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Transcript on deposit at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Library
Citation of this interview should be as follows:
“Interview C-0049, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
From 1981 to 1996, Anne Barnes sat in the North Carolina House of Representatives for Orange County. While there, she focused on issues of social justice, especially poverty, education, prison reform, civil rights, and women's rights. In this 1989 interview, she gives an overview of her childhood and early adulthood before explaining how those experiences motivated her to become involved in the political arena. Before running for election herself, she worked on a variety of campaigns, including Howard Lee's Chapel Hill mayoral bid, in which he became the first African American mayor in the United States elected by a predominantly white municipality. After exploring how her various campaign positions led to her eventual candidacy, she explains the reasons for her particular political foci and how she has seen the issues change over the past several decades. Much of the second half of the interview is devoted to the position of women in politics and the reasons Barnes believes women have struggled to find equality in that arena. After listing the sociological, psychological, economic, and political reasons for the gender imbalance, she proposes ways to level the playing field for a new generation of women.
From 1981 to 1996, Anne Barnes sat in the North Carolina House of Representatives for Orange County. While there, she focused on issues of social justice, especially poverty, education, prison reform, civil rights and women's rights. In this 1989 interview, she explains her motivations to become involved in the political arena and discusses some of the political campaigns she has been associated with, including her own.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[This is an interview with Anne C. Barnes for the Notable North Carolinians project, done by Kathryn Nasstrom, January 30, 1989.] Tell me about your family background, where you were born, where you grew up, and a bit about your family.
I was born in Gaston County, North Carolina, and there were three girls
in the family. My father worked for Duke Power. We were in a rather
remote area because it was near a Duke Power plant. So we had a larger
"family" in those who lived there in that village. It was referred to as
the Village, and it was right on the Catawba River. We had a lot of
advantages growing up out in the country. There were farms around us,
but we didn't, of course, farm and felt a little bit deprived because we
didn't farm. The elementary school where my sisters and I went to school
had time out for cotton picking. We had no cotton to pick so some of our
friends on the nearby farms would let us come over and pick. I soon
found out that was not so much fun
What years did you spend growing up in Gaston County?
I was born in 1932 and was in the area there until I married. I was
twenty years old when I married, so approximately twenty years there.
When we got high school age, the kids in the village went into Mount
Holly, which is the closest town. The
How far is it from Riverbend to Mount Holly?
It's about seven or eight miles.
A school bus came by?
A school bus came by and took us. Of course, now, the elementary school also has to rids the school bus to get there. There was no school within walking distance so we went to a little elementary school out in the country. It was called Lucia School, and it's closed up now. Sometimes when I go back to that area—my parents are buried there in the graveyard of a little church out in the country—when I visit back up there. . . . I still have a little family that "lives" in that area. I go up and see that Lucia School is all boarded up, and it may not even be there right now because I haven't been out that way in several years. But we were about three or four miles from the elementary school and then about seven or eight miles from the high school, where we went to high school.
Is there anything in your family background that sparked an interest in politics?
My father. My father was very, though he was not particularly involved in
organized politics, he was very, very
What was your father's name?
George Craig. C-R-A-I-G.
I think mentioning Roosevelt, your experience I think is very typical for people who were young at that age. He was president for so long that there wasn't anybody else to be president. Let's move on then and get some information about your educational background, particularly where you went to college.
I did not go to college. I've had some college courses, but I hold no
degrees, no college degrees. When I finished high school, there was a
little shortage of money in my family. I had a sister who was in college
at the time, and so I opted to go into the business that I was in with
my other sister
Then when you finished high school and thought about what you were going to do with your future, did you have a sense of what life would hold for you at that point?
I'm not sure I did. I think that at that time perhaps people that age
were a little less sophisticated than now, having lived something of a
sheltered life in comparison with today. I don't think that I had
really, at that time, grasped a great deal of what the potential was or
the possibilities. I had been a very good student in high school. I had
developed a number of interests. At that particular time I was really
quite carried
Yes, I suppose your background opened you to, there is no way you're going to avoid those jokes. You graduated from high school, and then I would gather, about two years later, you married. Is that right?
