ML: Could you start by just telling me your full name?
NW: My name is Nancy Albert Wolf.
ML: Ok. And then can we go ahead and start with, just tell me anything about your childhood: where you grew up, um, when you were born..things like that.
NW: Ok. Um, I was born in 1935; I was born in (unclear) county, which is West of Roanoke. Which at the time, well still is, rural but it was even more rural then, but it was also um yeah an area of the country that you know was more isolated and some modern life was there but it also had many, many parts of um, you know the way life was years ago. Even one hundred years ago.
ML: mm-hmm.
NW: So it was an interesting place to grow up in because it had a combination of um uh, our family happened to be one that could have lots of outside influences because people traveled and they had friends in other places but also we were right there in a very tiny town and you know, we got to know people who lived there and practically everyone who lived there no matter what their status in life they had, everyone had been there for about two hundred years by that time, so its in an area which was called “the first frontier”, which was settled right after the French and Indian War and people just kind of went there, into the mountain and valleys and just stayed. So, uh that’s where I grew up um which was a wonderful place, and I, was fortunate that I had a family that could give me a lot of extra things. The school system was um, uh, in some ways quite good and in other ways very lacking. So um when I came to Hollins that was a big big jump in some ways and it also was a great thing for me because it gave me a kind of window to a much wider world which I was interested in so Hollins was terrific, it was a very good choice for me and um, I really loved it.
ML: mmm-hmm.
NW: And I think it, it did a lot for young women and that was a different time when young women who were serious about studies usually went to, well at least in the Eastern part of the country, went to a women’s college because there were many, many good men’s colleges, of course they were not admitting women then.
ML: mm.hmm. Um, and I’m sorry you said what county?
NW: The name of the town in Honaker. H-O-N-A-K-E-R.
ML: Ok, Um, you said you thought the school systems were lacking some ways.. what do you think was lacking or you know what would you have changed?
NW: Well, I think first of all I was born in the Depression so there wasn’t much money anywhere uh in this country for that matter but, but it also was a rural area that was very far away from the state capital, we always felt that that end of the state was the step-child um, the amount of money in the economy there was certainly much less than in the Eastern part of the state. So, they didn’t have as much money to spend on schools and the school system when I went through it. Had no kindergarten, and actually kind of skipped over eighth grade so uh there were only eleven years of free school in that county when I went through that system and that, since then that’s changed but that’s the way it was. We had wonderful school arms of the old type school, they were really, really good in certain subject like, I had and incredibly good English background, you know, English grammar, English literature..
ML: mm-hmm
NW: Wonderful teachers. Uh, social science, social studies, all of that, was good but when you got to things like higher science and higher math, very few kids took those courses and so, we wanted to take higher math and they didn’t even give it in high school and higher science, you know, was also lacking. Again, it has all since been changed but, so, you know that, it would have been good for me to go away for my last two years which my mother had suggested but my father didn’t want me to go away so young and I think he knew that once I went away I really wouldn’t be back. (laughs) Not that I didn’t go back to see them just that I wasn’t going to come back to that area to live, he was pretty clear on that and so he decided that I should just, I should stay until I graduate and I did and, it was okay. But uh, certainly it was an uneven education in that.
ML: mmm-hmm…So uh, how do you feel Hollins was different or changed or gave you a, a different perspective from the public school system?
NW: Well, Hollins, a lot of girls had come from prep schools, not all by any means, I don’t know what the percentage was but uh, they had had more advanced, you know education in high school. Hollins afforded me the opportunity to catch up, and I remember my mother had talked to Dr.Evertt, who was the President at the time, I think she spoke to him about that when she met him and he said “Well, its true that girls that come from prep schools are ahead when they come but uh, he said we have found that after about a year all the others are caught up and they’re all just going along together and that’s basically what did happen.
ML: Ok.
NW: So Hollins basically was a wonderful opportunity in that way and then of course Hollins was connected to the wide, wide world so I met people from all over the place, and the professors were from all over the place, as were students and we had the opportunity to travel to New York and Washington and other places like that and to go abroad and, and so I really put me in the middle of mainstream American life is I guess what you would say.
ML: mm-hmm. You had mentioned your father, your dad, wanting you to stay close to home…can you tell me about your family growing up: did you live with both parents, do you have brothers or sisters, we’re y’all close?
NW: Um, well I was an only child and I lived with my parents the whole time I was growing up and they lived on for many years. I was fortunate when my parents died. My father died when he was 86 and my mother died when she was 99 so I had my parents with me for many, many years after Hollins.
ML: Wow.
NW: So I also, of course, had a very wide, extended family because our families had lived there for so long. I had grandparents that lived right up the hill and I could see them everyday. I had cousins who lived there actually, my early years, this was very typical what happened during the Depression. Some young parents, with children who had gone off on their own when jobs became scarce, their families took them in, they had to come home because literally they couldn’t make a living. So we had happened that one of our aunts and uncles you know, once set, came back and lived with our grandparents and they had a little girl my age who was really like a sister. Then another aunt was finishing school and her little girl who was the same age was there. So I had two sisters really, which was terrific, you know, being an only child, but really, it was, was a great thing because they were right up the hill with my grandparents. We had, you know, thousands of cousins (laughs) within one day drive so people visited a lot and you know it was a typical southern extended family. People really stayed in touch all the time, so I had a very, very wonderful childhood in that way. I knew a lot of people different ages I knew a lot of older people, I knew all the people my parents age and there was just lots of cousins built in so I really didn’t mind, you know, not having brothers and sisters.
ML: mm-hmm.
NW: So it was a very, very happy childhood.
ML: Sounds like it.
NW: It was.
ML: Um, was anyone in your direct family or you know your larger extended family, involved in any kind of social work or volunteer work that might have piqued your interest?
