The Girls from Ames (37 page)

Maybe it’s their Midwestern roots, but Kelly believes most of the other girls try to portray a look that radiates health as opposed to glamour. “I don’t get manicures and pedicures,” Kelly says. “I’m not overly zealous about whitening my teeth. I’m not going in for skin treatments. I am ardently against breast enhancement.”

Her focus on health as opposed to glamour is her way to combat a culture in which women are still objectified and there’s an unrealistic airbrushed ideal that is everywhere in the media.

Kelly has been monitoring the culture’s impact on women all her life and in all sorts of ways, so she’s a bit of a barometer for her friends in that respect.

When Kelly considers the woman she has become, she sees flashes of the fighting spirit she first developed back in Ames. Yes, she and the other girls benefited from the Title IX legislation of 1972, designed to end discrimination against girls in sports and educational opportunities. But Kelly also remembers the bad old days.

There was the time at fifth-grade recess when she and a few other girls decided to play soccer with the boys. A teacher came running out and angrily told the girls to quit the game. The teacher, a woman, implied that by being so physical, the girls were acting in a seductive manner when they had contact with the boys. Kelly proudly recalls how she and the other girls heard the teacher out, then chose to keep playing.

In junior high, when Kelly was student council president, she attended a meeting with teachers, parents and students to discuss ways to improve the school. One suggestion was to make sure the girls and boys had equal activities. Someone said, “Girls should be allowed to do the pole vault in track.” Kelly can still remember how one of the adults laughed. “That won’t work,” he said. “Girls will never have the upper body strength to do the pole vault.”

But there were sea changes, too, showing up in the living rooms around Ames, and Kelly now believes the impact wasn’t insignificant. “During our formative teenage years,” she says, “women featured on TV shows went from playing housewives to being the Bionic Woman and Wonder Woman and Charlie’s Angels. The first female athletes who made an impression on us entered our lives when we watched the Olympics. They participated in sports very few of us were involved in, but at least we were seeing strong female athletes in competitive situations.”

Kelly likes telling the other girls that once she began teaching, the feminist mentors in her life were her older colleagues. Encouragement from them kept her in the workplace. She had one fellow teacher named Ruth who was an ardent feminist and took Kelly under her wing. In 1995, after her third child was born, Kelly thought about leaving teaching. She had actually turned in her letter of resignation, explaining that with three children under age four, she felt overwhelmed with the duties of motherhood and needed to be home. Ruth convinced her to stay, to think about how her decision would affect her pension. “I did it,” Ruth said to Kelly. “You can, too.”

Ruth told her about how, as a young mother in the days before car seats, she’d tuck her baby in a laundry basket to transport her to a babysitter each day. “Women used to lose their jobs once they became pregnant,” Ruth said. “They’d hide their pregnancies as long as they could.”

Kelly listened and then took back her letter of resignation. “It was a way to honor the women who had been pushed out of their jobs when they became mothers,” Kelly now says.

She understands and admires the other Ames girls who choose not to work outside the house. But she says she has a special appreciation for the working women among them, for how they balance work and family.

“I once listened to a debate between working moms and stay-at-home moms,” Kelly says. “Although I respect that this is a very personal choice, it’s important for society to acknowledge the benefits of women in the workplace. We need to praise the women who are doing essential, valuable jobs—and not criticize them.”

Kelly is proud that there are three working teachers in the group—Kelly at a high school, Sally at an elementary school and Jane at a college—and that Karen may someday return to teaching. She admires how Jenny has a high-powered job as an assistant dean of public affairs at a university and that Angela runs her own public relations company.

When Kelly’s daughter Liesl has a day off from her own school in Northfield, Minnesota, Kelly invites her to drive south with her and join her for the day as she teaches at Faribault High School. “I want to model for her how happy a woman can be at work,” she says.

 

 

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elly admires the back stories of how her old friends from Ames found their way in the workforce. Jane was always smart and inner-directed back in Ames, so Kelly wasn’t surprised that she’d work hard to get her Ph.D. and become a professor. Angela has always been a terrific multitasker—taking on a host of projects and committees as a student at Ames High. So Kelly knew she’d make a go of it when she began building her own PR agency in North Carolina. Angela was suited to juggle a host of clients, motherhood and more.

