:                And as you know, women were limited when they could go off campus. They had to be chaperoned usually if they were to leave the safety of the William & Mary campus. Strict curfews, house mothers. And while there were few social restrictions on women during your undergraduate years, there was still curfew in the dormitories until I think 1970, when President Graves—

Joanne:            Right, and I graduated in ’72, yeah.

Kim:                —came in ’70, ’71, yeah.

00:30:00

Joanne:            Right.

Laura:              Oh, interesting.

Kim:                And then when Laura entered those social restrictions no longer really existed. So for Anne and Joanne, how did you navigate, or how did women, not necessarily you, but just in general how did women navigate around those social rules and restrictions—

Joanne:            You know—

Kim:                —such as, you know, I mean, I’m sure there were instances of women sneaking in, learning how to kind of bend the rules.

Joanne:            You know, I think most of the women just accepted the rules. I mean, there were people…I want to say if you didn’t get in by curfew, they didn’t let you in, and they called your parents, and your parents got to come up there and get you, which, that was pretty big motivation to be in on time. [Laughs.] And as far as the dress code, I mean, we just knew that, you know, if we wanted to go bike riding or go running or whatever, they, I mean, they made us wear a raincoat into, you know, to the cafeteria to eat.

00:30:57          I mean, they were very strict about not letting us…you know, we couldn’t throw on a pair of shorts and go ride a bike and go eat. You had to get a raincoat so you could go to dinner.

Kim:                To wear over your shorts?

Joanne:            This was now on campus. We could certainly go to the pizza place and stuff like that and do anything we wanted to, you know, off campus, but on campus they were pretty strict. But I tell you one thing. I just thought about this as you were talking about it. I had been dating my husband since high school, and we were not…we broke up when I went to college just because I think I wanted to, you know, be free to date around.

But we got back together, and my four years in college he was in the Navy, and he was getting out in August. And I was going to be an elementary school teacher. I’m sure you don’t even know this. But anyhow, so I told Mother, I said there is no way—he’s going to get out of the Navy in like August the 8^th, and I have to report for, you know, first year teaching like August the 15^th.

00:32:06          I said there is no way I’m going to get married, try to set up household and, you know, start teaching school. So we decided to get married in January of my senior year, which turned out to be difficult because we took exams like the end of January.

But the long and short of the tale is I went through, got it all worked out, all my professors allowed it, and I became the first married woman ever to be allowed to live on campus at William & Mary. I literally moved right back into the sorority house and he went off to the Med. [Laughs.] In the Navy. So yeah, it was pretty amazing.

Kim:                Was it difficult to get them to agree to that?

Joanne:            Ironically, no, for most of my classes. I don’t think I could have been taking PE in my senior year, but it was something like my PE teacher who said no. I mean, I had to go over his head to get permission to do it.

00:33:02          But everybody else—I took exams before Christmas, you know. It was a lot of work on my part, and some work, I guess, on their part to have the exams in advance. But it all worked out. I can remember we got married in early January. We went on our honeymoon to Florida. I

 actually stayed—he was on a ship in Florida—and I stayed with Liz Tarpley, a sorority sister, who was married down there, and her husband was in the Navy, was an officer in the Navy. And I missed break, study break, I missed sorority rush, and I came back, I think, like mid February and finished my senior year.

Kim:                Wow.

Joanne:            But just one more funny story.

Kim:                Sure.

Joanne:            I graduated in May. John was still in the Navy, getting out in August, and because we were married I was able to fly on a dependent’s flight to Greece.

00:34:00          So we were checking into our hotel, this big, I don’t know, 30 story hotel. We get on the elevator and this guy says are you American? We said yeah. He says you ever go to Virginia? [Laughter.] And I said yeah. And he said you ever heard of Williamsburg? And I said yeah. My husband says yeah. He said my wife just graduated two weeks ago. He says, well my brother and I own the corner deli, and he says I am just getting back. He runs it for six months and I live here in this hotel for six months and then the other six months I’m there and he comes back over. Isn’t it a small world?

Kim:                Wow.