NW: Well my mother was Miss Volunteer of all time. (laughs) Her family, her her, parents encouraged um, they themselves, well the community was small so if you wanted to be involved you immediately had many things you could do and they were also close to the church so a lot of their volunteer activities were around the church but in other ways also, and so my mother grew up helping out in that way and she expected to continue to do that after she got married and I think she told me that that was one of the things that created a real disagreement that she had with my father after they got married…she expected to continue working in the community and she was a big red cross volunteer and you know all kinds of things, you know, my mother…whatever there was to volunteer for she was happy to do it. And he…his mother had not been like that so I guess he expected that once they got married she was going to settle in much the same way that his own mother. And she..was just terribly upset. She said I just cant imagine living my life just being in the house, just taking care of family and not going out and helping in the community. So they evidently had quite a, quite a discussion (laughs) but she, I think he finally understood that this was a major part of her life so while I was growing up she was very involved: she raised Red Cross money in the war and I would go with her as she drove around the community you know, getting funds and we all, I remember, my first real memories of my help with doing things was in World War II. Things were very, very different from they way things are now because everybody, I mean everybody was involved in that war. One way or the other. So I came by volunteer work from the get go and Ive always been happy to do it, no one in my family was a professional social worker. My mother was a teacher til she became a full time homemaker…um, and my father was a pharmacist and a business man so uh…and my grandparents, my grandmother was a homemaker my grandfather was a dentist. And I’m just trying, I don’t think anybody was involved in social work though, a lot of women were involved in teaching and because the salaries were so low, in a way I guess you could say that was social work (laughs).
ML: (laughs)
NW: Well I mean it would be really hard to support yourself on the salaries that teachers were getting. Most of the teachers, the men teachers had other jobs in addition and the women teachers were basically usually supported by their husbands or if they had not married they lived at home with their families.
ML: mm-hmm.
NW: So that’s, that’s the way life was then.
ML: So do you think your mother or your family really is what got you involved so much in social work?
NW: Well, I don’t, I don’t do social work. I do environmental work so..are you thinking of that as a social work career?
ML: Um…I guess I just worded it wrong. I guess just more involved..in your page you sent in it says you’ve done a lot of volunteering and about your environmental activism and I guess I just used the wrong words but do you think she’s the one that got you involved in all that?
NW: Oh, I think certainly I had a great example as I grew up and um, it was encouraged and um, I think I probably was just like my mother, was expected to do volunteer work when I grew up and I did.
ML: mm-hmm.
NW: So that’s, it just developed. So maybe that in a way, that’s kind of first cousin for working for a non-profit I suppose. Working for private business or development there’s kind of three things you can go towards there’s: you can do private business, you can do governmental approach or you can do the third, third leg of the stool as (unclear) called it, is the uh, the non-profit world and that’s what I went into.
ML: mm-hmm.
NW: You had mentioned how when your mother got married, how her work had changed…um, when, did you get married?
NW: Did I get married? Yes I got married in 1963.
ML: Did, um, you have the same kind of dilemma that you said your mother did?
NW: No, no, no. My husband never thought that, that would not happen.
ML: (laughs)
NW: It was a non-issue and you know, I think he was perfectly happy to have me do it, you know he was not as involved but he certainly had no problem with me getting involved.
ML: mm-hmm. Well good, that’s always supportive.
NW: Well he was quite supportive I think we were supportive of each other, whatever we wanted to do.
ML: mm-hmm. Um, going back to Hollins, and the times you were here, um so, what made you decide to come to Hollins…was it a first choice?
NW: (laughs) Well, it was actually my only choice, kind of funny in a way….believe me going to college in those days was not quite the hysteric it seems to be now I mean it is just….I mean the young people I know in this neighborhood, they are under so much stress, and the SATs and stuff, applying to ten colleges I mean I have never seen anything worse. And you, you probably just went through it in a major way…um yourself..
ML: Yes, I did.
NW: It’s just, its just terrible. But I, um, I read about Hollins and I don’t even remember (mumbling) I think it was in a magazine, there was an article about it, ummm, it looked wonderful, there were some wonderful pictures, um and just sounded so interesting and um, I think going to a women’s college was just, you know, as I told you, I was considered to be a good student and so forth and if you really wanted to go to a good college and make sure your brain was stretched, you know women’s colleges were really what it was all about then. At least in the Eastern part of the country, so I don’t think that there, there was, there was not this discussion about going to co-ed schools, that I remember. My mother had gone to a women’s college in Bristol, Virginia, Tennessee, which was a two-year school and I guess it was still a two-year school when I came along and of course she was kind of, I just, I think she just imagined that that’s where I would go, I don’t think she was promoting it but she uh, she just kind of expected that. I didn’t want to do that and uh, then we wrote away to Hollins and we got all kinds of information with, they had this wonderful booklet about what all it was really like to be a student there, beautifully done. So I said this is it, this is where I wanna go and it never occurred to me that I wouldn’t get in (LAUGHS) and, and I, but this was one of the turning points and I think women really need to identify those places in your life, I mean things could have gone totally differently. I remember going into the living room where my father was sitting there reading the paper and I said “well you know, mama just keeps saying Virginia Intermont and I guess I’ll go” and he looked up at me and said “no, you’re to go to Hollins. That’s where you’re going to go”. So he stepped in at a really, really important time and I think, he had a lot of contact across the state and knowing him as I did, as this whole thing started he got on the phone to all of his pals who were in different parts of the state to discuss it, you know, what about Hollins? What do you think? And they all said, “Oh…Hollins is the finest women’s college in Virginia, Jim, I think Nancy should go there.” And then I think he understood that it really was miles apart, or these two places were miles apart and Hollins was certainly gonna be where I needed to go and so, he made plans to go and so that was the only place I applied to and I don’t know what it would have done if I had been turned down (laughs). I just think I thought, “Well, I’m going to get in!” And the next thing we know here comes this thing from Hollins saying you have to take the SAT, well no one had ever heard of the SAT.
ML: mm-hmm.