Kelly thinks it’s terrific that Diana had a full career years ago as a certified public accountant, then took time off to raise her kids and has now gone back to work twenty hours a week behind the counter at a Starbucks near her home in Arizona. Since her husband is self-employed, Diana likes that her family can take advantage of the full health-care benefits that Starbucks offers even its part-time workers. And Diana says she’s having a lot of fun working as a barista—interacting with regular customers and knowing their names and their orders before they ask. She calls it great exercise for an aging brain. “Some people do Sudoku,” she says. “I work at Starbucks.”

Diana also likes talking and listening to her younger coworkers. She feels protective of some of the teens and twentysomethings who work with her—and she learns a lot from them, too. They give her a glimpse into the world her preteen daughters will inhabit in a few years. She’s impressed by so many things about them, but she’s also a bit taken aback by all their piercings and tattoos. “Their lives are exciting, though sometimes worrisome,” she says, “and getting to know them gives me a lead-in to discuss issues with my kids at home.” Her coworkers have asked what she’ll do if her kids come home someday with body art. “Well, honestly, I hope the trend doesn’t last too long,” she tells them, “but I know there are much worse things they could get involved in. I’ll just keep loving and supporting them.”

Kelly likes the idea of Diana—who drinks hot chocolate, not coffee—spending her days at Starbucks learning from her young coworkers. It sounds like more of a kick, and appears more emotionally rewarding, than being a CPA.

Kelly also is proud of Jenny, whose earlier career was in politics. Jenny came from a family that was active in Republican Party circles in Iowa. Her grandmother was a state legislator, and her grandfather, a newspaperman, knew Ronald Reagan back when the future president was a radio sports announcer in Iowa. The two men once took a train together from Des Moines to a convention in New York, playing poker all the way.

Because of her GOP pedigree, Jenny joined the Young Republicans when she got to the University of South Carolina. In 1984, Nancy Reagan made a campaign stop at the school, and Jenny was on the committee that met her at the airport.

Jenny was in the Delta Delta Delta sorority and had heard that in her day Mrs. Reagan was, too. “It’s so nice to meet you, Mrs. Reagan,” Jenny said, as they shook hands. “And I just want you to know that I’m so glad you’re a Tri Delt!”

Mrs. Reagan smiled and replied, “Well, I went to an all-girls school. I wasn’t in a sorority. I’m not a Tri Delt.”

Jenny found herself stammering, “I’m so embarrassed,” and Mrs. Reagan rescued the situation by saying, “Well, is it still nice to meet me?”

After graduation, Jenny went to Washington, D.C., and worked as a receptionist at the National Republican Congressional Committee. Then, in 1986, she got a job as an aide to an Ohio Republican in Congress, Donald (Buz) Lukens. It was an exciting time to be young, learning about how government works, dealing with constituents and hanging out after work with other young Republican staffers.

“In a House office, the staffers are like a family,” Jenny would explain to Kelly and the other girls. “There are only six of us, and it’s close quarters. We’re all in our twenties, and it’s almost like Buz is the dad and we’re all the kids.”

At first, she described the congressman to the others as “a perfectly nice old guy.” He was in his fifties then and divorced. Jenny found it interesting that no matter how unattractive, fat or churlish a politician might be, there were always “congressional groupies throwing themselves at these guys, mostly women in their thirties and forties.”

Buz was a politically incorrect throwback, and in the 1980s, people like him were still common at the Capitol. He called Jenny and the other young female staffers “honey.” He put his arm around everyone. “He’s very touchy-feely,” Jenny said, “but he’s harmless and he cares about all of us.”

Then Congressman Lukens was caught paying $40 to a sixteen-year-old girl to have sex with him. The encounter was secretly taped by an Ohio TV station. After that made headlines, a House elevator operator accused him of fondling her.

A firestorm followed, and there was even a photo in the congressional newspaper,
Roll Call,
illustrating the fact that Lukens and his staffers were under siege. The photo showed the hand of a Lukens staffer sticking out from behind a partially closed door to the congressman’s office. Between the fingers was a sign that read: “No comment.” That hand was Jenny’s.