Joanne:            It’s pretty amazing.

Kim:                It is amazing.

Joanne:            Yeah.

Anne:              Yeah, I was in the Navy and I lived in a home where there were four other girls who were with the Bureau of Naval Personnel. And we always went together.

00:35:00          And we would have to walk down to this corner and the car we would rent, the man would say I can’t drive my car unless I have it full to take people. So I went down there and all of us would jump in the car and sit on top of each other. And he said don’t slam that door, don’t slam that door. I don’t know how long I’m going to have to be riding in this car. [Laughter.] He went on in took us right up to [unintelligible] 00:35:29.

Joanne:            Wow.

Kim:                So the first African Americans in residence entered William & Mary in the fall of 1967, a year before you entered William & Mary, Joanne. So will you describe the general vibe regarding race relations on campus? I know the numbers were small, so…

Joanne:            Yeah, I honestly don’t remember any of that. I remember when you were in school. Wasn’t Colin Powell’s daughter in school with you or was that [Blaine]?

00:35:58

Laura:              She was a Kappa five years ahead. So my big sister in Kappa was her best friend.

Joanne:            And I met her when we came back for homecoming. I met her. I was so impressed.

Kim:                That’s actually going to lead me into asking Laura the question, if you could describe the student population when you were there in terms of diversity. Because by the ‘90s it had changed from what it had been from its beginnings to the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s. But I wonder kind of in retrospect do you feel that it was a diverse campus? Not just race, but also nationality, religion, sexual identity.

Laura:              You know, the sexual identity part was not an emerging issue then. I think that was still probably very quiet or…you know, I have no recollection of that part being an issue, you know, that we were aware of or that we were supposed to advocate for.

00:36:58          I had been raised Presbyterian and Episcopalian, and I do remember getting to William & Mary and there was a very active Catholic component, and it was like 25%, I think, of the campus, so they had a really big, active student Catholic organization. And then it dawned on me that I think it’s 25% of the entire population is Catholic, and it’s a state school, so it started to look a lot like, wait a second, this reflects sort of more of our state and our country.

I had never met people from, you know, Grundy, Virginia or Big Stone Gap. I mean, there were people that lived further west than Detroit in the state of Virginia that had come to William & Mary, and I just, it had really never dawned on me. But I do remember calling up my father the first or second day that were there, maybe the first week and I said, Dad, there are all these people from NoVa. I was like what and where—

Joanne:            What is NoVa? [Laughs.]

00:37:59

Laura:              —is NoVa? And my father, you know, in a very tongue in cheek way, was like, well, I’ve been trying to keep you from that for, you know, most of your life. But that would be the entire Northern Virginia.

Joanne:            Virginia, that’s right.

Laura:              And as a Richmonder, you know, you were like well isn’t Richmond the epicenter of the universe? You know, you either went abroad or you went to another state, but I had just never really thought about Northern Virginia and the population of Northern Virginia.

Joanne:            Right.

Laura:              That was sort of my first realization how big Virginia is with the Virginia Beach population and the Northern Virginia population. So we had a ton of folks from Hampton Roads and Norfolk and that whole—

Joanne:            Right.

Laura:              And then all around Reston, and Sterling, and Alexandria, and I mean the schools up there, of course, that just generate, I mean, every valedictorian just came right down, right?

Joanne:            Right, exactly. No question.

Laura:              And you thought—I didn’t even know what had hit me. I mean, it was…I didn’t stand a chance at throwing off a curve. I mean, it was… [Laughs.]

Joanne:            Right. [Laughs.]

Laura:              They were incredible. So I will say, though, and I remember specifically looking back and someone asking about population and composition, and we did not have a large diversity component still to William & Mary when I was there.

00:39:03          I think the diversity came in economic backgrounds. The gift was there were a lot of people that had shifted in with Northern Virginia through military, so people had lived in really interesting places.

Joanne:            Right, right.

Laura:              And I don’t know, we had a lot from like north, sort of New Jersey, sort of that northern Pennsylvania.

Joanne:            Our whole football team came from New Jersey. [Laughs.]