NW: Because most colleges didn’t require it but, but Hollins was one that did and they were, you know, modeling the college after the seven sisters. And they were watching what Harvard did and other schools like that so SAT it was and so when I took it, there were two people taking it. There was myself and then there was a young boy from Bluefield, West Virginia who, uh, wanted to go to Harvard.
ML: wow.
NW: We were the two, just the two of us in this huge library in this high school (laughs) in Bluefield, West Virginia. So that’s, and in those days you never knew what score you got. Or anything. So, you know, I took it and you know, whatever it was, it seemed to be ok, so I was, uh, you know I applied and was, was given “yes” and that was all there was to that.
ML: (laughs) Well….
NW: How many schools did you apply to Mandy?
ML: Um, only Hollins. (laughs)
NW: Oh really??
ML: Yess.
NW: Well that’s an interesting story in itself!
ML: mm-hmm. Yeah, its…
NW: Where are you from?
ML: Um, I’m from Richmond, Virginia.
NW: So you knew you were going to get into Hollins and that was going to be that?
ML: Pretty much, kind of the same.
NW: And you knew you wanted to go to a women’s college.
ML: Um, not at first but definitely kind of evolved and changed my opinion.
NW: Well, yup. I still think women’s colleges do a wonderful, wonderful job with young girls and I wish my girls had decided to go there but they didn’t…
ML: (laugh)
NW: But…anyway…
ML: Um, well, can you tell me a little bit about what it was like here, while you were here?
NW: Well, we had a wonderful President, umm who had um, Hollins had had some really marvelous presidents in the past but they came from a particular culture, you know kind of, gentile, Southern, Virginia oriented, and I think they, they had done a great job. They had held Hollins together during some very difficult times. Through the Depression for example, and World War II, but I think the trustees, this is right after, er not long after World War II, you know I was there, and I think they wanted to position the college to really become part of the new modern world that was clearly happening. And so they recruited Dr. John Evert who was from New York. Soo, it really gave all the connections that, that they wanted in terms of a much, much wider um world and um, so it was full of smart girls who were studying hard….and I think, um, one of my friends….it was interesting, I mean it was really no nonsense. If you didn’t do well, you weren’t gonna stay. Period. And I think because there were so few comparable men’s colleges that admitted women, like UVA was not co-ed, I mean that wasn’t co-ed.
ML: Oh really??
NW: Oh, oh YES, oh yes! So, the bottom line is the kind of girls who might have gone to UVA or whatever went to the women’s colleges just because, you know, UVA and other colleges did not admit women. Princeton, Harvard, you name ‘em, you know they did not. So, we were all in the women’s colleges and the seven sisters, you know in the north and then Hollins and um, Randolph-Macon in, I think were the two colleges in the South that tried very hard to be, you know, much like seven sisters as possible. So, uh, you know, the academic level was quite good, quite high…that we worked……(SNEEZE)
ML: Bless you.
NW: This is terrible, sorry (SNEEZE) there’s dust evidently in the air and that’s what sets this off.
ML: mmm-hmm.
NW: Anyway, I just delved into a lot of old closets, places that hadn’t been cleaned up in quite a while, this was yesterday. I think this is what started this, but anyway…So you know, we, I enjoyed it very much. I was curious about learning, um, my friends were too and you know one of our friends that we had freshman year I sat beside her in our major, everyone had to take, freshman year, eight hours of what was called (unclear) and eight hours of social science and uh, these were like foundations courses. Harvard had these kinds of things and they were terrific, actually, I thought. But uh, one of our friends sat beside me and I couldn’t help but see, you know the grades she got on the papers handed back, and I knew it was not doing well and she came to visit me the summer after that and we were all talking about you know going back and so forth, but when we got back to school she wasn’t there so I mentioned it to my parents and my father said, “well I could tell,” she didn’t say anything but she said he said she got quiet as a little bird when we were talking about all this stuff. So basically she had been told, don’t come back. So you either were doing well or, there, there wasn’t any in between.
ML: Wow.
NW: it was not so horribly drastic but I, I really think that most, I mean I, I, if you were there and you stayed there, you were going to graduate in, in pretty good style.
ML: Very high standards.
NW: I, I think they were considered high standards by others.
ML: mm-hmm. Um, while you were here were you involved in any kind, of extracurricular activities or clubs, organizations…or things like that? You know while you were taking classes?
NW: Well I think we were all involved in the things that were college wide, that, that you know, I’m just thinking the white gift, the white gift service-do they still do the white gift service at Christmas time? Stuff like that?
ML: Ummm, I’m not sure, I feel like they might but it’s definitely not, it’s not like a huge thing here now.
NW: Ok….I volunteered a little bit too, um, with um, uh, we were trying to help a very poor black school, you know not very far from campus. I guess a lot of the people who worked in the maintenance and kitchen staff, their children were, went there so there was some volunteer work that I did there. That was very, that was really a shock…I mean I, I grew up in a part of Virginia with no black people so (sneeze) I had never seen that kind of school that was for colored only, it was just, just awful…and it just made me so sad and…sick almost to see the difficultly and see exactly , you know, what the situation was, which I had never actually seen with my own eyes.
ML: mm-hmm.
NW: I certainly had read about it. Of course this was before, this was at the very very earliest stages of the integration movement and the Civil Rights movement so we were still in the old system and it was really…so sad. I was a music major so I had most of my other activities involved being in the choir and being involved in music, stuff like that.
ML: Um, well, uh, talking, you know, about the integration and volunteering, stuff like that, how did you adjust coming from a part of the country that doesn’t really have black students to coming here and volunteering with that?
NW: Well, Hollins didn’t have any black students either so I think that was uh, we, I guess, my group, my age group was part of a major transitional group that was going to go through, it was gonna enter into an adult life that, that was totally, not totally, largely different from what we had been brought up and you, you either embraced it and was happy that it was happening and tried to help it or you, I guess could be horrified and kind of try to run away and hide but it was happening, was definitely gonna happen so at Hollins, you know, I really got to know the first black people that I ever knew. But they were all, they were all people who were in some kind of service, you know, they worked in the kitchen or they were in maintenance group or whatever so it was still a very class based, racial integration and these young children, you know, I mean I remember them coming around while we were there in school handing out stuff or whatever it was, and they called us “Miss Lady”. Everybody was called “Miss Lady”.
