Anthropology

Ellen is 72 years old but insists that inside Im still 16. Shes witty and intelligent (a member of American Mensa Ltd.) and very busy. Only five feet tall, with hair a lovely blonde she says owes more to LOreal than nature, Ellen is as focused and driven in her work as anyone half her age.  While most people her age seem to be slowing down, shes speeding up. She confided that recently shed pulled two all-nighters in one week to meet a clients rush deadline. By the end of the interview, I was feeling tired just being in the presence of such energy.

    On the personal side, Ellen has been married twice, both ending in divorce. Ellen has 5 grown children (3 girls, 2 boys) and 13 grandchildren. She has a B.A. in History and Anthropology, an M.A. in Linguistics, and a J.D. in law. She worked for over 30 years as a communications manager and consultant before opening her own business communications shop in 2004. She takes freelance business writing assignments from clients all over the U.S.

    Ellens personal hero is Isaac Asimov who marked his 65th birthday with a non-retirement party. She quoted to me from Asimovs comments on working If the doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldnt brood about it. Id just type a little faster. Theres a lot of Asimovs attitude in Ellen. Her typical workday is often over 8 hours, and her work can stretch well into the weekend, especially if shes taken off a few afternoons to play golf. Ellen admits to having seen enormous changes in her lifetime, particularly in the role of women in the workforce.
    ___________________
     Ellen gave the interview on the condition that I not use her last name. She doesnt look her age and doesnt want her clients to even suspect her age.

The open-ended questions I asked her gave her an opportunity to reflect on those changes, but in the end she shrugged and offered, Thats all history. Today is for living.
Interview Questions

Lets talk a bit about your history. Youve seen a lot of changes in your lifetime. What changes stand out to you as significant and having the most impact on society

    In the field of technology, our venture into space is a dream come true. When I was 13, I stood out under the night stars, gazing up and crying because I thought Id been born too soon to ever see mankind reach the moon. I was a big science fiction fan, but in the early 1950s, it seemed we were making no progress toward getting off this planet. Then John Kennedy made his famous declaration about going to the moon and the race was on. Its a race we won as a nation because we were focused and dedicated to that goal. Then the space program almost foundered and has never gained much momentum even with the space station. Now were going to have to hitch a ride to it via the Russians when our shuttles are taken out of service.

    Weve made huge advances in medicine and micro-technology too. On a daily level, our advances in computer science probably affect everyone on the planet the most. I cant remember the last time I wrote a letter to anyonebut I answered over 50 emails this morning. I wouldnt be able to be in business for myself easily now without computers. My contracts with clients are all signed electronically, thanks to the Electronic Signature Act of 2000, so theres no paper being mailed back and forth. I deliver my business assignments to clients via email or an upload programand I get paid electronically too, whether its by credit card, PayPal, or direct deposit into my business account. Open Meeting and other programs allow me to meet with my clients in real time without ever leaving my home office. I owe a tremendous debt to Tim Berners-Lee, the father of the Internet, and all the others who worked to reduce computers to desktop and laptop proportions. When I was young, the concept of a personal computer didnt exist. Television was still black and white until the 60s, and a lot of programming was boringnot much better than infomercials are in the dead of night today. As a result, we read more, we got out of doors and did more things, and when we called a friend, it was from a stationary telephone in a house. Life today has become portable, and we live in an era of instant breakfast and instant cash. The pace was slower, and in some ways, that was more beneficial. We had more time to think.

    Another huge change for the better in the 20th century was the Civil Rights movement. I grew up in a segregated South and even as a young child puzzled over why my mother always told me to treat people equally when she also expressed that colored people really preferred to remain separate. By the time I was 5, I didnt buy that statement at all and made it a point to drink from public fountains marked colored much to my mothers horror, pointing out that there were only colored people in the world. Some people were pink and others brown, but no one was white. Maybe my argumentative logic was what steered me to law school many years later.

    The bid for equality among women was another profound change. I got caught up in the Womens Movement in the 1960s, resuming my maiden name while still married, opening separate charge accounts and acquiring credit cards solely in my name. I wouldnt have had the career opportunities I had if it werent for the push the Womens Movement gave me to be assertive in business. But that success was a double-edged sword. My second husband was not nearly so successful and my achievements and earning power contributed to the end of our marriage. Am I sorry for that Not at all. I dont think I could be induced to marry again for any reason. In retrospect, it seems to me that theres room in marriage for one-and-a-half people, and Im damned if Ill be the half.