Laura:              Yes, yes. They were great—I remember Cherry Hill and just—

Joanne:            They were.

Laura:              —did a great job with the field hockey team. The lacrosse team was from someplace in Pennsylvania. You know, I mean, there were just these huge chunks of… And my husband’s from, you know, from New York, so that was…

Joanne:            Right.

Laura:              I mean, he’s the greatest example of, you know, how you get in great folks from just northern states. I had not met a lot of those folks before.

Joanne:            Nor had I. That was…it was interesting to me. And the same thing—

Laura:              Okay. Okay, good. Yeah, yeah.

Joanne:            Even the Stanton, Big Stone Gap, Buffalo Gap—

Laura:              Yeah.

Joanne:            —all that place, I mean, I had not met.

Laura:              No.

Joanne:            Just didn’t know people from out there.

Laura:              No.

Joanne:            Yeah.

00:39:52

Anne:              You know, this…when I went to William & Mary we had a new football coach—[laughs]—because I like athletics. And William & Mary never had a decent football team. We never had. And he had gotten all these guys from Pennsylvania and the coal mines and so forth at that part, and all of them had accents and would talk like this. [Laughter.] But they could play football.

And I’m telling you William & Mary had a good team that year and we won games. And every time the game was over they rang the bell, ding-dong, ding-dong. That means we won, you know. And everybody [would come out and we would walk down the street, yeah, we won the game, we won the game. [Laughter.] So that was a lot of fun, too, and I remember that.

Kim:                So there are very few documented examples of student activism at William & Mary, and sometimes they’re not as blatant, those that we can make out.

00:40:55          So women during Anne’s time and later, to the late 1940s or early ‘50s would, by way of the women’s student government, apply, you know, these petitions to get more freedom, social freedom. So it could be an extended curfew, so can we come in at 11:00 on Saturday instead of at 10:00, that sort of thing. So I think that the activism is just not very blatant. And then the late ‘60s you start to see some of it against Vietnam.

Joanne:            Right.

Laura:              Mmm.

Kim:                But compared to my experience at other institutions, you know, William & Mary doesn’t…there doesn’t seem to be as much of it in the forefront as there has been at other institutions all over the country. And so I wonder do any of you have any experience witnessing or being a part of any kind of student activism? And why do you suppose there hasn’t been as much kind of vocal student activism at William & Mary?

00:42:00

Joanne:            You know, when I was there Kent State happened, and I think that was a real turning point in what you’re describing. They closed, I mean, we had no classes for a couple of days following Kent State because I think they were trying to not let that become an issue.

But you know Mom and I were talking about it just a couple of weeks ago. We said, you know…we were asking the question because I said you know these people on television now, these interviewers, reporters go around and they interview people, and they’re talking about like can you tell me who the Secretary of State is, and these kids, you know, have no clue. And I say you know what, when I was in college I had no clue either.

Other than Kent State and Vietnam, which were the big issues, we were a small college. You don’t know everybody on campus, for sure, but you knew a lot of people.

00:43:00          And I don’t…I think we didn’t have those kinds of dynamics that…I mean, if William & Mary was protesting, big deal. The news media wouldn’t be there. Where, you know, some huge school that’s going to do it, they are going to, you know, get thousands of kids out there. We didn’t even have thousands of kids in the school. So I think part of it was that.

Part of it probably that for the most part I think we were young, fairly sheltered, naïve kids that were more interested in what was going on in our school than we were what was going on in the world. I mean, I…you know, I hardly remember anything about the politics other than the big stuff like Vietnam. I don’t know if that’s still the case when you were there or not. I don’t know. I know it was Mom’s case. She said she had no clue what was going on in the world. [Laughs.]

Laura:              Speak for yourself.

00:43:57

Anne:              I had enough going on at William & Mary.

Joanne:            Yeah. I mean, we were involved in school, and studying, and sorority life, and fraternity life, and—I mean, which is also different than some schools. You know, big schools they’ll talk about, you know, going into whatever the town was, and going to these huge shows. Well, we were small. They built William & Mary Hall right, you know, right along about when I went there, and the shows came to us. And we were pretty self-contained, I think.

