Miranda Dennis
Longer Life History
March 25th, 2006
Cameron Vowell’s Home,
Birmingham, AL
Miranda Dennis: (clears throat) Uh, first of all I didn’t ever ask you when you were born. So?
Cameron Vowell: Oh! My birthdate. January 8th, 1947.
MD: Okay, that’s good. I should have asked that last time, but, um—you mentioned last time that your mother had, um, polio and, um, she, you know, went through recovery and with all of that, but—did that affect, um, like, family dynamics in any way?
CV: Well, yes. It affected the whole living situation of the family. Until then, my parents had—my daddy had been a pilot, and he’d been sort of footloose and fancy free.
MD: Mmhmm.
CV: He’d flown in, uh, China and in, um, Miami where my brother was born. And then they, you know, they moved to Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, but when he—she got sick, he just, he had to quit flying, ‘cause it was a high-risk occupation, and he couldn’t leave her. A.) he needed—she needed him to help take care of and B.) he needed to be in a more stable, less risky life. So that changed their lives quite a bit; it also meant that while she was real sick that we had, uh, a nanny.
MD: Oh.
CV: She was a mean German woman named Martha. And she didn’t like us, and we didn’t like her. And Mother didn’t like her, but they had to get along because Mother literally could not stand up.
MD: Mmhmm.
CV: So, that was a real change in a family. It’s like having an unwanted in-law come in, but they were living in, uh, in Brazil when they hired her, when Mother got sick, so they were sort of stuck with her. I remember the day that Mother came home and threw her braces on the bed, and Martha just went in her room and packed her bags. (laughs)
MD: (laughs) So, when did Martha leave?
CV: That would have been, it probably was four years after, after she was stricken with polio.
MD: So, you were how old?
CV: Uh, probably seven. Six or seven.
MD: So, was it a relatively traditional family or did—I mean, did that affect—
CV: Well—
MD: I feel like that would, but—
CV: Up until that period, it, it was a traditional family in that there were, there were, um. Dad was the breadwinner—
MD: Mmhmm.
CV: And Mother was the, you know, the civically involved public face on the family, and, um. But until—and they had a wonderful time; they basically just had a ball wherever they went and whatever they did because they were in the most wonderful places on earth, and doing glamorous things. Mother was stricken on a golf course, and, uh, her whole goal in life was to get back to the golf course. So that turned out to be the best physical therapy for her that there was.
MD: Right.
CV: But in terms of—and, and back home they both had families who were, uh, supportive. Both of their parents were living, and, um, they had siblings. I don’t know what else you would mean by traditional family—
MD: Neither do I! (laughs) I mean, you know, just—
CV: (incomprehensible) But it was a single-wage earning family, uh.
MD: Yeah, that’s what, um—
CV: And it remained that way until, uh, uh—Mother did some civic jobs that probably paid her a little something.
MD: Mm.
CV: But it remained that way.
MD: So, she was in, was she involved with the same kind of activities after she got polio still?
CV: Well, she got back on her feet. Yeah, she stayed involved in the community.
(dog barks)
MD: You letting the dog in?
(pause in recording)
MD: Um, so, I also wanted to ask—um, your father was on, he was on anti-communist force in China, so, um, did that in any way just shape your growing up? Because I imagine, you know, that would—
CV: Well, I grew up with a lot of stories about, um, about China.
MD: Right.
CV: Um, it certainly; since it’s a history of China and the Nationalist Chinese in that movement, in terms of current politics I wouldn’t say it had much, much to do with it.
MD: I just thought that was an interesting little—(laughs)
CV: Yeah. Well, it gives you—it’s nice to grow up with some sense of history, makes you connect to things better.
MD: Um, (pause) also, have you always been interested in science? I mean—
CV: No. I majored in what, what I got an A in freshman year at Hollins.
MD: (laughs) Oh!
CV: I got an A from Russ Dunhart, and the rest were Bs. Plus, I think I got a D in Calculus. So, uh, that was, I headed in that direction because I really loved it. I got an A ‘cause I worked hard, and I really enjoyed it. And I never took Biology until I got out of college, and so that was a whole, uh, a whole new thing. Sandy Boatman was a huge influence on me; she was my last Chemistry teacher in college, taught me biochemistry. She came right before I left. She was there my se—I think she came my junior year.
MD: Mmhmm.
CV: And taught me senior year. And, uh, so, the, the quality of those teachers and the way they taught really directed me into science. I certainly hadn’t had any major interest in high school.
MD: So you just came into Hollins with just general interest in anything?
CV: Yeah, yeah. I had no idea what I was going to major in.
MD: Wow.
CV: And I, you know, I, I’m watching my son. He doesn’t have any clue as to what he’s going to be, uh, uh, or major in, so I, I think that’s okay!
MD: Mmhmm.
CV: If you start out with a huge buffet of opportunities at a place like Hollins, you can major in anything. You might miss something. I minored in sociology.
MD: Oh, I didn’t realize that. Um.
CV: Once again, it was a professor.
MD: (laughs) That’s good. Um, I ask that because, you know, lately people question whether, you know, with, um, the Harvard President—what he said about girls’ not being able to do science.
CV: Ah, oh yeah.
MD: You know, lately Nancy Gray, I think, has even been writing about how women can do math and science, and I just thought that was interesting that even—it seems like there are still a lot of science majors at Hollins. Back in the ‘60s when I look through Spinster and at the old, you know—
CV: Oh, yeah. There were a tremendous number. There were a lot of biology majors. I remember that clearly. Um, so, so, you know, it’s always been a strong draw for Hollins girls.
MD: Um, oh, I was also going to ask, um, you mentioned last time that it was your senior year of high school when, um, your school was integrated?
CV: Mmhmm.
MD: Um, how did you, um, deal with that? How did that affect you that year?
CV: (pause) It was very interesting. And, uh, I think—I remember being downtown when the church was bombed that killed the four little girls. Uh, AME churches downtown (??). That’s when I was sixteen. It made me aware of all of those issues. And, um, I couldn’t believe that any black child would want to go to Shade’s Valley High School, though. That, I mean, uh, the idea of one person integrating a huge black[1] school really was difficult for me to conceive of. I mean, it just seemed like a dreadful position to put yourself in. Um, but I, I was, I was galvanized in terms of being aware of what was going on. It didn’t impact my education a whole lot, I wouldn’t say. Although we had some very, very good conversations. We had a, maybe ten people I had in a history class who really would argue about anything. That’s really where I learned to do that, although my mother and dad both liked to have fi—um, active discussions at the dining room table about issues. Uh, high school was where I learned to argue with boys. (laughs)
MD: Right, because you’re at the co-ed school.
CV: Right.
MD: At that point.
CV: Right.
MD: Oh, so did you feel—so that’s when you started to, like, learn to speak out? Or?
CV: Mm, yeah. Uh, probably at Shade’s Valley, so that was 9-10-11-12, 10-11-12th grade, and it certainly kept up at Hollins. I went to Hollins as a Barry Goldwater fan.
MD: Oh, that’s right!
CV: A Goldwater Republican. And, uh, that didn’t last long.
MD: How quickly did that change?
CV: Oh, within a semester, I’d say. (laughs).
MD: How did, um, did that changing ideology—did that affect your relationship with your parents?
CV: Oh, yeah. Oh, but it was, you know, it was appropriate. It was the way it was supposed to; my parents are idiots, they’re the dumbest people in the world…
MD: (laughs)
CV: Um, that was all sort of a natural, natural—
MD: But they raised you, uh, to talk about these things, so it was probably no surprise—
CV: Yeah, right. I don’t think they had, they had the parental feeling that I do that it’s appropriate for John Scott to turn against us. Although we, you know, I may have told you we’re in the state where if the worst thing that could ever happen to us is that he could grow up to be a Republican. (laughs)
MD: (laughs)
CV: If he’s gonna turn against us, and that’s highly possible at Hampden-Sydney. Uh, but he’s gonna think—uh, when he was in high school, he thought we were really reactionary conservatives.