ML: mm-hmmm.
NW: And I just wanted to die! I mean..it just horrified me. You know so in that sense…my reaction was this is terrible, it shouldn’t be this way, and whatever I can do to stop it or make it happen differently, I’m definitely gonna do. You know I didn’t do a lot of that while I was at Hollins but I certainly got involved later.
ML: So, uh, you mean when…you’re saying you thought it was terrible you mean…
NW: It was terrible that we were called “Miss Lady”, it was terrible that these children felt so, inferior and inadequate. It was terrible that the school where they worked was so poor and, you know, what not the kind of utilities that they needed. It showed very clearly that the school separate but equal mess was just a total fart. (laughs)
ML: mm-hmmm.
NW: And I knew that in my mind intellectually but I had never actually seen it. And so I really saw it, it was awful.
ML: Ahh, that’s so interesting! So much happened while you were here. (laughs)
NW: Well that, I mean this was all at the very beginning, you know the Civil Rights movement hadn’t gone into full gear, but the first inklings of what was gonna happen, was happening. Black soldiers were allowed to, eventually, black soldiers were allowed to fight the war, then they came home and were expected to go home to the same second class jip, and they, they didn’t want it, of course they didn’t want it….but, and so that was some of the beginnings of it, and you know…you could study it for the rest of your life on what happened in the 50s…in the beginning of it all and, and the culmination of it. Big time of change…BIG, BIG time.
ML: It sounds like it, definitely.
NW: Right.
ML: Um, well, while you were here do you remember any specific classes, like you mentioned earlier, um, or any professors that really influenced you into, um you know into environmental work and volunteering and stuff like that?
NW: Well, I don’t remember anything about volunteering, the professors didn’t encourage me to do anything like that but, uh, the professors, I think that if I hadn’t majored in music, which I guess is another one of those turning point decisions, I came there thinking I was going to major in history and social science and uh…freshman year I was very fortunate to Ms. Jackson and uh, Ms. McDonald, both of who were just powerhouse teachers. Ms. Jackson taught social science, she taught statistics, you know that type of thing. Ms. McDonald was head of the history department and she was really formidable so I’m very fortunate to have them and they, you know, I had many hours at the baseline which was, I’ve been able to use all of that later and you know there was no such thing as an environmental focus…you know forget about it! This is waaayy before that word was even spoken about.
ML: mmm-hmm.
NW: But then I was taking piano, I had taken piano growing up, uh from Mr. Moshier from the music department just to keep it up and you know for fun and at the end of the year he asked me if I wanted to major in music so I decided to do that so that took a lot of hours away into another type of the curriculum. Another curriculum that I would have spent in the history department and in allied fields. And I think in retrospect I think that was probably not a good decision, I enjoyed majoring in music, I had a great time and I learned a lot but it, it was not something, I was, I learned during that period of time hearing, hearing visiting people play and you know going to concerts here, there and everywhere, I knew that I was not good enough to be in that world.
ML: mm-hmm.
NW: And so, what Hollins was preparing me for was being a music teacher, you know, if I had wanted to go back home I would have been welcomed because I had a pretty good music education so of course I would have been teaching piano and helping out with all kinds of musical events and so forth. But that’s not what I wanted to do so that major, though it was fun, it was a mistake….as I look at it now I would have much better to stay with my original one. So that’s what happened…..it, it was okay because it wasn’t the end of the world and I was able to make up for it later, you know.
ML: mm-hmm. Um………how does, you mentioned earlier, kind of touched on the subject of the women’s college, how do you think it affected you, um, I guess or does it affect you still today? How you think about things, get involved with things, haing that women’s college background?
NW: Well, I think a women’s college, at that time in your life, you know I’d say 18, 17, 18 to 21, 22 you are trying to become your own woman. The women’s colleges tell you, teach you, encourage you, somehow in the experiences you get at a women’s college you come out of there, prepared to do anything. And that, that was the message that was said and that was the sunliminal message everywhere. You are important, you are, you are just as good as boys (laughs) you are ready to go anywhere and do anything and we are empowering you to have your own life.
ML: mmm-hmm
NW: And that may seem not strange at all to you Mandy but girls growing up at that period of time, it was phenomenal.
ML: Yeah, I definitely think I uh, I think, I feel the same way today but I guess I take it for granted a little bit more.
NW: Yes, well…the girls have come a long way since then (laughs)
ML: (laughs)
NW: Since the 50s….but, but it was fantastic and um I just soaked it in big time and its just, you know its just really amazing and I see my own daughters and they’re capable and they have a lot of self confidence but they had to work it out for themselves in a much longer trajectory and I think if they had gone to a women’s college they would have come out of college in a much stronger position, you know, personally.
ML: mm-hmm. Do you think your background and everything at Hollins taught you, helps you still today?
NW: Oh, YEAH. Yeah, absolutely. Well because the self-confidence builds. I mean, you know, if you feel like you can do something and you have a certain baseline self-confidence then, you know, you go forward and it all builds but you look back at whatever you might have achieved and done over the years, its part of the foundation you can look to.
ML: mm-hmm. Um, I was reading that you went to graduate school can you tell me just about you experience there and you know what all you majored in and finished at….
NW: Well you know I, I spent about a year or so fiddling around, not really knowing what to do next, I mean I was working, I worked at a bank, in Roanoke for a year and then, uh, and uh yeah, that was what my mother and I call my “lost year”.
ML: (laughs)
NW: Because, that was kind of a diversion….but during that time I decided that I really, the best thing I wanted to do was teach in high school. Not music but teach in high school and teach and that’s where I went back to history and social science and I went to William and Mary for a year and I took a lot of courses in history and the social science that I, hadn’t had time for at Hollins, and I, I also took education courses so at the end of that year I was certified as a high school teacher. Then I went to New York for a year to live with a friend, this was a friend from Hollins, we had planned to go to New York right after Hollins, but we didn’t…and fiddle faddled around and you know so we finally ended up being in New York and we had a great time, you know, it was terrific.