Thinking back, as a young adult, what were your expectations for your life
(She chuckles) Girls of my generation werent brought up to have expectations beyond being a wife and mother, but I came from an unusual background and it informed my thinking in a number of ways. I couldnt wait to finish high school and went to summer school to get out a semester early. While my high school classmates were still struggling with graduation, I was completing my first semester of college. Then I fell in love, or thought I did, with the other top student in our junior college, and we married the day after my 18th birthday and went off to school togetherhe went to dental school and I pursued a degree at a major university. Then in the days before the pill, I got pregnant and had to put college on hold for a time. That marriage didnt survive long. We were both far too immature to make good life decisions. The only thing we had going for us was that wed been the top students in school together, but my GPA outshone his once he started dental school. So what did I learn from the experience After all we should learn from out mistakes. I found that I was probably seeing marriage as a route to independence, when it has its own shackles. One girl I met on campus my freshman year summed up the traditional expectations for girls of my generation when she asked me, So why are you herebecause your parents sent you or to find a husband

    A sociology professor (I forget his name) described my generation as the unknown generation. We were too young for World War II or the Korean War to impact us directly, and Vietnam was still in the future. We were the first peacetime generation to grow up and not have the expectation of going off to fight, although boys still had to register with the draft board. We all thought wed have middle-class lives with a home in the suburbs, two cars and three or four children. Young women, in particular, didnt think much beyond that. Its life the Cinderella fairy tale where the prince takes Cinderella off and they live happily ever after. My happily-ever-after ending didnt come until after my second marriage ended 25 years later. It took the Womens Movement to give me and many more disenchanted Cinderella housewives a wake-up call.

What was the college experience like for you
    When I first started at age 17, I had a brief epiphany about self-responsibility. Id always hated authority and answering to adults. After all, like any teenager (and this hasnt changed that I can see), I didnt like to have someone else deciding all the important stuff for me. High school was a drag. I excelled in courses I liked and made abysmal grades in ones I didnt. Always there was someone nagging me to do my homework, to turn in assignments and setting rules. When I got to college, I suddenly discovered that nobody cared whether I showed up to class or not. The professors didnt care. My mother was no longer in a position to check up on me, and I was, quite suddenly and miraculously free. But if no one cared whether I succeeded or made an A or an F, I decided that I cared. It was me on the line in college, not my parents. So I started making As consistently and was very proud of it. It was the first time Id really taken control of my life and used any self-discipline in studying. Memorization had always come easily to me, but now I actually began to study not because someone made me but because I wanted to. For the first time, I gained a sense of self-esteem from taking care of myself. I think in some form or another, its a transition that is important for all young people to make. Its the last snipping off of the apron strings with home.

What was the most profound impact on your life as a young adult that changed your expectations for the future

That ones easyand theres nothing comparable for your generation to go through. The birth control pill was introduced on the market. Suddenly, the dynamics of relationships between young men and women shifted dramatically. Men doubtless breathed a huge sigh of relief. For us women it was the first time we could reliably plan on a career or not feel a need to marry a guy we cared about. The pill came on the scene a little late for me where children were concerned, but it had a huge impact on my career. I could decide whether to have children or not. Employers gradually got the message too that women didnt necessarily become liabilities or take off due to pregnancy and childbirth. So...we were free from worries of pregnancy, venereal disease was curable with penicillin, and AIDS hadnt arrived on the scene. For young adults, it was a golden age.

My Impressions
Some things dont seem to have changed from generation to generation. For example, Ellen described her resentment of authority and how that changed when she reached college and became aware that she was truly in control. From my perspective, I dont think it makes a great deal of difference whether parents are paying for college, the college experience is a chance to fly on ones own for the first time, and I can relate to Ellens shift in attitude.

    Apart from the crisis today with AIDS, the attitude towards relationships and sex among young adults seems very similar to what happened to her generation when the pill was released. Most of us marry later because we have choices we can make regarding relationships without fear of pregnancy by a girl or fatherhood by a boyso marriage for both our generations became more a matter of choice. However, I suspect that Ellens generation carried a lot of baggage in parental expectations that the young people marry.

    While we share a lot, we also have grown up with some fundamental differences that Ellen alludes to that shaped her life later on. Television was as close as her young adult life came to high-tech until she was over 40. Yet theres much to be said for the slower pace of life she describes. People took more time to get to know each other, to debate ideas, to think without all the hurry-up clutter of life around us. Ellen grew up without cell phones and computers, something thats hard for me to imagine because theyre so much of daily life.

    I dont think Ellen is typical of her generation. Ive met other women in their 70s who are definitely retired and slowing down as they slide into old age. I think Ellenlike those of us in my generationwill only meet old age kicking and screaming in protest. More than anything else, this interview gave me an opportunity to see that the generations arent all that far apart, but that we can learn valuable lessons from adults who have done a lot of living already. We have some of the same problems, we share many of the same problems, but our problems today reflect a difficult, much smaller world where politics and terrorists are on the home front and where unemployment is very high. Ellens generation achieved a kind of stability thats missing today. Even so, while her young adult decade would be a nice place to visit, I wouldnt want to live there for long.  Ellens generation learned to solve a lot of problems, technological and human, and we should be grateful, but I suspect women like Ellen dont want gratitude. They want ongoing action.