MD: (laughs) Oh, really?
CV: It didn’t last long. Because we started talking to him about who we were and what we valued, and he’d always known that, but we didn’t let him get away with it.
MD: (laughs) Why did he think you guys were reactionary conservatives?
CV: Because he was supposed to. (laughs)
MD: (laughs)
CV: You’re supposed to distance yourself from your parents at a certain stage in life, and we’ve all been, we’ve been very close all our lives with, with he being an older child, only child of older parents. So, it’s okay. We can live with that.
MD: That’s just really funny. (laughs) Sorry. I never thought my mom, even when I was rebelling against her, was conservative. I just thought she didn’t, you know, care. You know, but every, you know—you have to get away from your parents in a way, so.
CV: And you sort of have to do it emotionally, probably at—I don’t know, did it help you going at the college stage? Or?
MD: Um, probably in high school. I mean, going to college, I just, my, you know, my views I already had probably went more to the left already, which I didn’t, you know—I thought I was the most liberal person in my high school. And I probably was, to be fair, but I, you know, it’s just—
CV: But it was Montgomery.
MD: Yeah, it was Montgomery! And even at a liberal arts magnet school in Montgomery, it’s still, you know, that’s saying very little.
CV: Yeah.
MD: But my, my family’s been really supportive of me. I mean, even when saying, “Oh, I’m going to be a women’s studies major” on top of my English major, they’d be like, “Women’s studies? What’s that?” And my grandma calls me a “women’s libber.” (laughs)
CV: That’s (incomprehensible)! (laughs)
MD: It is! But they’ve been really supportive if I just talk to them and explains things, and you know, there’s no problem.
CV: Yeah, that’s (incomprehensible); communication’s a really—
MD: My mom, she’s really big on compassion, which often translates into a liberal ideology, so there’s no—
CV: Yeah.
MD: There’s no big problem there.
CV: No, it’s good.
MD: Just, I always thought I was, you know, had to rebel against her, but that’s, it’s true, they have to do it. I mean, I doubt, I doubt your son will become a Republican, but there is that strong influence at Hampden-Sydney!
CV: (laughs)
MD: With all the young men who look like they’re 30 years old already, with their bowties, it’s so great.
CV: He’s a bow-tie wearer, yeah. So is his dad.
MD: Ah, there ya go. Um, to go back to Hollins, um, what were the—can you talk about the friendships you had or some that formed at Hollins?
CV: Mmhmm. (pause) I think my friendships were centered around my freshman roommates. I was in a triple.
MD: Hmm.
CV: I don’t know if they do that anymore.
MD: Uh, there’re a couple triples, but it’s usually for sophomores, juniors.
CV: Yeah. Those great big rooms in the middle of West—
MD: Yeah.
CV: --on the second and third floor were triples. On the front and back sides.
MD: They still are.
CV: Um, and, uh, one of—and I had a, uh, real conservative roommate from West Virginia, and a, a real liberal one from Maryland, and uh, they—so we ended up just we had active discussions. And, uh, it—one, one side, the liberal side actually evolved into a nucleus that became active in student government and active in ADA and active in all sorts of things that happened on campus. And that was great fun, and they would turn to me and say, “Well, there’s this position on House Board. Why don’t you run for it?” I’d say, “Okay!” (laughs)
MD: I know that feeling.
CV: I’d never, I’d never tried anything like it before. But, you know, it couldn’t, it could only be interesting at worse. So, that had a lot do with, uh, encouragement, being with a group of women even if, on any particular issue even if it was only four or five who would sit down and figure out who was going to do what. Um, it had a huge impact, learning how to work with women—
MD: Mmhmm.
CV: --Uh, come forward as a group.
MD: Did any of those friendships continue after Hollins? Or?
CV: My senior roommate, um, I stay in touch with. Uh, and of course a lot of them have gotten reactivated through this board work. There are a couple who have been on the Hollins board I’ve stayed in touch with.
MD: Okay, um, you also mentioned how at the Hollins, like, senior table and places like that, that was where a lot of, um, open dialogue kind of occurred—I’m looking at it now, that was, that was funny to me because to me, the senior table is, I look, and it just is the same group of seniors, and they probably do discuss things, but I think it’s more of a social setting. Did, at the time was it really actually kind of known as the place where you go if you’re a senior and you wanna chat up a storm about whatever issue? Or?
CV: I think we looked forward to it for that reason. I mean, senior tables were special and, um, they were interesting places to be, breakfast, lunch or dinner. Um, I’m not sure we had them at lunch, ‘cause lunch was sort of, sort of scattered. But, and it it was special to be invited as a lower classman to the senior table.
MD: Mmhmm, mmhmm.
CV: But, but they were only, they were big round tables that seated maybe, maybe ten, but I, but maybe not that big, eight to ten people.
MD: Mmhmm.
CV: So that, so you were looking at everybody at the table; it wasn’t, uh, long tables.
MD: Right.
CV: I don’t know if those lend themselves to the conversation.
MD: You know, I can see that, that—
CV: The way the circular ones did.
MD: And it provides more of an equal sort of setting ‘cause you do see everyone’s face. I mean, I sit at tables like that often, and I prefer those.
CV: Do seniors wear jackets?
MD: No!
CV: We had senior jackets. It was like a lab coat, only a different color, gray. Ours were gray, I think. Um, do the seni—I don’t—they don’t wear their robes all the time, do they?
MD: No, just, um, for like Founder’s Day, Convocation—
CV: Right. Um, the senior jackets were sort of a help in terms of identifying seniors, and you, some people wore them all the time. Some people didn’t wear them at all, but I wore mine all the time ‘cause I was used to, I was used to wearing lab coats, and I usually had ac-acid stains and holes all over, holes all over them .
MD: (laughs)
CV: But that was, that was part of your identity, wearing your senior jacket and sitting at the senior table.
MD: Wow. Well, that must be nice, to build solidarity and—
CV: Mmhmm, mmhmm.
MD: Um, do, will—how did that work—did wearing the senior jacket make it more possible for, like, people to actually approach you more? Or?
CV: Probably the opposite. (laughs)
MD: (laughs) That’s what I was thinking! But still it could be fun.
CV: Yeah, you could put your nose up in the air with your senior jacket on and ignore everybody. But it, uh, it was, it was sort of an identity of being almost out in the real world, almost grown up.
MD: Yeah.
CV: And, um.
MD: They have, I mean, we have, you know, the athletic outfits. Or, you know, like things for the horse riders and all of that, and that—or the lacrosse team just got some cute sweatshirts, but, yeah, we don’t have anything like that. That’s interesting. Yeah, I wonder why or when that started disappearing.
CV: I don’t know.
MD: It might have just been because people felt it was exclusive, or—or was it for—you said they were like lab coats, was it just for, like, science majors? Or?
CV: No, it was a short, um, broadcloth (??) jacket, and it had class of whatever on it.
MD: Oh.
CV: So, but it was designed like—I would say a lab coat because I wore lab coats all the time.
MD: Mmhmm.
CV: So, um, it wasn’t, it wasn’t anything stylish. My word, no. It had, it had pockets. That was the most important thing.
MD: Okay, well.
CV: And pockets, I’ve always been a big pocket fan. I wonder if that started at Hollins. But most people I think, I think really wore them ‘cause they were handy.
MD: Yeah, um, have tee shirts, you know, for every year, but. And that’s kind of been the new thing to do anyway for, just in high school. You know, it’s just cheap to produce a bunch of tee shirts and ??? fun. But I can see how a jacket would have worked, too.
CV: And it was fun. You never washed them. They just got to a point where they’d stand up on their own if you took them off. (laughs)
MD: (laughs)
CV: A sort of a challenge to see how long you could go.