ML: (laughs)
NW: Just, young college girls, this is part of the history of New York, you know, young college girls arrive and they share apartments and they, they find out about life, and themselves, and the city and all kinds of things and that’s what we were doing. And by the next spring we decided we would go live in Richmond because we had all these friends in Richmond that we would g down and see on the weekends so, you know, we decided lets just go to Richmond, and we did and then I started teaching, that next fall, after we settled into this apartment that we had on West Franklin Street.
ML: So you taught in Richmond?
NW: Yeah, I was in Richmond for several years and it was really a wonderful time and I was teaching at Thomas Dale High School out in Chester.
ML: Oh, okay..I know exactly where that is!
NW: We were living in an old townhouse on Old West Franklin Street, that they turned into apartments.
ML: That’s so crazy I know exactly where you’re talking about.
NW: Yeah, Yeah, well, a lot of our friends were involved in what used to be called RPI but its now Virginia Commonwealth.
ML: Okay…
NW: and, uh, so we were there and we, we though we were bohemians, but we weren’t and there was a certain kind of, artistic tenor to life and we just had a great time! You, know we worked and we learned things and we learned about ourselves and we buzzed around and did everything and learned about men, and who to date whatnot and who we wanted to marry and who we didn’t and so forth it was just, just a great growing time and I loved it and um, I loved my teaching too, I really loved, loved teaching high school kids. Wonderful people, high school kids.
ML: (laughs)
NW: Where, where did you go to high school?
ML: I went to Clover Hill over um off of Hull Street…
NW: really…
ML: Do you know where that is?
NW: No, no I don’t think so.
ML: Its kind of a new area that’s just been developed in probably the past like 15, 20 years.
NW: And, what’s the name of the school?
ML: Clover Hill High School
NW: Yup.
ML: (laughs)
NW: Well, sounds good!
ML: (laughs) Um…Sorry…just a minute….
NW: So, I know Richmond pretty well, my father had been at MCV when he got his pharmacy degree so he, he, my family had connections with Richmond actually way back, so my parents were kind of, you know, New York…what in the heck is she doing way up there? But when I came back to Richmond they well, oh oh you know, we know Richomnd, we feel ok about Richmond.
ML: mm-hmm. Seems closer to home.
NW: Well, I was still six hours away but you know…so that, that was a good time I, I really value the time in Richmond very highly, wonderful..
ML: And you said you lived there for, like, quite a few years? Did you meet your husband there?
NW: I met my husband in Baltimore but it was through friends in Richmond that I met him….and at that point I had decided to go back to school and get a masters, and I, I went up to New York, I was going to go to Columbia, I was back in my New York phase and I was gonna go to Columbia, and I was gonna go to Columbia to interview and on the way back I stopped in Baltimore because my roommate was engaged to a guy that lived in Baltimore and so she was visiting him for the weekend and I stopped by and we went out and he had gotten this friend of his, from where he worked, uhh, to be my date, you know, blind date, and that was John and that was that. So instead of going to Columbia I got married and I, I taught one more year outside of Baltimore and then I went to Johns Hopkins.
ML: mmm-hmmm.
NW: Another great school.
ML: And what all did you do there, and how long were you there?
NW: Well I was, I had got a masters, it took two summers and a year. But the thing, that is where I started taking courses that had to do with environment. Now, I didn’t know it…and remember, this is before Earth Day…environment was not a word anybody used but looking back, lots of the courses that I took and the way my mind was working at the time, I was working my way towards that and if so happened, fortunately, that some of the courses and seminars that I took, chose for those masters, became building blocks for the environmental work that I did. Then by the time I was finishing there, my husband had gotten a job in New York, he was a television director. And so we moved to New York.
ML: mm-hmm. Do you remember what…
NW: then I had two girls, two babies and then, and then in 1970 Earth Day happened, and that, that, and after that, you know, nothing was ever the same. (laughs) Earth Day was, you know, a blockbuster, so…for me.
ML: I’m sorry, which years did you go to Johns Hopkins?
NW: I was at Johns Hopkins in the fall of ’64, I started in the summer I guess in the summer of ’64, the fall of ’64, 65’, spring rather, and then summer of ’65 and then I graduated with my masters in August of 1965.
ML: Okay.
NW: Then I had a baby in October. (laughs)
ML: (laughs) So you said that’s what really got you started in, and um, you were mentioning how, you know, environmental action was nothing really thought of and then Earth Day happened, um, can you tell me what all happened with it, how you got involved?
NW: Well, Earth Day, Earth Day was one, well, what happened, what happened was that Rachel Carson wrote a book called Silent Spring. You’ve heard, have you heard of Silent Spring?
ML: No, I have not.
NW: Oh, well, you must not have studied anything about environment Mandy, (laughs)
ML: No, not yet.
NW: It’s like the bible of the environmental movement. Um, Rachel Carson was an eminent scienctist, just a researcher and she sounded the alarm of the water pollution, air pollution and the whole way the earth was being treated and she wrote a book about it which was based in science but was really written for a more popular audience at the same time. And Silent Spring meant, you know, there will come a time when spring comes and we will have a silent spring. Well, and this was just, just, it was like the Uncle Tom’s Cabin of the environmental movement. So that got a lot of attention and I believe it was published in 1968. So, so all of the sudden everyone’s talking about the silent spring and um people who had understood what was happening but hadn’t really had a voice started speaking out and started writing articles and Senator Gaylord Nelson I think he was from Wisconsin, I’m not sure, he was in the Senate and he decided that we have to do something political to really put this thing forward and uh, and why don’t we do something in the spring and we’re gonna call it Earth Day and um, a young aid to him, Dennis Hays, was told to go out and start doing something about Earth Day. So he called all of his college friends and they called all of their college friends and everybody called all of their friends so you had this telephone tree going big time and so, different people just volunteered, it was true grassroots, just sprang up in different places where we were going to do something or other about this and bring pollution to the understanding of how we were polluting the earth to the forefront. So New York became one of the big grassroots instigators and, you know, Dennis Hays was actually in charge in the one in New York and all of his college friends and their college friends, you know, on and on and I was doing, actually one in Brooklyn which was actually part of this scene. But you know, no one actually dreamed it was going to be the Blockbuster it was going to be and I suppose that was the Hallmark of something truly revolutionary. Um, because New York is the media capital, the television covered the event at Times, er uh, Union Square. April 22, 1970. And so across the nation on TV that night was all this stuff on environment and how important it was and, and hen it was just like out of the way! This freight train is moving along!