Laura:              I do remember the big thing was that we had a big snowstorm, and I remember that one of my sorority sisters called up President Sullivan and said I really think you should let us off from school.

Joanne:            Yeah?

Laura:              That was activism for us. We’re like wow, that was big.

Joanne:            That’s right. [Laughter.]  

Laura:              We’re like, she did what? Wow, she’s so brave. I actually look back and am sort of embarrassed. We missed the Rwandan genocide. I missed it.

Joanne:            Right. Missed it totally. Yeah.

00:44:55

Laura:              I mean, that’s… And again, I was probably busier than some and, you know, I wasn’t paying as much attention probably as I should have been, but, I mean, how do you miss that?

Joanne:            Oh, I know.

Laura:              You know, I look back and just think—and I remember talking to a good friend, you know, a sorority sister and saying, well, what were we doing that possibly could have—

Joanne:            We weren’t watching the news.

Laura:              No. And, you know, but I don’t think—the television was on. You didn’t necessarily subscribe to the newspaper.

Joanne:            Right.

Laura:              And we didn’t have social media, so you were missing an outlet—

Joanne:            Oh, yeah.

Laura:              —that would have…it would have taken a phone call, or, you know, probably a dinner at home with your parents that would have…to have updated you on something like that.

Joanne:            Exactly. Exactly.

Anne:              Well, we didn’t have much way to communicate either when I was young. During the war, when I was in the Navy, one of my roommates was from New York, and she invited me up and we spent a weekend with her. And we were walking down the street, hey, Anne! How are you doing? It was one of the guys from William & Mary. He came up and we sat there and talked about 15, 20 minutes. [Laughs.]

Joanne:            I’ll be darned.

Kim:                Wow.

Anne:              You know, all the people in New York and he runs into me and we see each other.

Joanne:            That’s pretty amazing.

00:46:05

Kim:                That’s awesome. Yeah, there’s, you know, some interesting insight, I think, to William & Mary choosing, at least maybe up to the past few years, to remain a small school and to not try to expand as much as a lot of the other state schools have. You know, VCU is one of William & Mary’s, what I call the children, and—

Laura:              Mm-hmm.

Joanne:            Right.

Kim:                —and they’re D2 and they’ve grown…

Laura:              Huge.

Kim:                Huge. And there’s Board of Visitors records where the Board of Visitors is saying, you know, we want to keep it small for a lot of reasons, not so much to keep people, you know, to be insular, but to have that ability to maybe not know everybody on campus, but have the ability to know as many people as you possible can—

Joanne:            Right, right.

Kim:                —to where when you’re in Greece or you’re in, you know, New York you run into, you know, people from Williamsburg, whether you went to school with them or not.

00:47:04

Joanne:            Right.

Kim:                But then part of that is that kind of contributed to why there has not been a lot of student activism. I interviewed an alumnus who said the reason he came to William & Mary in 1971 was because it wasn’t known for student activism.

Joanne:            Right.

Kim:                He didn’t want to go to a school that was like a Kent State.

Joanne:            Right, exactly.

Laura:              Oh. Uh-huh, uh-huh.

Joanne:            Yeah.

Kim:                It’s very interesting to me.

Joanne:            Yeah, it is. It’s probably still that way. Even though I think you mentioned social media. It’s hard not to know what’s going on with social media.

Kim:                Well, just last year when the local Black Lives Matter movement, and students usually…I think, at least one of them was a graduate student and they wanted to come through the library, which is a very popular spot for students, and I guess it always has been for studying.

Joanne:            Right.

00:47:54

Kim:                And hoping to energize students. And it actually had the opposite effect because—the leader’s name was Travis—said the students were like we’re studying.

Joanne:            Oh, wow.

Laura:              Yeah, yeah.

Kim:                You’re making a lot of noise. You’re interfering with our studying. It was the opposite. They didn’t want to join in. They’re like you’re a nuisance.