MD: Yeah. Um, let’s see, how many questions that kind of relate. Um, to keep going on with the science, do you think your, um, kind of science-based background has helped you in how you approach activism?
CV: Yes, absolutely! Um, I think that in, in retrospect—all of this is in retrospect— but I think that the more organized you are about your thinking, about what needs to get changed, and how you—
(phone rings, recording stops)
MD: Okay, I forgot what you were saying—oh, about your science background?
CV: Uh, in, in, most—I started out in activism in graduate school, in environmental things, and having the science background to backup what you’re, what you’re talking about is just critical. I think that most well-res—well—most successful activism is based on well-researched information.
MD: Mmhmm.
CV: A well-researched stand is just—the most successful environmental group in Birmingham has been the Cahaba River Society.
MD: Oh, yeah, I know about them!
CV: And they were founded by a guy who played the trumpet in the symphony. He was not a scientist at all.
MD: Mmhmm.
CV: But he had a scientific, and he—it may be that the music-math connection gave him a very organized mind. And he was a camper and a canoe-er, and so he combined all of that to lay out an unbeatable case for protecting the Cahaba River, and for forming a society around it.
MD: Mmhmm.
CV: And it’s the, when you have it right, when you have the facts right, and you, they can really best be laid out in an organized, scientific fashion—uh, activism’s much more successful.
MD: I agree. I thought that was probably—you know, I can see how you started in environmental issues and worked your way, kind of, away from that or maybe still with that, but that’s a good starting point, and I think it is probably for a lot of people. Like, even being in like elementary school and learning about saving the rainforest, this is how the seeds of researching and getting involved are planted.
CV: And, um, in, in our women’s issues groups, we have, um, we’ve done a lot of research on the status of women in leadership, or the status of women and girls in Birmingham. The facts are there, and they’re really not difficult to pull out, but when you lay out the facts for somebody who is unaware of them, they’re stunned. And it, and it makes it so much easier.
MD: Mmhmm.
CV: And you’re not really, I don’t really want to knock them over the head, I just want them to change the way they do things.
MD: Right.
CV: And—
MD: Just, if you lay out the facts, it becomes apparent.
CV: Yeah.
MD: Um, what do you think are current environmental issue-concerns?
CV: Um, well, I think, sort of from a global perspective, uh. (pause) I think that there is—let me see how to start—(laughs) it’s just a—on the technically environmental issues, um, I think the real problem is consumerism.
MD: Mmhmm.
CV: And the fact that the average—
(phone rings, recording stops)
MD: Um, consumerism you were saying?
CV: I think that there is an intrinsic American attitude about that doesn’t address what each person contributes to the destruction of the environment, consumption of limited natural resources—lack of a big picture, for better words. Um, and the, I don’t know how you get them to do it—recycling is helpful, getting developers to build greener communities is helpful. But when you look at a, uh, an economically deprived country or neighborhood or group, any group of people, they all want what they think is the American dream, which is to live on, to live where I live. And I know that if, if ten or fifteen percent of the world were elevated to this standard it would just crush the planet. There isn’t enough energy. There isn’t enough wood. There isn’t enough, um, brick and mortar. And at this point, there aren’t enough laborers to build the houses properly.
MD: Mm.
CV: To support the world at the current level of consumption, of maybe even the 50 percent level. Um, I don’t know how to—globally, I think if we can direct the development of the underdeveloped countries into a greener way of developing, a more sustainable economy, more sustainable, supportive of individual rights, I, I think we might have a chance. E.O. Wilson, this ecologist, said that in the countries where women are—the really underdeveloped countries is where the population is way, way out of control.
MD: Mmhmm.
CV: And the answer to that is to educate women. That’s what, I mean for that to come from a Harvard biologist who’s an ant specialist—he says when women are educated anywhere in the world they make better choices. They have fewer children; they understand what it takes to sustain a family, and the men just don’t.
MD: Have, um—similar to that—you mentioned sustainable communities. Have you, like, looked into the sort of community—um, what is it, community sustainable, sustained agriculture things, like—I know there’s some around here.
CV: There are a few neighborhood farms that might do organic tomatoes for (???) and potato, you know, the very highest end restaurants.
MD: Mmhmm.
CV: Um, the problem—
MD: I know you can buy shares for some of them.
CV: Yeah, you can, and that’s good. And they need to continue that. Um, but part of the problem is it’s not going to have an overall impact on the global economy unless, unless it’s easily and economically affordable. For everybody.
MD: Right.
CV: You know. Recycling, um, isn’t really working because there, there’s no money in it. It’s not economically, um, sustainable. The city of Birmingham quit picking up glass because they didn’t have anywhere to send it. They were just shipping it to Illinois for no money, just to get it out of their landfills. Um, the recycling center here, uh, has constant struggle trying to get them to come get glass, and the paper doesn’t bring any money. People aren’t demanding recycled products, um, because they’re more expensive.
MD: Right, so.
CV: Until it’s more expensive to make paper out of raw trees, we’re not going to get anywhere.
MD: Mmhmm.
CV: So, in other words, I think it has to get a lot worse before it’ll get better. There has to be a strong economic drive for people to be greener, to globally. I mean, individually it’s terribly important to make a statement, to gather friends around you who make a statement. Um, you know, I’ve tried to get Birmingham-Southern, and there’s a real strong group out there trying to get it to be the greenest campus in the state. It’s not even close.
MD: No.
CV: But it has an environmental center out there. They’re building environmental eco-gardens around the community that are rallying points for neighborhood revitalization. And I don’t know where you get to the tipping point. No, but it’s such a struggle to push against the consumerism of those huge communities that are coming north from Montgomery and south from Birmingham.
MD: Mmhmm.
CV: Uh, I don’t know how to get past that.
MD: So,
you’ve been working with Birmingham-Southern, though, just to encourage
them? Or what have you done specifically with them?
(Cameron takes a sip of her drink.)
MD: Chew your ice! (laughs)
CV: I worked with, uh, the professor who got the environmental center started out there, and I have encouraged and been an advisor on planning sustainability conferences that they have.
MD: Mmhmm.
CV: Um, and there’s a bright young President out there who’s a lot more interested in that kind of thing than ever was before.
MD: That’s good.
CV: Yeah.
MD: That’s really exciting. Um.
CV: So, that, that’s the question was what are the environmental issues. Was that an answer?
MD: Aw, yeah, that was totally an answer.
CV: Okay.
MD: It actually was very helpful. Um, to get more to your recent activities, um—you mentioned also you were on the state ethics commission? I’m not actually sure what that is. Um, could you tell me a little bit more about that?
CV:
Yeah. The ethics law was first passed, I guess, around 1970. Uh, and it was,
it was a response to the Watergate scandal when—
MD: Mmm!
CV: --and all the ethics, um, issues that developed in Washington. Most
states in the country passed a law that says you don’t, um, take public
resources and you use them for your own personal gain. And that’s the, the
essence of an ethics law. You don’t use your public position for personal
gain. The question is defining what personal gain is and what misusing
public resources is.
MD: Oh!
CV: So what we have is a, uh, law that is, that requires every public official, which means everybody from the secretary in the office where you go to get your driver’s license renewed to the governor. Um, state county, uh, local officials, say what they’re, uh—file an ethics form that says, “These are my financial interests.” So that if somebody says, Okay, this clerk is, has, or this county commissioner has directed funds to this organization, and his wife works for that organization! The law defines that as using his public position for personal gain.
MD: Mmhmm.
CV: And, so that’s, it’s designed strictly to lay out the rules for what you can and can’t do and what’s personal gain and who you are and who your family is. Uh, we, we tried to convict Hank Sanders, um, oh, ten years ago of—Senator Hank Sanders from Selma—of, uh, directing money to organizations his family’d benefited from. At that point the law did not define daughter as a family member. He was supporting his daughter with some state money that was directed to one of the organizations, so we, that was, the law was changed and strengthened. Uh, so that’s what it’s designed to do.