ML: (laughs)
NW: And it was so wonderful and exciting to be a part of it and you knew you were a part of something that was going to be a big, big deal. And so your question, then or my question, anybody’s question is “how can I be part of this?” “What do I do?” “What do I have to offer that I can use to be part of this?” So, you know, there was no such thing as an environmentalist, nobody had gotten an environmental degree there was no such thing as one who was an environmental scientist or anything like that. So you took whatever you had and you said, I’m gonna be in the environment! Here’s my credentials. So of course I was going to be environmental education because that was my field. So I started trying to find a way to be involved as an educator. So…that’s how it happened.
ML: Soo… when you say, um, you just, you did, are you saying you just continued teaching just teaching environmental education, um, as a high school teacher?
NW: Well, at the time, I guess, my youngest child was three years old, I wasn’t ready for a full time job at that point. I could ha..yeah, in high school, my intent had been, as soon as Laura, my youngest one, was in kindergarten, I was going to get a job as a high school teachers again, that, that was my idea. But as the time, I started volunteering and helping to create these environmental networks where we could, we were all out there, you know, prophesizing, you know putting up tables at fairs, handing out information, trying to learn and meet people who would teach us more it was just this huge, things going on and the scientist who understood it from that point of view started, the formed things like the Scientist Committee for Public Information, and the Science Institute for Public Information that they started teaching all these volunteers and others who wanted to get involved so it, and that, that went on for several years until it became unnecessary, you know, there was no college course to go, if you wanted to really..(come in! who is it? Oh Mandy hold on, someones at the door, can you hold on?)
ML: Sure.
NW: (hello??) Mumbling in background talking to people at the door.
NW: Mandy?
ML: Yes?
NW: I’m sorry that was my younger daughter and her husband and uh, they were, they came by to say hello, but they’re coming later. They all live, we all live in the same house. We live, they live on the top floor. My other daughter and her family live in between and I live down on the bottom, kind of like a little..
ML: Have you stayed in New York since you moved back up there?
NW: No, well, uh, when my husband got the job in New York we moved in ’65 to move to New York and I’ve been here ever since.
ML: Wow.
NW: Well, we love New York.
ML: Yes, yes it sounds like you, you’ve been very active there.
NW: Anyway, the point is, to cut a long story short I did a lot of volunteering sdtuff in the very early days and became involved and of course everyone was reading every book they could find and, and we knew sooner or later colleges would start teaching about environment in some formal way but if you wanted to get involved before that you just kind of took whatever you had and declared you were going to be an environmentalist and you know, went from there. So in ’72 it was, 1972 I started working part time at an environmental group that was actually one of the ones that came out of Earth Day. It was a whole bunch of people who had volunteered for Earth Day and when Earth Day was over they, they didn’t want to give it up so they…some of them actually quite their jobs and form this organization and they were going to be the staff and the others that went back to their jobs declared that they were the board and they were going to raise money. And that’s what happened and that organization was established.
ML: Which organization was it?
NW: I started working for it part time. Environmental Action Coalition was the name of the group.
ML: Okay.
NW: So, so they soon began to realize that they needed to do environmental education in the schools. And they got some grants to do some curriculum to go out to schools start to teach environmental topics and I started working with them on that and that’s how I began my, that’s, that how I connected my professional work to this incredible new thing that was happening.
ML: Do you think being, um, a woman during all of this, um, affected you any differently?
NW: I don’t think so because the environmental movement, the whole environmental thing start after, you know, after all the revolutions of the ‘60s, you know the Civil Rights movement, the women’s movement, ummm, anti-war movement. It didn’t have you know, it didn’t have all this baggage of, you know, men having formed it and, get involved and bossing everybody and women, you know, serving coffee, so you know it helped. I mean, for example the executive director of the organization I started working with was a woman.
ML: mmm-hmmm.
NW: And since then, the organization put itself out of business about three or four years ago they figured their work was done, because I was no longer with them at the time but I’ve tried to think out of the, there were about one…two…I think there were about five or six executive directors of this organization through its lifetime, and one of them was me, but there were two other women along the way so I think that it was, it was a very, uh, compatible thing when I was there, you know, I had several men working for me, I worked for men, it was basically a very, uh… it was collegial, that’s the word I look for, you know, could we all be collegial, could we all work together…..you know maybe somebodys the boss with the final decisions sometimes but its much better to work as a team.
ML: mm-hmmm.
NW: So that’s the way we tried to.
ML: Can I ask you, how would you define activism?
NW: How, how, if I’d what?
ML: Activism.
NW: Good question (laughs)! Um, I think activism, I think, comes from, the point, if your in activism the point is that you’re an activist. It means that you don’t sit around and wait for someone to tell you what you should be doing. You kind of figure out what do I want to do? And then you go and try to do. Then you try to encourage others to do also. So, its, its forward movement it is not passivity, not waiting for someone else to advance it and maybe wait til later. Its what do I want to do: X, Y, Z, and I’m gonna make it happen. Its, so, youre head works that way. I mean this organization I worked for, for so many years, that’s why it worked so well for quite sometime, question wise, what wasn’t being done by government. You know, what were the issues, what were the things that government ought to be doing to help save the earth that were not being done. Well, if you identified that we’re going to do something about it and maybe, hopefully it would be taken over by government or by somebody to make it a permanent part of life going on. So, you know, the first active thing that this organization did was recycling. You know, there was no recycling in this city of New York at all. It took fifteen years of activism of this organization and others to get the city finally to give in and decided. To do recycling.