Something like that, yes. In the interim there, as I was teaching dancing with my sister—we had two studios at the time—I also worked for Duke Power at the plant because I continued to live at home. I worked in the laboratory there, which was a new interest for me. I had a little high school chemistry. That was very interesting work, and I enjoyed doing that. So I was doing two jobs at the same time and enjoying it. Then when I got married, I moved away from the area.
If you would then, briefly recount, between the time you left Gaston
County and then you settled here in Chapel Hill,
The really wonderful person that I married was in the service. At the
time it was during the Korean War, and we moved first to Jacksonville,
North Carolina, to that area. He was, my husband Billy, was in the
Marine Corps and stationed at Camp Lejeune so we lived there and in that
area around Jacksonville and Wilmington. After our first child was born
in 1953, in September of 1953, I moved back home for a while to where my
parents still lived and had then retired, while my husband was doing
some touring with the Marine Corps because I had a brand new baby and
needed to be at home at that time. So after he was discharged from the
Marine Corps, we moved to Winston Salem, which was his hometown, while
he tried to determine what route his life should take, or his career
should take. He had no career. It was interrupted with the time in the
service. He had been a student at Chapel Hill at the time. He did a
variety of things during that time, and I encouraged him to go back to
school, and so he did. We moved back to Chapel Hill, actually to Durham,
where I worked in a radio station as a copy writer, and he went back to
classes in Chapel Hill. A little later, we moved back. We finally got
some housing. Housing was such a monstrous problem at that time. There
was nowhere that people could live who were students, or anybody else.
At that time there was a tremendous crunch in Chapel Hill in regards to
housing. So when we finally got a place to live in Chapel Hill we moved
here until he could finish. He was a student in the RTVMP Department and
It sure is.
At that time it was a small town with a corner butcher store and not
unlike a small Southern town, and I rather enjoyed being there. I could
go into the city when I wanted to but didn't have to go when I didn't
want to. My husband didn't have that prerogative so he tired of the rat
race very early, and we began to look for ways to get back to the South.
His company recognizing, I believe, his talent and versatility, didn't
want to lose him, so they had a job to open in Atlanta, Bureau Chief for
McGraw Hill, and though he had not had the usual tenure with the company
to have a job like that, they took a chance with him and sent him down
for that job. So we lived in Atlanta for about
that time, particularly, and at this time to a large degree as well.
The North Carolina Fund was trying to find ways to break the cycle of
poverty and later on the Great Society programs. President Lyndon
Johnson dealt with some of those main issues. How do you help people out
of poverty so that it isn't passed along generation after generation. It
brought both Billy and me in contact with a lot of realities that our
lives had not brought us in touch with before. Though certainly, growing
up in a rural North Carolina area, I had learned a lot about segregation
and had many things
Could bake?
Bake. There was a bake sale going on that was to raise money for the Party, and I think that a very noble thing to do. It wasn't quite what I had in mind but, as I recall, I did manage to bake something for the bake sale, and so that was my entree into that particular campaign at the time.
What year was that?
I'm trying to remember. It seems to me, well, it was here in Chapel Hill
so it was some time between '64 and '68. So
We had moved around so much during the time that Billy was in the service and after that time before we landed back in the Chapel Hill area, that we had hardly had time to put down any political roots. It takes a little time to find your way around organized politics, and it seemed just as we would begin, we would be up and on our way to a new place. So when we got here, we felt we'd have enough longevity here, and that has proven to be true, that we could really get involved. I was a great fan of Hubert Humphrey, and he's been an idol of mine. So I wanted to be as involved with his various campaigns as possible.
Then in 1969, a gentleman named Howard Lee ran for mayor of Chapel Hill.
We had had the opportunity to know the Lee's through our church. We
belonged to the same church, the Binkley Baptist Church, and I had
taught Howard and Lillian's children in Sunday school and got to know
them, a very lovely family. But no black person had run for a top
position around here, and Howard had a desire to run for mayor. He had
become very involved with the town. So had I, through zoning and
planning issues and school integration issues. So he began to talk to
many of us about the possibility of helping him to run for mayor, and I
thought that was a great idea. So I became the, he has referred to me as
the manager of his campaign. It was a campaign that had several, it was
a shared responsibility, but I
My children were still rather small at the time. I did not feel that I
could give the time then to run for office myself, but I was always
pleased to help other good people get elected. So I spent much of my
time juggling my home responsibilities and my responsibilities to my
children with a lot of hours every day in politics. That was a thing
that women did a lot of because at that time, I suspect, there were more
women at home with the time to do that. It's become increasingly
difficult to find people who can put that kind of time into a campaign.