MD: And so how long have you been involved with that?
CV: This is my second year of a five year term. Only one term, thank goodness.
MD: (laughs) That’s really stressful!
CV: It is. It’s a real range of activities.
MD: Right.
(Phone rings. Recording stops.)
MD: Um, I forgot what I was asking. Oh, the ethics commission. Just, um, how’d you get involved with that?
CV: Lucy Baxley appointed me, the lieutenant governor.
MD: Oh! Okay.
CV: I’ve known her for a long, long time. And she called me one day and said, “Would you accept an appointment to the ethics commission?” I said, “Well, let me check with my husband and see if he’s done anything.”
MD: (laughs)
CV: And, uh, so I called her back and said, “No, it’s okay!” And she said, “Well, be prepared to come down for a public hearing on your appointment.” And then the next day she called me from the floor of the Senate and said, “You’ve just been confirmed. You don’t have to come for a hearing.” She said. She’s really efficient. I mean, she’s the lieutenant governor; she, they’ll do what she tells them, usually. If, but she doesn’t push that as much as she could. So, that, I, I, you know, I was totally floored. I didn’t expect it, and, um, so here I am. One of the things this means is that I cannot contribute to anybody’s political campaign.
MD: Oooh.
CV: And I’ve been very involved in encouraging women to run for public office, which you do in a number of ways, but with a check. ‘Cause women aren’t very good about that, especially, you know—all women need to be freer to write checks to their friends who are running for public office, so being on the ethics commission is sort of like having a boost in our income, since we can’t contribute to poli-politicians. (laughs)
MD: (laughs) Well, that’s still interesting, though. It’s almost, in a way, another kind of activism, too.
CV:
Mmhmm!
MD: Just, you know, from looking at it, it’s just a different outlet. It,
like, looking at it—
CV: Yeah, like my friend Patricia, I would love to be able to give her some money, but she might end up in front of me on the ethics commission. I can’t contribute to anybody who might appear before the ethics commission.
MD: Mmhmm. I see. Well, that makes me wonder more about, um, the political action committees you do.
CV: Uh-huh.
MD: Could you, like, tell me some more about that?
CV: Well, the first, uh, the main one was called the Alabama Solution.
MD: Mmhmm.
CV: And it was a group that was formed, um—I think I mentioned to you before that I, a breakfast club, when we—
MD: Yeah.
CV: Well, um, we started out having a fundraiser for, uh, a man who was running for governor. I think it was Paul Hubbard at that point. And we raised, in a smoke-filled room, we raised about $14,000.
MD: Not bad.
CV: Not bad!
MD: (laughs)
CV: The word on the street in Birmingham the next day was that we had raised $140,000. I mean, people were so worried about women getting together.
MD: (laughs)
CV: They were just horrified. The story just grew and grew and grew! My friend Natalie Davis who ran for Senate some years ago, when somebody told her the number they had heard, she said, “Well, that sounds about right!”
MD: (laughs)
CV: She, we’d always been good at rounding up. (laughs)
MD: (laughs)
CV: And then we had another one for Chris McNair who ran for, for, uh, county commissioner here. He was a black candidate, and we raised him $18,000. And once again the people were just stunned, and the rumors grew and grew. And then we finally figured out that we weren’t going to get anywhere with these guys and that we needed to regroup and focus just on women candidates.
MD: Mmhmm.
CV: And so for—we had a good run of about six or eight years there where we would raise about, oh, a hundred, a hundred and twenty-five thousand a year to give to women candidates all over the state. Both parties.
MD: Mmhmm.
CV: The, uh, philosophy behind the group was that Republicans and—there are so few women candidates in Alabama that we can’t afford to dwell on the differences.
MD: Mmhmm.
CV: And if you want to take a powerful group of women and divide them and copy them, you say, “Okay, Republicans here. Democrats here. Okay, you Republicans, pro-choice here. Pro-life here. Okay, you Democrats, pro-choice here. Pro-life here.”
MD: Right.
CV: And you got little bitty segmented groups who’ve got no common voice, so the Solution was about trying to pull those women together and find the common threads and just leave the other issues out—aside. And it worked! We really did get a lot more women running for office. We didn’t get them into office.
MD: (laughs)
CV: We got them into judicial positions, into commission positions in city council, but the legislature is where the Constitution concentrates the power, and that’s where the business council puts all their money.
MD: Right.
CV: So, the mayor of Auburn was a woman named Jan Dempsey—very capable, very great politician, wanted to run for the legislature, and the Business Council of Alabama said, “Are you going to do exactly what we tell you to do?” And she says, “No!” So, they gave her just nothing opponent $125,000, which back then was huge, and she lost!
MD: Mmhmm.
CV: --in a city that she had locked up because she, she was a woman! Women on the whole tend to vote their consciences, whereas the men are much more likely to play a game.
MD: Mmhmm.
CV: In politics. So, if you want to be an activist, if you can get a critical mass of women into a political body, it makes a huge difference.
MD: Even with the differences in ideology?
CV: Yeah. Yup, yup.
MD: Because it sets a precedent.
CV: Yeah, well. They act better, for one thing. But there’s a group called the Center for the American Woman in Politics at Rutgers University. Does that name ring a bell?
MD: Uh.
CV: If you got a group looking at women in politics, look at that center—
MD: Okay.
CV: --‘cause they have, over the years they have followed what happens in state legislatures as the numbers of women have gone up. Alabama’s about maybe ten or fifteen percent; it was below ten for years; I think it’s just crept up above ten. See, oh, Washington’s at 40 percent.
MD: Wow.
CV: Alabama’s legislature is the least effective in the country, and theirs is one of the best. And I have to think there’s a correlation. Put more women in there, and the work gets done.
MD: I—
CV: And that’s what, that’s what the Center for the American Woman in Politics has found out, that if you put women at the top in a position where they can get the work done, it happens.
MD: Well, it certainly a worthy experiment. (laughs) I mean—
CV: Yeah!
MD: There’s no reason why it shouldn’t, if there’s, you know, supposed to be equality, there should be more women in—
CV: There have to be.
MD: Um, what were the other—Um, oh! You said you were on eleven boards. Now, that’s a lot of boards! Have, um, all of them, um, you know, been really good outlets for you, or have some been more especially dear to you than others?
CV: Oh, yeah, some are always more dear than others. Some are just a pain in the neck. Um, I’m on the symphony board. I have stayed away from arts groups; I’ve resigned from every arts board I’ve been on, except the symphony board. And it is tending to be more professional about the way it’s run, and so I, I’ve enjoyed that. We love going to the symphony, but artsy people are difficult. And combining, uh, business principles with an organization that’s centered around dealing with artists can be very difficult, but if you can get it done—I mean, our symphony musicians who used to be just a nightmare to deal with are now at the table; they understand the financial statements; they understand their role in the financial success of the symphony, so, you know, it’s success—it’s useful. But my heart belongs to the Women’s Fund and the Nature Conservancy, uh, Freshwater Landtrust here, those environmental groups that I work with. And the ones involving women and girls.
(dog barks)
MD: (laughing) The dog.
CV: Just ignore him.
MD: How’s it been being on the Hollins board?
CV: Oh, it’s been great. I mean, that’s a fabulous group of people. It really is. And, uh, interesting to see the roles of men on the committee. Uh.
MD: Yeah.
CV: They defer—I’ll say they defer slightly the men on occasion, but not as a rule. So, the men occ— have to, uh,-- but they’re really high quality men on that board. The women are top notch, and I love seeing—it’s a huge cross-section of ages, too.
MD: Yeah, I noticed that! I was really surprised by that.
CV: Really…
MD: ‘Cause when I met, when the night I met you, I was also at that dinner, I was seated next to—she hadn’t have been older than, like, 33. Um.