ML: wow.
NW: Yeah, so you know.
ML: Gosh.
NW: I mean, and even now, Roanoke County doesn’t have recycling I know, why, how do I know, well because Renee Godard, her kids, students put together the recycling system.
ML: yes, we actually just had a recycling event here yesterday.
NW: Yup, I’ve heard about it.
ML: And it’s interesting they don’t recycle anything but clear glass I’ve noticed.
NW: That’s all??
ML: That’s all! They wont recycle anything, well, they do like papers and plastic but out of glass they wont do anything but clear.
NW: Well, that’s probably because the market says we don’t want anything but clear. No brown and green glass.
ML: mm-hmm.
NW: The thing about recycling, we, we, we teamed up with a lot of people from the private sector when we were working. And you know recycling doesn’t mean picking up, recycling only happens when there’s a market.
ML: mm-hmm.
NW: So, if, if private industry doesn’t want something as a commodity, forget about it, recycling it, forget about it! You’re just going to be left with a huge pile of nothing on your hands. So its, anyone that’s into recycling has to be in partner with private industry for sure.
ML: mm-hmm.
NW: So, they’ve been told I guess that there’s no market for anything besides clear glass I suppose.
ML: I guess so.
NW: I’m sure.
ML: Well, do you, yourself, consider yourself an activist?
NW: Oh, I definitely, I still, I consider myself an activist (laughs).
ML: Right……….umm…sorry I’m getting my thoughts together (laugh)
NW: I mean, maybe I misunderstood your question I mean am I still, or how did I decide to be? Or how did I decide to be?
ML: Well, definitely all of that, we, our professor was talking to us about, cause all of the girls in our class have to do interviews and she was saying you know it’d be a good question to ask because some people do social activist kind of work but don’t consider themselves activist like, how different people define it…
NW: Yeah, yeah, well I’ve defined it in a way that I think of it in that you don’t wait around, you don’t sit around its like, well, like, individually and as a group the organization I worked for said we are wasting a lot of things, we are throwing away important materials that ought to be recycled and the city’s not doing it, nobody else is doing it so we’re gonna do it. So, we helped organize recycling centers around the city and that gradually grew and that pressure, and you know we were educating people about the recycling all the time in every way we could and the pressure built up and finally the time came when the city decided to do it.
ML: mm-hmm.
NW: And, you know not the city of New York picks up six different materials.
ML: Good, gosh.
NW: Curbside.
ML: Gosh…
NW: So after a lot of hard work it sounds like.
NW: It was absolutely, and sanitation still doesn’t want to do it but the political, things change so you know politics is a big part of activism
ML: Oh, definitely.
NW: So, you cant ignore politics, you know, you may have the greatest idea in the world but if you don’t know how to convince whoever is in government to do it then forget about it, Then, so, um, a lot, there’s a lot of political science, social science…you know the thing that’s been interesting about environmental work is that it’s a combination of hard, pure science, you know, chemistry or what all and you know political science and social science, you know, how to do it. You know, you may have the greatest scientific…well look what happened, you know, with climate change. Scientists who were studying climate change were absolutely certain that is was happening and the, the evidence was there and it was highly, highly scrutinized and it was clearly there. But the political world was not there because the government didn’t want to it to happen.
ML: mm-hmm.
NW: SO look what Al Gore has been able to do, he took it to another realm.
ML: mmm-hmm.
NW: So, it, it takes a combination of the two.
ML: mmm-hmm. Definitely. Can I ask you, how is this meaningful to you and why, what all does it bring to you that makes you keep doing it?
NW: I’m sorry I didn’t understand you Mandy.
ML: Um, how is this meaningful to you and what is it all that keeps you so engaged and keeps you so active?
NW: Well, I think if you really believe that you are part of something so important and you know like saving the world, you know if you want to be a little bit grandsiose, uh, that in itself is its own reward, you know you feel like your life is not been wasted, its, that you know you’ve done something. You’re going to be leaving behind something that, that is gonna matter. It matters now and its gonna continue to matter. So that was part of the excitement that, that you were working a field that was important or you felt it was and I think most people think it is. And so whatever part you play and you know in the middle of all these huge things, whatever part you play was significant in your world and you could feel that your life and career somewhat was meaningful. And that, and if you still feel that way and you feel that what you’re doing is still contributing then of course you want to keep on doing it and that’s where I’m at right now. I’m not working full-time and I’m spending nearly the amount of hours, I don’t have the energy to spend the amount of time I used to and I don’t know how in the world I ever did..
ML: (laughs)
NW: But, I’m still working on projects, I’m still involved with my colleagues and I’m still a part of the environmental world and that’s really good.
ML: mm-hmm. And, this next question might be very broad but feel free to say whatever you want, what would you change about the world now if you could…I mean, you’ve already changed so much (laughs)..
NW: (laughs) Well, it doesn’t always stay changed sometimes, that’s part of the problem. Well, the world is quite different now I mean, you know, I mean first of all when we first started educating people about pollution you had to define every word. You had to define the word environment you had to define the word pollution. When I was teaching kids, half of the lesson was really vocabulary, we were speaking a language that they didn’t know. So, all of that’s changed so you know, now, if you went into a classroom you’d just start, just roll right on, you don’t have to start from scratch. Government has taken on, you know, many of the things that we tried to push, including recycling. Nixon, when Nixon was President, this is kind of ironic because you think of Nixon as being a real you know, right-winged Neanderthal, but many of the major, major uh, laws that protect our environment were passed during the time Nixon was President. You know, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and so on just try to pass anything like that today would be almost impossible.
