Carol Jones Saunders
I grew up in Hopewell, NJ, and attended high school in Princeton, just 7 miles away. The architecture of PHS is based on that of the university so it's easy to feel at home inside those iron gates where I didn't even bother to apply in those olden unenlightened days when tigresses were unheard of! Thus I graduated from Dickinson College in PA and after 2 Fulbrights to the University of Paris, recieved my MA in French language and literature from Middlebury College in VT.
I followed my Mother and Aunts into the teaching profession. I began my teaching career at Witherspoon School in Princeton. However, I decided I'd prefer college age students and taught at that level on and off for the rest of my professional life. My mother had retired from teaching when I was born to be a partner in Jones Electric Co, my father's electrical contracting business which she expanded to include a full line of GE appliances. She ran the store, and, although my father had a business degree from Rider, she, with her degrees in education, did the bookkeeping and billing. It was also she who dealt with clients whose accounts were overdue or suppliers who did not deliver as promised. A strong female role model considering she was born only 2 years into the twentieth century!
Mother's mother was also a 'can do' lady. Widowed when my aunt (an 'oops' 20 years younger than Mother and her twin sister) was only seven, Nana paid the mortgage on her new home during the depression by taking in schoolteachers as boarders. Two decades later, she found the perfect husband for this daughter by rolling up the rugs in her large living room and inviting the lonely soldiers from nearby Fort Dix to come and dance to the Victrola and sing around the upright piano which my aunt played beautifully.
My love of travel began during my graduate studies in Europe and has accelerated to a fever pitch since my marriage 12 years ago to Hal, who as Director of International Affairs for the Kettering Foundation criss crosses the globe at a dizzying pace. We travel to be able to spend more time together, and in the belief that a pleasure shared is magnified many fold. I've often joked to Hal that I can't think of a half way decent civil war he hasn't taken me to - and it's true. We each remember the long years as widow and widower, and thus relish even more our time together.
Paris is the only place I've lived outside the US, although we now spend 6 7 weeks each summer in a 12th century village in upper Provence. As a military wife, I lived a few months or years each in CA, TX , AL, MO and northern NJ widening my interests to include not only plants and animals but also rocks. I studied a bit of geology in TX, as a desert garden of cacti was not as rewarding as one of peonies.
I've lived very happily the last 26 years just 10 miles from the White House in DC where I can indulge my passions for art, architecture, theater and music - when I'm home that is! I love to read and keep up with current affairs. I also manage out of state real estate as well as the daily needs of my frail 80 year old aunt who lives 5 hrs away and intends to remain in her own home 'forever.' For many of those years, I was a professor of French language and literature at The George Washington University and the American University in DC. I pioneered intensive third year language courses and introduced the study of non French Francophone authors, especially those from Canada and Senegal.
In a strange role reversal, I have been less a professional woman than my mother. Driven by the memories of the hardships they suffered after losing all their savings when the banks closed in the Great Depression, both my parents worked harder than they should have to build up a nest egg to leave for their only daughter. Sadly, they each died at age 69, but their generosity allowed me to take a 12 year 'maternity leave' when my only child, Caryn, was born and to take early retirement a few years after Hal and I married . I also have been able to serve the community and church in a number of volunteer capacities, several with important responsibilities. I've experienced many facets of the life of a woman in my 62 years. Given the option of attending Miss Fine's School in Princeton, I chose Princeton High, partly because it was coed - and you didn't have to wear dumb cookie cutter uniforms - and partly because I still believe I couldn't have gotten a more superior education anywhere than I did in the top ability grouping of the academic track. (Back then, it was clearly indicated in which of 4 ability groupings you were placed for each subject.) I never felt there or in my coed undergrad or graduate schools that women were called on less frequently than men - even though they often outnumbered us. As a young military wife, I performed all the required duties, including donning hat and gloves for the monthly wives' club luncheon at the Officers' Club, entertaining the Colonel's wife, and standing on swollen feet in a long receiving line under the relentless July sun in Texas when I was days away from delivery to greet the new base commander. I even scheduled my college teaching so as not to interfere with my social responsibilities. In the late 60's women were not allowed to wear pants - even pants suits - to the O Club, or even to the faculty picnic at the college. In the early '70s in August in Alabama, I was rebuked for wearing a skort to the commissary one Saturday. It looked like a skirt from the front, but someone noticed it was shorts in back. Aren't we glad those days are over, though I must say I preferred going to the airport when people dressed for travel. Today's faded rumpled shorts and shower shoes look too much like a Trailways station! The pendulum will eventually swing back toward the middle, I believe.
In my chosen field of teaching, I've never felt discriminated against due to my sex. Indeed, in my one year of junior high teaching, I lobbied strongly for more male teachers as role models. With a mother who enjoyed her work so much, I was raised to think that women could do anything, and it never occurred to me to assume anyone else would think differently. I strongly believe that gave me the confidence to go ahead and realize my dreams.
I feel very grateful and blessed to have been welcomed so warmly into the Princeton family by all of you. I look forward to each occasion to come back home and see old friends and haunts, and add some new faces to my list of Princeton friends and acquaintances. The minis have provided an especially easy place for me to get to know many of you in a smaller group setting, while enjoying some fascinating new venues. I am an enthusiastic proponent of minis!!! Besides, they provide another place to wear the orange and black and tiger stripes in my wardrobe!!
I would find it especially helpful to have talks at our minis or on campus reunions by some of our in house experts on aging - both our own and that of elderly dependent relatives; the merits and disadvantages of different types of long term care insurance, advances in medical or mechanical devices to help the disabled, etc. Seems to be about that time of life! |