Volunteers are
Where did that take place?
The mini-convention was in Kansas City, [Missouri] and I went. I bring
this up because it was my first experience with the National Democratic
Party Convention. It gave me an opportunity to learn a great deal. One
of the highlights is that I did have the chance to meet Hubert Humphrey
personally and have a few words with him because he had been my idol for
such a long time and still is, I guess. That makes that Convention stand
out in my mind, as well as the superb job I thought that Terry Sanford
did presiding over that Convention. So that was another shot in the arm
to continue my involvement with politics. Almost every year, there was
some candidate I thought was very worthy of running. So I was always
involved in campaigns. In 1978, I decided to run for office myself. My
children were almost grown,
What years were you elected from your own campaign?
I was elected in the fall of 1982 for the '83-'84 term and took office in the term of January of '83.
So then you've been in the House for six, seven years?
Seven years. I'm into my eighth year in the House.
What would you say, at this point, has been the highlight of you career? What's been the most important to you?
Well, most people take something of an agenda with them when they move
into public office. I had a particular sensitivity at the time about the
partnership between local government and state government because I had
served on the County Board of Commissioners and had an opportunity to
learn already about the interaction between many services, particularly
social services and the whole array of human services. How counties are
impacted by certain decisions that the state makes. So this was one of
the things that I wanted to work on when I went there. I had also been
involved in the ERA movement and was still hoping very much that North
Carolina could become one of the states to ratify, and I guess will
always be disappointed that that didn't happen, as I suspect most of the
women you've talked to are feeling at this point. It was a long, hard
campaign for ERA and I had the opportunity to meet a lot of
The ERA movement made me able to articulate and clearly define, in my own
mind, some of the very real discrimination that was occurring, and the
injustices, inequality, that women in our society have experienced. I
had experienced some of this in my personal life, but had not clearly
understood what was happening. My involvement with the ERA movement and
getting more and more familiar with the laws, pointed out to me many
areas that could be corrected even without the ERA movement, even
without ratification of ERA, by changing the laws. So I took on myself,
along with other women and some men in the legislature, to set about and
change some of these
What would you say those gains are? And then your comment that we're not in a position to move forward, why do you think that is?
Well, the gains that we have made are that we've changed the law having
to do with distribution of property at a divorce, with the passage of
the Equitable Distribution Law. We changed the laws in regard to tenancy
by the entirity—land ownership laws. We've changed the inheritance laws.
We've changed some tax laws. Made little bitty gains in insurance, but
not enough. Those kinds of things that were simply laws that were
written to favor men and had been on the books for a long time. We've
made some progress in those. We've also been able to establish and
maintain a State Abortion Fund so that indigent women might exercise
their right for a choice. At this point, I think the whole country,
during the last eight years and perhaps in the foreseeable future, or at
least the next four, has done a pendulum swing to the far right. I think
probably through
If we can hold on to the things that we have and not have those laws
tampered with and changed back, then we will have, at least, stood our
ground on them. But that's very difficult to do when the makeup of the
policy makers is more and more conservative. So that's the place that we
find ourselves now, trying to hold on to the gains that we have made
until things swing back a little bit to the moderate, toward the
moderate place, and give us a chance to move forward on correcting some
more of these laws that are holding women back and causing women and
their children to be the largest group of people who live in poverty.
There is still economic injustice going on. There are not the same kinds
of educational opportunities, so there is still a lot of work to do.
Since that time I've also, because sometimes you can't stick exactly
with your own agenda, and you assume the agenda according to the
assignments that you receive. So some of the assignments that I received
came by way of my predecessor's work. Trish Hunt was very involved with
juvenile justice issues, and I assumed some appointments that had been
hers. I was appointed to some vacancies on committees that she had
served on. So I have done quite a lot in the years that I have been
there in regards to the
Yes, we'll take a break here.