ML: mm-hmm.
NW: So, so huge changes have occurred and you know I can’t claim that I single handedly did any of them but I was part of what was happening. Our work was used as an example. And we did, we did outreach to people and you know, encourage them to write letters to call your senators, you know, don’t ever think for one minute that that kind of thing does not work. It DOES work. And even if you’re organized as non-profit or the people, uh, you start being specific about what you want and you have the science behind you and you know, you start pushing the right buttons you…it happens. You know, I know it does because I was part of it so.
ML: You’ve done it.
NW: That’s right. The, the issue that is, was most, that I most identify with certainly I saw from the very beginning, even til today, is the whole issue of greening the cities so uh, green space, open space, trees, etc. so uh, and when we first started working on this it was kind of poo-pooed. It wasn’t considered as important as some of the other environmental issues. But, it had a good science base and the forest service took notes and they began to get more money for their budget which was called urban forestry which nobody knew what it was til we defined it and they put some of their researchers to work, what would happen to cities, which are overbuilt, if they tried to bring back more green, you know. Would if be more beautiful? Well, yes, of course it would be. But, you know, would there be any real pollution and science that you would put onto it. You know, did it make any difference if you were trying to plant a million street trees and of course the science of it showed that it did. So urban forestry and the greening of the cities is alive with um, air pollution medications and um, energy conservation and you know those really big issues. So, we were doing the work of grassroots and working it hand in hand with researchers at Syracuse University and you know, other well known universities and that has been just tons of fun.
ML: And that’s what you’re working on…
NW: And we, we were the ones who did the lobbying, you see, they couldn’t do their own lobbying for their own work so it was up to the people outside to put the pressure on Congress.
ML: mmm-hmm. And that’s what you’re actually working on this week right?
NW: No, this week I’m educating kids about what fun it would be to be an environmentalist
ML: OHHH (laugh)
NW: (laugh) We have about 150 middle school kids coming to Central Park to look at environmental careers, so that’s. that’s, I’m back to my education.
ML: Well, that’s, that’s great.
NW: Meeting education in the more classic…young people meeting more environmental careers. There’s gonna be 19 different stations around the park and they’re gonna learn, with professionals who are volunteering their time, what its like to be an arborist, or a forester or a landscape architect or, um, or how to take water monitoring, or how to do water monitoring and air monitoring and uh, all kinds of groovy things. Its going to be a lot of fun.
ML: It sounds like it! Defintely.
NW: Yup, its, its, its in its 12th year and certainly successful so far. And so I, my job in this whole mix is I am one of the facilitators, I’m the project leader.
ML: So you get all the, the stations together and all the volunteers…
NW: There’s there’s about 100 million details that we’ve worked on since about February
ML: WOW.
NW: You know, its really, its just very intense. Its very tense right now you know. My daughter said to me the other day, don’t you want to go to the movies this afternoon and I said are you kidding??? I am not going to do anything from now on until the end of Wednesday afternoon.
ML: Oh, gosh.
NW: Because we, you know, we have to get all the registrations together and badges for the kids and, you know, on and on and on…but its gonna be fun. We’re doing something for juniors in high school. A similar one on the 1st of November, you know, introducing them to careers but they’re also gonna have people there from colleges that they might want to apply to. That’s a slightly different approach.
ML: Well, cool.
NW: It’s great, its really fun.
ML: Um, well I guess lastly can I finish up with how do you feel about participating in this project for me and you know what got you know interested in you know wanting to be involved because I know its taken a lot of your time and…
NW: Well, it hasn’t taken that much (laugh) Its taking a lot your time.
ML: No, no.
NW: No, I mean with all the work you’re doing with your course. Well, no I mean I’m very interested in Hollins and whatever I can do to be part of it I’m happy to do and this sounds like a really, really good idea and its good to, I think its kind of gratifying in a way to be chosen. Um, how many, how many alumnae are you interviewing? For this class I mean.
ML: Well, she has a list of probably about 150 alumnae that we could choose from and we each just choose one. She really wants us…
NW: Ohhh, well then I’m honored, I’m honored Mandy.
ML: Oh, I’m definitely glad that you know you were still willing to participate.
NW: When I heard about, when I heard about, well of course
we get, alumnae get a magazine, but we also get updates all the time,
electronically, I cant imagine what life would be life, you know, the whole way
that I work, when I first started, you know there were no fax machines, you know
electric typewriters, writing carbon copies of things and sending everything by
mail and of course the telephone, I guess that was the only quick way of…of
course now, everything I do is by e-mail. I just can’t imagine, what it would be
like otherwise. But, uh, I think that um, well we get updates all the time from
Hollins by e-mail….
ML: mm-hmm.
NW: So, you know, when they sent information about Renee Godard’s work and how she had formed this major in environment I was thrilled to death and, and and, the description of how she put it together is just so right! Its social science and science together and that is the way it needs to be viewed! You just, I know a lot of really great scientists who just couldn’t get anything passed in Congress if their life depended on it. They just don’t have those social science skills.
ML: mmm-hmm.
NW: So, I, I e-mailed her and uh, you know was talking to her via e-mail and you know, she sent me the list of courses. Boy, I just wanted to go back to school. Every one of them sounded great.
ML: (laugh)
NW: So, then when our 50th reunion came along, which was 2006, I gave $25,000 to start an endowment for Renee’s program
ML: WOW. Thank you!
NW: and I am very very pleased to do that and I’m hoping that others will add to
it and I’m going to try to add to it.
ML: Well, thank you its definitely taken off.
NW: This is a big, big plus for Hollins to have that kind of program.
ML: yes, mm-hmm. And she is a great professor, everyone here just absolutely loves her.
NW: Well, yes, she, I met her, of course, since, when I went for the reunion, we met on the front porch of Main and had a nice chat so I’m in contact with her and she’s doing wonderful stuff.
ML: Well, awesome! Well, I think that’s about it for this interview.
NW: Okay!
ML: But thank you so much!!