Joanne:            Right. Leave us alone.

Kim:                Yeah, leave us alone.

Joanne:            Yeah, exactly, yeah.

Laura:              But you know, Joanne, you said something, and I feel like maybe some of the insight is that if I had to categorize or broad stroke William & Mary folks, kind of like hearing what you were talking about and what you took—we’re doers and we coalesce organizations, and we run them better or more efficiently, or we get things done, but I don’t think you’ve got a lot of pot stirrers.

Joanne:            Right.

Laura:              Like I don’t think, as a general rule, people at William & Mary were like we’re going to shake this up and we’re going to break it apart. You know, it was like okay, this is a job to be done. Most of my people just—

Joanne:            I think that’s true.

Laura:              —they were…we were doers, you know.

Joanne:            I think that’s true.

Laura:              And I just think you’re almost drawn to a you’ve got to study and you’ve got to get your athletics done, and you’ve got to get your extracurriculars done.

Joanne:            Right.

Laura:              As opposed to could we really dream outside the box and really throw away the model.

Joanne:            Right.

Laura:              That’s not right or wrong. I just think that was more…

00:49:04

Joanne:            No, I think that’s true. I think that’s true.

Kim:                I don’t know that I foresee a time when William & Mary students will overtake the academic, you know, administration building like has been done at Duke University, for instance.

Joanne:            No, I don’t see that, either.

Laura:              No.

Kim:                I don’t see that being something that William & Mary students would do.

Joanne:            No. The ones that were the activists back then, at least, were the weirdos, and they… I mean, it was a small—don’t you think? Seriously. You know. Drugs had just come in. Drugs were a big thing when I was there. But it was the beginning stages of drugs, and the people who were using the drugs were really shunned. I mean, it was not… And I’m not talking about smoking pot. I’m sure that went on all over the place. But anything more than that, it was really shunned.

Laura:              Not mainstream, mm-hmm.

Joanne:            I think the people who were doing it were shunned.

00:49:56

Kim:                So switching to another serious topic, sexual assault on college campuses is a reality of community living. And other alumnae have told me that it did happen during their time that they were here, other women crying, but no one dared to tell the administration because they knew that the women would be blamed.

When the dorms went coed, several people in favor of going coed remarked that the women would be safer because there would be a male presence around to scare off the bad guys.. However, women can, as we know, can and are raped by men that they know and trust. So describe what the culture was like on campus regarding sexual assault during your time. Was it something discussed just amongst yourselves? Did you have an awareness of the potential danger of sexual assault among coeds?

Anne:              You know, when I went we didn’t have problems like that at all, publicized anyway. And I’d go to the sorority house and leave and walk home by myself in the pitch black at 9:30, 10:00 and I never gave it a thought. You know, it was like two, three blocks that I walked. And—

00:51:07

Joanne:            I’m going to say that’s close to true when I was there. There was a sexual assault, and I don’t remember the details, but it was big news. But it’s the only time I heard of it when I was at campus. And of course I’ve read about it since many times, actually.

But no, I was the same way. We would walk home typically not alone, you know, but there would be two or three gals, and we wouldn’t mind being out at 10:00 or 11:00 at night walking all over the campus. Never thought about it. Did you? I mean, I don’t…was it worse when you were there?

Laura:              I think there was…looking back I think there’s still sort of a false sense of security. I think that we probably just put a lot of faith in the fact that Williamsburg was a nice place. And I think when we were there things were starting to get a little mixed up with folks, you know, that it had gotten a little bit bigger, right, so there were more people living off campus, and there were more folks from the town.

00:52:04          They weren’t to blame. And I think you had much more interaction with folks that weren’t just your immediate somebody you would know. Even though that’s not always 100% safe. But I think you started to have oh, that might be a friend of a friend, and he lives someplace else, or maybe he’s in grad school, or he’s working someplace. So I think that was starting.

My husband did a lot of volunteer work, actually, with the hotline for the sexual assault hotline. That was…he had had a family friend had something happen and he…that was a cause that was near and dear to his heart. And I think he was aware of a lot of things that were going on that I probably wasn’t as aware of.