CV: Ann Faircloth or Sandra Frazier?
MD: Sandra Frazier.
CV: Yeah. She’s the youngest on the board. I like her a lot.
MD: But I was like, she—she, she, we had so much fun, we just looked through the Spinster and made fun of Annie Dillard. (laughs)
CV: (laughs)
MD: Bless Annie Dillard’s heart, I love her, but we made fun of her.
CV: Well, she’s good for that, as well.
MD: Yeah, I mean, well, it was just really interesting, saying the whole—you’re right, cross-section.
(dog barks)
MD: Um, I know.
CV: Yeah, let me—
(tends to the dog)
MD: Okay, um. I forgot what I was going to say. The dogs.
CV: Annie Dillard. Oh, the board.
MD: (laughs) “Annie Dillard. Oh, the board.” Um, I was just, I was just curious about that.
CV: It’s been a terrific group. I’ve, I’ve had—I’ve been on what I would call a national board for about the last, I guess, twelve years or so. I was on the Nature Conservancy Board for nine years and then have been on the Hollins board for a couple of years. And it’s, uh, it’s very helpful when you come back to your own board work to see how these bigger organizations made up of people from much wider, um, uh, geographic and economic situations, how they work. Uh, board work is not, uh—it’s a varying sort of thing, seeing how these organizations take hold and take responsibility is interesting. It’s not wildly something I’m passionate about, but I care about the organizations, and I know now that having boards that know how to act like boards is really important. And it’s, you know, everything from the Enron scandals to HealthSouth here convinces me that women need to be more on those big boards to keep this sort of thing from happening.
MD: Right, and so you’ve—with eleven different boards you’ve had, like, a whole range of different experiences—
CV: I really have.
MD: From academic to conservancy. I mean, that—
CV: Uh, little bitty boards, great big boards, brand new boards, um, some that have been around and need to be totally revamped—it’s been fun. I’ve been on my, I was on my community foundation board for eleven years, and I’m going back on in, in January. And they—giving away money is a huge, is a huge really fun—they use that board for a lot of the real work of the organization.
MD: I noticed, um, this sort of connect also to, like, to the sort of scientific methodology and the mathematical doling out and figuring where—
CV: And, and that, again, the foundation, through the work of women, because it’s been run by women, Junior League people mostly who have—are taught methodically how to do community work, who laid out what boards are supposed to look like: do these boards contribute to your organization? Does every board member give a little bit of money? Do they take fiscal responsibility? Can they read the financial statements?
MD: Mmhmm.
CV: Um, they, they, you know, they—they help nonprofits figure out how they’re supposed to work. And then everybody who comes to the foundation, whether or not they get money, goes through the process of being interviewed, and they come out better for it.
MD: And that’s helpful because nonprofits, I mean, an effective nonprofit will do a lot of grassroots, you know, organize—
CV: Right.
MD: That’s really interesting. Like, it never occurred to me that being on a board would—I mean, I always just thought it was almost like a Wizard of Oz kind of thing, where you know—(laughs)—those are the board members, and they’re all fair, but you, you know, it really is almost, you know, really skill-building, too, and.
CV: It is skill-building. Um, and I hope that y’all have the chance to do a lot of that. Part of it’s figuring out how to sit in a meeting and deal with each other, how to listen, how to accept responsibility, how to work in a small committee and come back and report what you’ve accomplished, uh, and it’s, um—it’s, it’s, you know, not wildly exciting, but it’s the method that you need to get things done.
MD: Well, I think that in a—just to tie it back to what I know which is Hollins right now—like, Hollins has that whole—a lot of classes have that collaborative learning atmosphere and learning to get along and learning to listen and all of that and bringing that together, and I think Batten Leadership, although I’m not in Batten, but I think that has some similar focuses. Maybe some would argue too focused on going through all the skills, but, though.
CV: Do you think having Batten on campus influences the whole campus?
MD: I don’t know. I’m a little irritated with Batten, to tell the truth, because they, they really try to push that the only real way to be, like, for instance: my first year, which was last year, they had a flyer up about how three-fourths of the leading members of SGA were Batten Leaders. What they failed to mention that that one-fourth, the one person was, um, the SGA Vice-President. And she—SGA Vice-President does a ton of work in leadership—she actually ended up becoming one of my closest friends, and the more I got to know her, the more I was like, wow. She’s not in Batten—that kind of in a way made it okay to not be in Batten, but I feel like they project the image of that—
CV: Too elite.
MD: And not even too elite, just that anyone can join Batten, but the only way to really do your leadership properly is to be Batten. A lot of the young women will believe that. They’ll say things like, “How can So-and-So be a leader? How can So-and-So get asked to do this? She’s not even in Batten.” Like, my friend is—
CV: Like it’s the only credential.
MD: Yeah. My friend is the, um, General Speakers Bureau Chair, which is, um, so she gets all the speakers to come in, and she does a few other things. She’s also the editor, the co-editor, of the Columns, and uh, she does a lot of stuff, and someone apparently had said to her, “But you’re not even in Batten! How are you so involved?” It’s interesting because last time we talked about how, you know, the ideas that you said—everyone—I mean, it’s good to be a leader, but we still need the followers, too, and when I look at the Batten projects, they all have their individual projects, but a lot of times they’re very individual projects for personal fulfillment but don’t necessarily bring the community in because if they did, we would know what every single Batten girl is doing.
CV: Right.
MD: And we don’t. And I think it’s just, it’s just interesting that they really try to portray that; I feel it’s going to happen even more with the two million dollar—
CV: Well, they’re not lacking in applicants, are they?
MD: Oh, no. That’s—
CV: Why’d they put up a poster board then?
MD: A poster board?
CV: Where, wherever it was that said three-quarters of the—
MD: This is a flyer last year. ‘Cause they, they, they really—they want to keep it up, keep it up because they did just get that huge gift—
CV: Yeah.
MD: So, especially now, which I haven’t really seen anything lately, but they’re always advocating Batten. Always. I mean, that was a big thing that was mentioned at our conference.
CV: I. I love the idea of Batten—
MD: Oh, yeah.
CV: It’s terribly important, but unless they have a positive impact on the whole campus, and in particular not only in sharing the skills that they get but in, um—I would, I would like to see some of those skills across the curriculum.
MD: Right.
CV: There’s no excuse in turning anybody out of Hollins who hadn’t had a course in conflict resolution. Or, I don’t know how you’d do that. It ought to do, happen the first week you go to class. (Laughs).
MD: Well, they could even have just a workshop.
CV: Right.
MD: On peer mediation or something like that.
CV: Right, right.
MD: But they do make it where you have to put this time commitment, this huge time commitment—
CV: Yeah. I, I, I agree with you. I don’t think it needs to be—it certainly doesn’t need to be this advertised as the only way to get to the top.
MD: Yeah, and they make—to be fair, if they heard me saying this, they’d probably go, “Oh, we don’t say that!” But it, there are ways of saying things that can be interpreted in many ways, and that is one interpretation. I just find that interesting because—
CV: So, you think that from your standpoint, they’re more geared toward the individual fulfillment for the girls?
MD: Um, well, they do it, from what I can tell, is they work on the skills; they work on a lot of different things, and they worked on what needs to be fixed in each individual to make her a better leader, so they assess what’s wrong, but still that’s assessing it from one viewpoint of—
CV: --this person.
MD: And I, um, a critique is that it’s kind of corporatized leadership, which can be useful, and there are a lot of young women who are going to be needing that in their jobs, but that doesn’t apply to everyone. There’s some of us who like to print underground newspapers, or some of us who put up flyers, or rearrange tables, you know, and not saying that’s, I’m not trying to, like, build a dichotomy of us/them, but it can seem that way when they’re advertising it a specific way.
CV: Right.