Lukens would end up resigning, and it was left to Jenny and her colleagues to pack up his belongings. He was too depressed to help. Congress had been his life and now he was ruined. Jenny worried she’d come into the office one morning and find him dead. (He would later go to jail for nine days.)

Once he was gone, Jenny and the other staffers held on to their jobs for a couple of months; there were still constituents’ needs to attend to. But Jenny found herself unable to get another job on Capitol Hill. “It’s awful,” Jenny told some of the other Ames girls. “All the other offices have shunned not just the congressman, but those of us on his staff. We’re pariahs. We’re unhirable. No one will even interview us.”

Jenny worked as a temp for a while and eventually got a job at the Business Roundtable, an association for corporate chief executives. In those years, Kelly would take her students to visit Washington for national journalism conventions, and she’d meet up with Jenny in fancy hotel lobby bars and listen to updates on her career and love life. Eventually, Jenny ended up in her job as an assistant dean at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

The picture of Jenny in Kelly’s mind was always the image of the small-town girl she was back in Ames, driving around in that old World War II-era jeep her dad had bought her. Now, in Washington, Jenny seemed so sophisticated and glamorous, advising Kelly on the transit system, the best hotels, the sites an average tourist wouldn’t know about. She wore heels and a suit, while Kelly was in tennis shoes—a teacher from the Midwest touring the Capitol with wide-eyed students.

Jenny took Kelly to her office, and Kelly thought she seemed so worldly. Around her cubicle, Jenny displayed photos of her family and friends—so Ames had a presence—but the work Jenny was doing just seemed important. For the Business Roundtable, Jenny was working on a public-service ad campaign aimed at asking legislators to fund programs that help American children be more competitive in math and science.

While Kelly was impressed with Jenny’s work, Jenny viewed her old friend as so much further along in life. Kelly already had children. And here she was, visiting Washington, leading a group of fresh-faced students from Minnesota, a busload of kids who depended on her and looked up to her. To Jenny, Kelly seemed like the more developed adult.

It was intriguing how Jenny and Kelly viewed each other. For her part, Jenny felt as if she’d arrived at her success without having a clear game plan. When she was a child, her mother was very busy with community and charity projects, but she was almost always in the house when Jenny got home from school. “I always thought my role in life was to be a mom and serve the community,” Jenny says. “It wouldn’t have occurred to me that I’d be the sort of working woman I am now. Who would I have seen in Ames who is like me now?”

Jenny feels circumstances turned her into who she is. “When I got to Washington, where it felt like seven women to every man, I realized I had to change my plan. I looked around and said, ‘Well, there’s no one here I want to marry who wants to marry me, so I’d better go with Plan B.’ And that’s when I decided I’d better be serious about what I’d be when I grew up.” (As things turned out, Jenny didn’t end up marrying until 1996. She and her husband, involved in their marriage and careers, waited eight more years before having a child.)

After marveling at Jenny’s career trajectory, Kelly is impressed by the ease with which Jenny has now segued into late-in-life motherhood.

“Although any of the women would be wonderful role models for my daughter, Liesl,” Kelly says, “I’ve really been drawn to Jenny over the past few years. Several times, I have held her hands during sad moments—including at Christie’s memorial service—and each time I was surprised by how small and fragile they seemed, and yet how strong they are.”

 

 

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ince her divorce, Kelly has tried to look at her life as it is, to appreciate the light and deal with the darkness. “I never imagined a life where I would feel so alone,” she says, “that I would be a mother but not have my children with me all the time, that I could have lovers but not have someone as a constant in my life.”

On the positive side, here at the reunion at Angela’s, she shares with the other Ames girls her observations about all sorts of wonderful moments in her life back in Minnesota. She tells Sally about a man she has dated. “He’s used to petting animals,” Kelly explains, “and when I’m on the couch watching a movie with him, he’ll pet my neck. Oh my God, I love that! It’s like heaven to have a man pet your neck. You put your head in his lap and he’s just stroking. The whole movie!”