Joanne:            Right.

Laura:              I think that it started to be a much bigger problem.

Joanne:            Right.

Laura:              And I don’t know that it was coed housing. I think that’s maybe just part of even voicing things that hadn’t been voiced before and giving an outlet to you could call, or there’s a counseling center. There was a health, a student health center.

Joanne:            Right.

00:52:59

Kim:                Yeah, I think the sexual assault you referred to, Joanne, was right before you graduated.

Joanne:            It could have been.

Kim:                It was someone from off campus who came in through a window in the dormitory.

Joanne:            Right. That’s exactly what it was, yes.

Kim:                Yeah, so…

Joanne:            That’s exactly what it was. I don’t remember the dorm, but it was in the string over there were Barrett and Jefferson and all of them were.

Kim:                Right.

Laura:              Oh, yeah, yeah.

Kim:                So you’ve all managed to give back to William & Mary in several ways as alumnae. Why was it important for you to stay involved with William & Mary after graduation?

Joanne:            Hm.

Anne:              Why what?

Joanne:            Why was it important to stay involved with William & Mary after graduation?

Anne:              Oh, I can’t answer that because I didn’t stay involved. [Laughter.] I had a girl call me up when I was first married, and she was from William & Mary, and they wanted me to come and join their group. And I told them I’m sorry. I said I’m tired of being a leader. [Laughter.] I just, I’m going to stay home and be with my husband.

00:54:08

Kim:                But you continue to support William & Mary.

Joanne:            Right.

Anne:              Oh, yeah.

Kim:                Maybe not actively, but you still support it.

Joanne:            I go back. I don’t go every year, but I probably go back to homecoming every five years. I don’t know, it’s just the connection. You feel like it’s where you got your start. It was your real move into adulthood. And while I think we were still kids, you know, it was where you prepare for the job you’re going to have. And, I mean, in my situation, you know, I formed lifelong friends. And it’s an opportunity for me to go back every five years and see people that I don’t see otherwise, haven’t kept up with otherwise. But, you know, it’s really special. And there’s, I don’t know, there’s a connection. It’s…

00:54:59          Going to the Kappa house, I mean, it’s just fun. It doesn’t matter that these gals are 20 years old. There’s a connection there. And I love it, you know. It’s just great.

Laura:              You know, I think there’s a draw. There’s like some sort of centrifugal force that pulls you down, right?

Joanne:            Yeah.

Laura:              I mean, my car still like pulls off right by the Camp Peary exit, you know, and it knows just where to go. I mean, I was fortunate enough to work there at the business school for a few years.

Joanne:            Oh, yeah, that’s right.

Laura:              That was just a gift to be back kind of on the other side. And of course a brand new, beautiful building. I mean, I had been a history major so I had never gone in the business school.

Joanne:            Oh, wow, yeah.

Laura:              But the Mason School was gorgeous. And Sam Sadler had been our Vice President of Student Affairs and he had really just been such a wonderful mentor when I was a student. And then to go back and talk as a professional, you know, that is an incredible—

00:55:54

Joanne:            See, she mentioned Sam. I worked for him when I was in college. I mean, it’s—

Laura:              Yes, right?

Joanne:            —it’s amazing to think that there’s all this difference of time and yet what an impact he made on the school.

Laura:              Oh, my god.

Kim:                What are some of your favorite memories of Sam? Because we’re still quite fond of him. [Laughter.]  

Joanne:            Wow. It’s amazing. I just…mm.

Anne:              I can remember one time going to government. I had to take a class in government. And the man who was teaching us wrote the book. And when you went to the class, he read the book to us. [Laughs.] I mean, that’s all we ever did, you know. So Saturday morning, it was the only class I had at 11:00 on Saturday morning.

One Saturday morning and the class was full, and he hadn’t come down. We sat there and we talked about ten minutes. I said I’m going to down to see if he’s in his office. So I went down and I peeked in, and he was there reading. I didn’t say a thing. I came back and I said he’s back there reading, I think we can leave. [Laughter.] And we all left. [Laughs.]