MD: So, I don’t know. And, I mean, I have a lot friends in Batten because, well, that’s inevitable. (laughs) So many people in Batten, but it’s just interesting how it’s advertised.
CV: Does it cost more?
MD: No. It’s just, well, time is money. (laughs)
CV: Yeah.
MD: I mean, I, I—I’m overwhelmed enough as it is, and I feel like I’m very involved in campus.
CV: Yeah.
MD: (fiddling with recorder) Dropping this. But, um, yeah. It’s just really interesting.
CV: It’s interesting. Yeah, it is.
MD: I just, I was wondering with the new gift to Batten how that’s going to shape—‘cause the Strategic Plan, as you well know, the first thing it says is leadership. And then it’s, um, like it’s underscored by—they mention Batten again—in what I’ve read of it. And I’m like, okay, that’s good, but we have to keep in mind that leadership is going to mean a bunch of different things, and it’s also going to mean supporting one another, not just, you know, having everyone be a leader.
CV: Right.
(dog barking)
MD: So, it’s interesting to see what’s going to happen. Do you need to yell at your dog again?
CV: It might be better if we move down to the library.
MD: Okay, that’s fine! Yeah.
(recording stops)
MD: Okay, um, to shift gears a little, um, I have some fun questions I made up.
CV: (laughs) Okay!
MD: Um, at the, I got inspired by this at the women’s leadership conference there was a workshop on mentors, and I was wondering if you’ve ever found yourself in the position of a mentor or of having a mentor?
CV: Um, I’ve certainly, uh, been a mentor, uh, through, uh, a program here called Momentum which is, uh, what—two programs that came together. One is Momentum which is aimed at leadership for sort of second-tier corporate women, teaching them the skills, uh, to be corporatized leaders. And the other was a—I may have mentioned a leadership program for Alabama college women, women in four-year colleges all over the state, called Leading Edge.
MD: Ah, you didn’t mention that.
CV: Um, I helped get that organization started, and it’s really fun to see what they’ve done. They’ve had five or six graduating classes, and they take the women into for a week-long institute, and then they do projects and come together during the year. And they match them up with Momentum leaders at Birmingham-Southern—
MD: Oh.
CV: So, I got matched with one of the girls and was a mentor, and we stuck for two years, really getting to know each other. Um, and it was a good experience, really good. Um, in terms of having a mentor, I worked through that same Momentum project with a woman here to help get a geriatric center established at UAB, and it was great fun, and it was successful.
MD: Are you involved in geriatrics?
CV: Mmhmm, mmhmm.
MD: What have you done with that?
CV: Well, I helped fund, uh, my family funded the geriatric clinic here, which is a free-standing clinic here for, uh—‘cause the old one was in the Kirkland Center, which is just a huge awful building to get into and not at all geriatric-friendly.
MD: Mmhmm.
CV: I serve on the board of counselors to the Geriatric Center, Center for Geriatrcs, and Gerontology in the medical school, to try and, well, raise money for it but also raise awareness of the difference between regular medicine and geriatric medicine.
MD: Oh, does that, is that like involved with how Medicare pays for things, too?
CV: Well, I love to get involved in that, but that really involves lobbying in Washington.
MD: Yeah.
CV: Um, it’s just awful. What’s your interest?
MD: I was just wondering. (laughs) Because as, I mean, that’s just something I don’t think about, you know, as—and the fact that I don’t think about it almost interests me more because, uh, I mean, that’s, uh, you know, being youthful and not having to think about things now. I always try to be aware of when I’m kind of missing out something or g losing over an issue.
CV: Well, you know, most, I think most women get really involved in an issue if it affects them personally.
MD: Right.
CV: And I got involved when I was taking care of my mom. And, uh, realized I was stuck at that point with aging, an aging mother in very poor health with very spotty medical care at the same time I was taking care of a child and realized that my predicament is very common.
MD: Right.
CV: And so we built a geriatric center really for the daughters. It’s a, it’s not only mostly geriatric patients and women, but most of the people who take care of them are women. And it’s, uh, they need—I mean, geriatrics is different medicine. It’s things like, and it’s largely common sense; it’s lower doses of medications; it’s rearranging your furniture; it’s taking up the throw rug so you don’t trip on them and fall and break your hip; it’s gate clinic, nutrition, but it’s, uh, you know, it’s a sweeter things that require the different mindset of a doctor, and you treat them differently in the hospital. You can’t over-medicate geriatrics patients; their metabolism’s entirely different. So, pushing geriatric medicine, I’ve pushed UAB as hard as I can on geriatric medicine. And it’s working. They’re finally getting the hang of it.
MD: Well, as they say, the personal is political.
CV: Oh, yeah! I like that, the personal is political.
MD: Aw, I do, too. I like saying it, and it’s interesting is most people will start with an issue because it’s close to them, and then they grow out of it almost.
CV: Right.
MD: It’s like you forget that you started there because—
CV: And then, you, your issues change as you go through life.
MD: That’s true, that’s so true.
CV: But you really are, when at any point you find an issue, if you look around at women who are in the same state of life, stage of life you are, you’re gonna find other women who understand instantly what you’re talking about.
MD: Mmhmm.
CV: When I started talking about geriatrics issues to daughters, they got it instantly. And, uh, uh, the mothers—nobody wants to talk about being old if they are old, so the geriatric patients don’t especially want to talk about geriatric care.
MD: (laughs)
CV: But the daughters really need the help.
MD: Right, because the burden often falls on women.
CV: And it’s not a guy thing, not a guy thing to take care—
MD: Maybe that will change! I think, as—
CV: I don’t think so.
MD: (laughs) You don’t think so? You don’t have hope? Okay! Maybe, maybe one day—
CV: Well, as men start living longer, they’ll probably become more aware, and they’ll start bitching when they get there—when the baby boomers hit their 70s and realize what’s going on, they’re gonna be furious!
MD: Mmhmm!
CV: They will be livid. This Medicare drug plan is just a disaster, and it’s just now beginning to, just, just hit the fan.
MD: It was funny. My grandmother, um, she does something—she, she, um, puts checks from my grandfather—they’re divorced—but she puts checks from my grandfather into my bank account, or she does something, she takes care of that stuff. And I wanted her to keep some of the money in her bank account for awhile so I wouldn’t spend it because I’m still learning how to spend things. She was like, “Well, I don’t know if I can keep it in my bank account technically and still apply, still be able to get my Medicare and medication because of the money.” Or something. And I was like, that’s really convoluted.
CV: Yeah.
MD: That’s, uh, that’s, you know, but uh, that’s when it first occurred to me, oh, these things—
CV: They really are complicated.
MD: Yeah.
CV: And they’re really anti-geriatric friendly.
MD: Right.
CV: They really are.
MD: And legislation isn’t, like, hard—well, it is hard to reverse—but it’s not impossible, you know.
CV: Well, we need some well-placed funerals and early retirements to get it done.
MD: (laughs)
CV: It’s not going to happen without that.
MD: Some political funerals.
CV: Yeah.
MD: Well. You know, that’s probably true. Um, were there any, um, activists and leaders, um, you admired and maybe modeled yourself after?
CV: Mm-mmn. Mm-mmn.
MD: It just came about more organically?
CV: Yeah, it did. I, I just fell in with the crowd and did one thing, and fall in with the next crowd—
(phone rings)
CV: Excuse me.
(recording stops)
CV: --they’ll be about fifteen minutes.
MD: Um, so you didn’t really have any mentors?
CV: Mm-mmn. I just, just, I would sort of say that I had groups who guided me.
MD: Yeah, I can see that, and that also sort of goes in with what you’re saying about starting as a follower, or at least, you kind of in a way started as a “follower”—using that term lightly—but that is a way to get involved, is—
CV: Yeah.
MD: I mean, that’s how it’s been for me.
CV: In any one group there’s always one person you’ll gravitate towards, but it really does uh, range, uh, vary with, uh, the focus of the group.
