Moving from small-town Colorado to Chicago was a cultural shock. Everything was different, and I mean everything from a small city to a very large city, diverse cultures, different weather. Going from wearing jeans to wearing gloves and stockings and riding on a bus and then the El (elevated train) to get to work in the Merchandise Mart in downtown Chicago was daunting. But I was my mother's daughter, so I knew I could do this. I was resilient, adaptable, and sometimes, I thought, invincible, a modern woman.
I saw a job open for a mining company, and I went for it because, well, I knew a few things about mining. The company mined bentonite in Wyoming and South Dakota and then shipped it throughout the country. I was hired as the receptionist but was soon moved to the order department to run the telex machine. I learned about train routes, tracking boxcars, telexing, and the newest developments in freight management at that time. I got to know the assistant to the boss, Miss Salmon, and I always had the feeling that she was behind the scenes helping me progress. I worked for the company every college break and summer during my college days. I learned so much about sustaining and developing a thriving business environment. I did not know then how helpful that would be for me in my career path.
Soon, Mother and Aunt Betty found a way for me to go back to college! I knew this was an essential part of my path to becoming an independent woman. I enrolled at the University of Illinois, Chicago Undergraduate Division, located on Navy Pier, jutting into Lake Michigan. Chicago was a working Great Lakes port city. The infrastructure for the port was still there, including the long, narrow pier with its massive columns in the middle. Classrooms were on either side of it. If you ever walked Navy Pier, you know that it seems like it is ten miles long. At least I thought so, especially if I had a class at one end and the next class at the other end, and it was a frigidly cold and windy Chicago winter day! I soon learned why people nicknamed Chicago the 'Windy City.'
Students were lobbying for a new campus, and they hoped it would be at Meigs Field (now Midway Airport). And the opportunity came to let the political powers know of our choice. Richard J. Daley was mayor of Chicago. The recently completed St. Lawrence Seaway, a continuous waterway connection from the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean, had just opened. The first ships were about to arrive in Chicago. The city was abuzz with excitement and planned a big celebration. Of course, this was an excellent opportunity for students to use their voices for a new campus!
I joined the students, and I took the first direct political action in my life. I stood out there with a sign that read "Dilly Dally Daley" and chanted until I was hoarse. Mayor Daley was not pleased; he walked right in front of me, and his face was VERY red! The decision to locate the future campus was not where students hoped it would be. Still, after the demonstration, plans moved ahead more quickly for a degree-granting Chicago campus. (Back then, you had to go downstate to the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign to finish your degree and graduate.) It was a rousing success for the students!
When I enrolled in college, I was determined to be an accountant. I loved the classes and found a wonderful mentor in a woman who taught cost accounting. She took me aside one day and cautioned that I would probably never get to be an accountant because, at that time, only men were accountants. Why? My mentor explained that businesses (which were run by men) only wanted to deal with other men regarding their money. They did not trust a woman to be able to handle it competently. I could be a bookkeeper, but I would likely fail as an accountant, and I would not be able to break down that barrier. So I decided to change my major at college and go into Commercial Teaching (business education).
While I was still in Chicago, I met a man who would become an extraordinary computer scientist. We dated, and before long, he proposed to me, and we were married in the final year of our undergraduate program. My husband wanted to continue his education with a post-graduate degree, and I prepared to work while he studied.
I got a teaching job at Urbana High School teaching general business and economics to high school students. I was so fortunate to get a teaching job. I had the foresight to see that my teaching experience would be helpful for me to find another career path. And I understood what teachers already knew; it was a service opportunity to give back to young people and help them along their way.
My husband and I relocated to Charlottesville, Virginia. The University of Virginia (an all-male school at the time) accepted him into their Master's degree program for computer science. I did some work with a real estate appraiser. Our first child was born, a daughter. My husband received his Master's degree and then pursued and earned a D.SCi. too.
A job offer came in to teach and conduct research at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Off we went. We had a second child there, another daughter. A housewife, two beautiful little girls, a husband teaching at a prestigious university; by society's standards, my life was complete. Except it wasn't.
I was the epitome of the women in Betty Friedan's book, Feminine Mystique (1963), bored and looking for something else. Friedan coined the term "feminine mystique" to debunk a stereotype that feminine women did not want to work, get an education, or have political opinions. Friedan's book struck a chord with the legions of women that wanted to break free and voice their feelings about it.
A friend went to the Houston Women's Conference that year and came back talking about political engagement and all the other things we could do to empower women. Little did I know her trip changed the course of my life.
Written by Dixie Swenson.
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Join us next week for Part 3 of I Am Because of the Women Who Came Before Me.
Correction to Part 1 (published March 03, 2022), 2nd paragraph.
For my mother, who was born in 1911 in a small town in Colorado, those programs provided the best options for women determined to be independent. The programs were a lifeline for my mother, the 4th oldest in a family of 13 children.
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