00:57:03          I don’t know if he ever came to class or not. But we waited. At ten minutes, that was the rule. If you waited ten minutes and nobody came—

Joanne:            You could leave, that’s right.

Anne:              —you had permission to leave.

Kim:                I did the same thing when I was in college.

Joanne:            Really?

Kim:                We were all counting down the minutes.

Laura:              I think we had the same rule, yeah.

Joanne:            Ten minutes we’re done. Yeah, exactly.

Laura:              Yeah, we had the same thing.

Joanne:            I think we did, too. I don’t know that anybody ever didn’t show, though. I’m not sure I ever got to use that.

Laura:              I can remember calling. I had a terrific history professor. She was my thesis advisor, Carol Sheriff who… Anyway, she was an expert on the Erie Canal. I mean, you know, like crazy things that you wouldn’t… And again, she’d written all these documents.

And I remember of all random things I had a horrible earache and I had to like—I don’t even know. We didn’t have email, right? And I remember having to call and say this sounds crazy, but I had to go to the emergency room last night, you know, I had this earache, can I take, you know, a test like a day later or something.

00:58:02          You know, and it was a big deal, right, because—and I was head of the honor council. And I remember she was like you can, you know, I just need you to not talk to anyone. But you felt like you were being treated as an adult. I think that’s what actually, that was my favorite part about Sam, is that he treated you as an adult even—

Joanne:            Yes, he did.

Laura:              —when you were not quite to being an adult.

Joanne:            Right. He treated you with respect.

Laura:              He always treated you with respect.

Joanne:            Yeah, I agree.

Laura:              But I always thought that was kind of his gift of, you know, being a great educator, was he sort of made you feel like you were as important—

Joanne:            Exactly.

Laura:              —as anyone else.

Joanne:            I think that that’s true.

Laura:              But I felt like there were some professors that did that. There was one in particular who told me he just didn’t really like me. [Laughter.]  He gave me a C. [Laughs.] And my father thought that was the best thing. He’s like that was worth every penny of your education, because there are going to be people in this world that just don’t like your writing. He said, Miss Edge, I don’t like your writing style.

Joanne:            Oh, that’s funny.

Laura:              And I remember calling up, and actually, you know, Sam thought that was hilarious, too, when I told him after I graduated. And he said, well nowadays, you know, I’d have a parent in my office complaining about that, you know.

Joanne:            Oh, yeah, right. Right.

00:59:02         

Laura:              And I said oh my gosh, my father thought that was the best thing ever that, you know, he paid this tuition money and it just didn’t always work out, right? You just…it didn’t…you know, you couldn’t just get an A because you showed up. Like you had to—

Joanne:            Oh, yeah, right, exactly.

Laura:              —you know, do more, and when I did more, he just didn’t like my more.

Joanne:            Right.

Laura:              You know? [Laughs.] He’s like that was real world.

Kim:                Well, one last question. In 2018 William & Mary will commemorate 100 years of coeducation. What are your thoughts about the value and contributions of women?

Joanne:            Wow. Well, you know, I never knew William & Mary as anything but a coed school, and I think the education of women and the women in the workplace, I mean, it’s huge. Where would this country be without women working? I don’t know how, you know, how it didn’t occur many, many, many years ago. Just running companies and getting into politics. Getting into everything.

01:00:00          I can’t imagine it. I’ve never known it any other way, and I guess…I know you haven’t.

Laura:              Mm-hmm.

Joanne:            I often tell people I…I mean, I loved, back when I was in school, a lot of the women were either majoring in elementary education or, I don’t know what else, nursing. I don’t know what else. But the doors were not open to women like they are now. Although I have friends who were accountants.

But getting into…I mean, I just think the experience at William & Mary, getting into being a financial planner, I mean, first of all I found my passion. But, you know, I’ve seen the women…women still in financial planning are a very, very small number. But I think we’re successful, I mean, the ones who are in it are successful, and I think obviously William & Mary contributed to that.