MD: Mmhmm. Yeah, if you have friends who’ll empower you, then you’ll eventually come to it on your own.
CV: Mmhmm.
MD: So, you don’t necessarily see it as that mentor kind of relationship.
CV: Not that personal mentorship. I did have professors who—
MD: Oh, yeah.
CV:--played a strong role that I would call more mentors. My sociology professor at Hollins was a man named Eustis Theodore, who, he went from Hollins to Yale. I don’t know if he’s still there, but he really, uh, taught me a lot about how to look at Birmingham when I came back to it.
MD: Oh!
CV: And we’d talk a lot about the integration struggles, a lot about civil rights, you know, a lot about Southern daughters and their Southern mothers, which is just the most complicated relationship on earth! (laughs)
MD: (laughs)
CV: It, it, took me seven years of therapy to get through all of that. Um, but, Eustis Theodore had a huge impact on me, just as Ralph Steinhart my Chemistry professor did. And, and in going into the depths of what science is, Theodore showed me how to take a scientific look at society.
MD: Mmhmm.
CV: And, but, you know from a very personal relationship with all his students, he really talked them through how to look at your surroundings and figure out how to make them better. And I think, you know, I try to do that every time I walk into a room; how can I, what can I do, how can I make it better? And, you know, even if, I remember one time when it was even finding a stool for my cousin to sit on that could slip up under her wedding dress because she couldn’t sit down—
MD: (laughs)
CV: Just look for what’s not being done.
MD: Right.
CV: And figure out if you can do it. And if you can’t do it, figure out how to get it done.
MD: Did, um, you know, a lot of people they have—you live in the same place where you pretty much grew up, right?
CV: Right. Yeah.
MD: And a lot of people have, you know, they feel hostile towards where they come from, especially if they come from Alabama where, where there are tons of problems—do you feel like you ever had that, or?
CV: Oh, yeah! Oh, yeah. I never dreamed I’d come back to Birmingham.
MD: Oh!
CV: When I was at, when I left, I was just, I was flying, flying the nest. I was, I had finally escaped when I went to Hollins. Um, Theodore had a lot to do with, Eustis Theodore had a lot to do with my changing my attitude about that, about the need for the bright young minds to stay in the South. Um, and then, when I came back to graduate school, what I realized here was that it was basically a small town, and you could make a difference. Uh, I ran away from home when I was 27 and realized quickly that in Denver and Dallas and Washington I did not know a soul. I did not need to be there because I personally couldn’t impact the quality of life in those cities, and so—granted, I did come back simply because I’d been mugged five times. (laughs)
MD: (laughs) I can see that.
CV: Uh, I, uh, no, it was my—actually, it was my car that was broken into five times, and I was mugged, but, uh, I was really glad to be back because I did feel like I had a, had a hand in making things happen here.
MD: Mmhmm.
CV: It’s made, it’s worked.
MD: So, putting your talents to where they can be used?
CV: Mmhmm. My niece, uh, graduated from Rhodes about six or seven years ago and when and got a master’s in public and private management at University of Washington-St. Louis.
MD: Mmhmm.
CV: And she realized up there that she could have an impact back home, so she came home. She worked for the United Way, and for the Family and Child Services Agency, and got herself a job out at Birmingham-Southern and is just doing really well. Uh, so it’s part—so, she connected with who she was a lot quicker than I did.
MD: Mmhmm.
CV: It took me a good while.
MD: Hmm, that’s interesting. I always wondered because—
CV: It helps to wander a bit.
MD: Yeah.
CV: It really does. And the new head of Birmingham-Southern is very good about advocating a new, uh, circuitous route through life.
MD: (laughs) I love it.
CV: He said, when he was introduced to the fellow who introduced him the first time, he said, you know, he started this school, and then he dropped out and he went into the Navy and was on some rig—and Dr. Pollack got up and said, well, what’d he do. “I’ll tell you; I flunked out of my first college.” He now has two PhDs in philosophy and is, is, just is the perfect person for us. I hope, I just hope, I hope he’ll stay.
MD: Um, I was gonna ask a similar question about—oh! Oh, I don’t remember. (laughs) That was funny, um. It had to do with Birmingham or Alabama, but uh—
CV: Yeah, it was in Birmingham. Yeah, I did, I didn’t ever want to be in such a parochial place ever again.
MD: Yeah, I mean, I can—I, I relate. (laughs) You know.
CV: But I got over it ‘cause I just realized, you know, how amazing it is to be in a place where you know where everything is, and if you need to get something done, you can pull the people together to get it done.
MD: Right.
CV: It took me awhile to find out who those people were, and I’m at the stage now where I, I really don’t know what to do next. I think there’s so much and so few leaders who are willing to tackle issues, but I’m, I haven’t given up entirely. I’m sort of, pulling back and rethinking.
MD: Um, have you ever lived abroad or studied abroad?
CV: Mm, well, you know as a child we lived in—
MD: Oh, that’s right.
CV: --in Brazil, I remember that. I’ve traveled a lot.
MD: Mmhmm.
CV: We’ve traveled every year. I have always traveled a lot. So, I haven’t ever lived abroad. I don’t speak a language; I’d love to. Oh, I regret not speaking a language. I mean, I could get by in French, but that’s not speaking a language.
MD: (laughs) I’m going abroad next spring, so—
CV: Great. Tell me where you’re going.
MD: Paris.
CV: For one semester, two semesters?
MD: Yeah, one semester.
CV: Oh.
MD: I have to catch up on my French, though. (laughs)
CV: Well, that’s great.
MD: I know, I’m excited. That’s why I was asking because I know that, I mean, the Hollins abroad program is really pushed on the students, and not everyone has to go, especially being a science major—
CV: Yeah.
MD: That’s really hard!
CV: It didn’t fit.
MD: It doesn’t fit with science. I mean—
CV: But I think that, I don’t know if I should have worked it in or not, uh—‘cause I really spent way too much time in the lab, but it, uh, is a great opportunity. I’m so glad you’re going. I really am.
MD: Yeah, I really am, too. Uh, but then again, at the same time, you know, as long as I feel like you’ve gotten the chance to travel—you travel a lot, you—I mean, and you, certainly you know a lot about what’s going on, especially with your environmental concerns. So, I think you’ve got it down. I don’t think you need—
CV: Well, but not being afraid to travel is really a big help.
MD: Yeah. That’s a, that’s a—
CV: Have you been to Europe? Been to France?
MD: I’ve never been out of the country.
CV: You’re gonna love it.
MD: Yeah, I actually could qualify for dual citizenship in Canada because my dad’s Canadian, but that’s kind of it as far as my—
CV: Well, I found out that I could have qualified for dual citizenship in China, but they didn’t, you have to select when you’re 21 if you wanna have dual citizenship—
MD: Oh!
CV: And they didn’t tell me until I was 23!
MD: No! That would have been so fun!
CV: Well, at 21 they weren’t sure of what I would do.
MD: (laughs) They didn’t tell you. That’s funny, withholding that information.
CV: Oh, they absolutely withheld it. Absolutely.
MD: Well, yeah, I have a really close friend who lived, I think, maybe a whole summer and worked a whole summer in, I want to say, Beijing, so.
CV: Mm?
MD: Yeah, I’ve had all these friends influencing me to make these very scary decisions like go abroad or, for instance, this summer I might work at a camp for quote/endquote “at risk” youth, you know.
CV: Uh-huh.
MD: Um, but you know, so, making these decisions, I feel like it’s because of Hollins and the people I interact with.
CV: Good. Good.
MD: And it’s interesting to see that.
CV: A little, a little risk-taking is really, it pays off.
MD: It is. I mean, really, like “running away from home” so to speak.
CV: Yeah, really!