01:00:57          And ironically, I tell the world my teaching background contributed to that because what you’re basically doing as a financial planner is teaching adults. So you’ve got, you know, my interest in math was fulfilled. I feel like my attention to detail and all of the things that I learned from my experience at William & Mary have contributed to that. And the fact that I am…was a teacher I think contributed to that.

And I cannot imagine…I mean, I’m still working, and I’m passionate about what I do, and I just think there are just millions of women in the world that feel that way. They’re fulfilled in their jobs just like men have always been.

Laura:              Mm-hmm.

Anne:              Yeah, but then we had World War II when I was in college, and the women didn’t do good jobs like you all are talking about, they worked in the shipyards building new ships.

01:02:00          And I can remember in Seattle they were sending food over to England and all kinds of supplies over to England. And the Germans were in their submarines and boom-boom-boom, trying to, you know, knock them all out, and knocked a lot of them out. But they called them Liberty ships. They were totally nothing but ships that were [hand gesture] outside and you had a place to eat, and the rest of it was empty so they could fill it up with supplies to take to England.

And they would send them 20 at a time. And they would get at least 15 of them to England. The Germans knew exactly what they were doing, and they didn’t want them, they wanted England to really suffer. They were bombing London and we were feeding them. But I’ll never forget that.

Joanne:            And the women were working in that? Were the women working in all of those?

01:03:00

Anne:              The women were working in the shipyards building the ships.

Joanne:            I got you. Building the ships that were taking the things. Okay.

Anne:              Yeah. So the women can do a lot of things, and they learned to do a lot of things that they didn’t know they could do, I’m sure. But they had the whole thing covered up in Los Angeles with a net and they threw stuff on top of it so that if the Germans came over to fly, to bomb those things they couldn’t see them, supposedly. That was the idea. I thought that was kind of interesting, just blocks and blocks and blocks of stuff that they covered up and put on top of it.

Laura:              See, I think that’s William & Mary, right? Because I don’t…it never occurred to me, by the time I got to William & Mary, I mean, I knew that you and Carolyn had gone, that women had not always been there. Like I never felt that women weren’t supposed to be at William & Mary because I’d known that you all were.

I mean, I’d grown up in this family, so it naturally seemed like people went. But I don’t think there was any different treatment of women when I was there, or ever. I just assumed that William & Mary was a great place, it had always been a great place, and there had always been women.

01:04:10

Joanne:            You know one of the things we were talking about earlier—I’m not sure you were here—but when I went to school, UVA was still all male, but while I was in school, probably 1970, let’s say, it went coed, and I had a friend from high school who transferred in and was in that first class of women.

And I thought to myself at the time wow, women have, I mean, women have been at William & Mary for years. And to think that we were so far ahead of other schools in that regard. I think the whole William & Mary experience, I mean, bottom line, to answer your question, I think it empowered us to be successful.

Laura:              Uh-huh, yeah.

Joanne:            In a world that, when I was coming along, was still a predominantly male dominated working environment.

Laura:              Mm-hmm.

01:05:01

Joanne:            I don’t think that’s so much today. I’m not sure it was when you were there.

Laura:              Hm-mmm.

Joanne:            But we were getting, we were breaking out of the traditional female jobs and into being successful in business. I think it…and I give a lot of credit to William & Mary for that.

Laura:              Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Kim:                There’s one last question that came from, I guess, a virtual audience about war council for Anne.

Joanne:            About what?

Kim:                The war council.

Joanne:            The war council? Were you familiar with the war council?

Anne:              The war council? [Shakes head no.]

Joanne:            War council.

Anne:              Yes, I…

Joanne:            Okay.

Kim:                A student organization of women supportive of the war effort while students.

Joanne:            Do you remember that? At William & Mary a group of students who formed an organization to actually support the war. Do you remember anything about that?

Anne:              No.

Joanne:            No.

Kim:                All right.

01:06:01

Anne:              They might have had, but I don’t remember it.

Laura:              You were playing basketball. [Laughter.]  

Kim:                Thank you all very much.

Joanne:            Thank you.

01:06:16          [End of recording.]