MD: I mean, it’s a good thing to do. Um, tangent. (laughs) Oh, um, what do you, uh, see are the big issues now for activism, like currently, or at least that you’re interested in that you may not necessarily, um, participate in?
CV: (clears throat) Well, just in Alabama I would say that the leadership—I’m not sure I’ve been asked to put it together in a succinct way—uh, there is a tremendous polarization of every community, and there’s so little willingness to work together, and a lot of what it boils down to is lack of civility. I’m sure I said that to you before. I think it’s a, it’s a sort of an old fashioned term, but people are not willing to deal with each other as, as humans. And I don’t know if it comes from a general lack of self-respect, or if you don’t respect yourself or have a vision for your own future, you can’t have any respect for anybody else. You know, I, I don’t know what the source of it is, but I think it’s, uh, it’s absolutely lethal to the public process.
MD: Mmhmm.
CV: It’s destroying politics to have to totally destroy anybody who runs against you, to this business with the Bush administration who calling anybody who disagrees with them liars or, uh, traitors—uh, that’s a lack of civility. It’s a lack of respect for each other, and it’s, you know, it boils down to good, old-fashioned manners.
MD: Mmhmm.
CV: I think that’s a huge problem. I don’t know what to do about it.
MD: I have a friend who’s, um, her mother was one of the state Supreme Court Justices in Kentucky, and she was up for re-election, and just the whole campaign was just terrible. And her opponent was clearly not qualified and just, you know, used the fact that, okay, she was, of course, of a liberal ideology and just twisted that so that it was, you know, lying, and it really does come across in campaigns, so she lost. And, of course, she got a job, like, doing all these other, you know, political consulting things, but the way people approach, it is very polarized, and it’s very us/them, us/them.
CV: And it’s also on the part of the voter who, who would rather believe than know—somebody they trust has told them, or somebody they’re supposed to trust says this person is a bad person, and so they swallow it hook, line and sinker rather than saying, “Oh? Tell me about that. Talk about what the facts are in the situation.” It’s almost—we’re so surrounded by information that it’s almost impossible to ferret out the lies.
MD: Mmhmm.
CV: Uh, um, none of that, none of that is, um, helpful to you in answering the question what are the issues, to be the focus of activism—
MD: No, but it’s at the base, though.
CV: But it’s the base of all relationships with people, of all your groups when you want to get, if you want to get—walk into the administration of Hollins and demand a change; they have to respect you in order to get the change. Uh, you have to respect them in order to give them—you’re giving them the authority to make the change.
MD: That’s right.
CV: According them the authority.
MD: Right.
CV: And there’s a certain amount of respect, and it’s hard to do if it’s an unequal power situation, but if you—I, I remember this funny analogy: I remember when my son was trying to sell lemonade on the street stand, and he and his friend were acting like monkeys. They had on tee-shirts; they had on cut-offs, and I said, “Okay, I dare you to go put on a shirt and a tie and a jacket and act like you are gentlemen, standing on the corner, trying to sell lemonade.” It was a smash hit! Nobody (laughs))—
MD: --and they saw these—
CV: Nobody wants to stop and, uh, uh, deal with the boy who’s yelling and screaming. But if you somebody who’s acting respectful, but if it’s a cute-faced young boy, you’re going to stop and buy lemonade!
MD: Um, the suit and tie would stop me! (laughs) You know!
CV: (laughs)
MD: Thinking, what the—in sweltering heat!
CV: In the groups where we wanted to make a change, if we, or if you, if you treat each other as equals, or as, and respectful to each other, you have a better shot at it. You really do.
MD: I agree.
CV: And, ya—you gotta realize you don’t always win. And you gotta pick yourself up and go, go the next time. The hard—one of the biggest things that my women’s political action committee did was when our good candidates lost, we rallied behind them and got them to get up and go again. It takes a candidate, on average across the country, three times to win. But women when they lose take it so personally, and you can see that at Hollins, when the girls who lose the Student Government elections probably get just crushed.
MD: Well, yeah, I had a friend who lost, and she was actually okay with it, but then again, she’s in London right now—
CV: (laughs)
MD: --and she just had some gin.
CV: But—
MD: (laughs)
CV: --women, you know, women on occasion don’t treat each other very well.
MD: Oh, yeah. (laughs)
CV: I have a friend who works with something called the International Counsel—
MD: Oh, you told me about that—
CV: Right. Well, I think that it, it happens a lot—if you treat women well, if you treat each other well, support each other, you increase the power of the whole group. You really do.
MD: Oh, that reminds me. At the Women’s Leadership Conference, there was this graduate student. He’s older. And he came, and he started talking about how women would be good—he was, he was just raising his hand to talk and show that he supported all of us, but at the same time he was saying that women would bring all these great things to, you know, conflicts etcetera, etcetera, which is true to some degree, but he was, the way he was saying it framed it as though—
(phone rings)
MD: Oh.
(recording stops)
MD: Anyway, the man was saying that, he was basically implying that women would just get along so much better or something. It was so weird, and I was, it was the second day of the conference, and I was stressed and a little more than angry, so I raised my hand and was like, “Well, as a women—as a woman, you know, at a women’s college, I find that going to Hollins has proved to me that women don’t necessarily get along, and that was very hard to deal with because you expect them to.”
CV: (laughs)
MD: And that’s the thing, but you have to get over that.
CV: Oh, yeah, you do. And you have to, and, you know, I’m—there are women I won’t, I won’t work with, I can’t work with, but, uh, that’s true—there are more men I won’t work with than women.
MD: Right.
CV: You don’t have to like everybody, but it helps a lot to not have bitter enemies.
MD: That’s true.
CV: Uh, but according each other respect is, is, it—once again, you don’t have to like them to respect them. But if you, if, you know, you gotta figure out what the chemistry is to put together a group that works, that’s effective. Um, and identifying your, your opponent in whatever issue you face, treat them with respect, and then figure out what success is going to look like.
MD: Mmhmm.
CV: If we get this change, what’s—is that really what we want?
MD: Mmhmm.
CV: And how are we going to know when we’ve gotten what we really want? When, when are we there yet?
MD: Right.
CV: Are we there yet? (laughs)
MD: You know, that’s a good point. Finding the common ground, too, also helps.
CV: Mmhmm.
MD: I mean, I’ve made more friends this year just by putting aside differences which I usually—‘cause last year I was like, “I’m so mad at the world! I don’t want to talk to anyone!” But now—
CV: That’s okay.
MD: But that was a good place to start at, and that’s always a good place, I think, is to be aware of your own, what’s important to you and then go from there to try to, you know, build bridges. Um, I guess one final question. Um, this has been a good interview. Ah, why’d you want to be involved in this project? Um, of Costa’s?
CV: I am delight—I’m just so pleased to be involved at, uh, Hollins, and I’m really interested in women in leadership. I’ve been interested in making this—things happen, activism, whatever, you know, since I graduated from high school. And so I’m, I’m happy to be able to see where it’s going with you all. I mean, I really and truly, my only hope for the future is looking at y’all.
MD: Aw. That’s true. (laughs) I mean, that’s, uh, good enough reason. Um, a lot of the women don’t even think they’ve done anything big, that go—it’s so weird, looking at that, seeing a lot of these—‘cause I have, I had—because I’m LeeRay’s workstudy student, I was making all the copies of everyone’s resumé, and I would look through them as they were being copied, and look, just great things people have done. And then, you know, they’d be like, “I’m not sure if I’m right for this project. I don’t know that I’m right for this project.” It’s started—of course, you are. Or, you know, anyone who’s ever done anything, you know, for what they believe in is right for the project. There’s no bias to it.
CV: Yeah, I think the thing is learning not to apologize for yourself.
MD: Yeah.
CV: Yeah. I’m going to open this door. Are we about through?
MD: Yeah, you know, I’m sure I have more questions, I just don’t really—I don’t know, like, ‘cause—
(end of recording.)