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
So my agenda for the past three or four years has been dominated by the work that I've been asked to do, which I had no idea that I would be asked to do. In regards to prison overcrowding and the lawsuits that the state is experiencing in regards to the conditions in our prisons and alternatives to incarceration, the whole area there of how will we manage offenders, how can we manage offenders better, what works, what doesn't, what the price of punishment is. So, with the Corrections Committee Chairmanship and then shortly thereafter, adding to that a Co-Chairmanship of a joint Senate/House Committee called the Special Committee on Prisons that was created as a select committee by Lieutenant Governor Jordan and Speaker Ramsey in December of '85. It is still operating to deal specifically with the conditions in our prisons and the problems of overcrowding to try to stay ahead of the lawsuits as best we can to keep the federal courts from taking over our system as they have in so many states. The bulk of my time and energy over the past several years has been with that set of issues. That is not something I chose, but it is something I was asked to do, and something that very much needs attention and must be done. That gives you an indication of the way our agenda is set forth, and we don't always have complete control over it. But I've become very, very interested in the issue. The more time and energy you invest in it, the more you want to see it through to some kind of successful conclusion. That's what I've been doing with a lot of my time.
Also, another issue that I've had an opportunity to work in, which has been gratifying, particularly coming from this area, is the education issue. I've served on the Educational Appropriations Committee for about six years, and though I was not appointed to that Committee by the new Speaker, I am on the Education Committee. There's an Educational Appropriations Committee and an Education Committee, so I'll still have an opportunity to be involved with education issues. That's important to the constituents that I represent and important to me, so that's another of the items on my agenda.
If you could spend all your time working on issues that are personally important to you, what would those issues be?
Well, as I said, it's important to me to finish what I start. So I would
continue with the issues that I've mentioned to try to bring them to
some kind of conclusion, particularly the prison population problem. I
do spend almost full time being a legislator. I'm not working at another
job right now, and so I can give more time to it than some can, and I
choose to do that. I'm spending most of my time working on issues as it
is. If I were not doing the prison things right now, if we had moved
along far enough that I felt I could slip out of that issue, I would
like to spend more time getting back to the issues of poverty. I told
you my early concerns about that, growing out of those years, so many
years ago, when my husband was working with the North Carolina Fund, the
Great Society years. I think we've moved so far away from the Great
Society, so far from the ideal
I'm thinking, too, of some of the things I saw listed on your resume, more in the category of civic activities and an involvement with North Carolina Equity and then the Women's Forum of North Carolina. So it seems in some ways that your civic activities have been, in some ways, addressing what you were just talking about here as well as highlighting women's concerns.
That's correct. I guess there's an overlap, and when you do a resume, you
can't quite divide political from civic from community or whatever. So
you do the best that you can with it. To me, it's all a part of the
whole. My emphasis in my civic life, non-political life or whatever,
overlap and correspond with the things that I do in politics as well.
Maybe I'm in a rut. I should try to
What, then, do you see these other kinds of organizations, what role do you think they play in the life of North Carolina?
Which organizations? The Forum and Equity?
Right, I'm thinking of all the things that were listed under civic activities on your resume, even though, as you acknowledge, there's a great deal of overlap.
Well, there are some things that government does not do best. There are
some things that the private sector does best. There's no way to take
the politics out of politics, because I've tried. It doesn't work. It's
there. It's a party system. It's built into our system. Therefore,
changing people [through elections] causes changes in direction. Things
the Governor does, things the legislature does, are always subject to
the political winds. Therefore, you find yourself in the position of
having to, as I said earlier, defend the gains that you've gotten
because the winds have changed. Organizations outside of government
aren't subject to those winds. They can keep an ideal alive through the
tough times. So my involvement with North Carolina Equity Incorporated
and the Women's Forum of North Carolina, the Women's Political Caucus,
these are organizations that can keep certain ideals alive while the
storms are being weathered politically, and that's important. Where I
may not be able to do much more on the women's issues right now than
just try to hold ground, other organizations can move ahead with
providing additional research, keeping ideas alive, continuing
educational programs, seminars, making contacts. Those things
I imagine that more people are familiar with, in North Carolina, with the Political Caucus than with the Women's Forum and North Carolina Equity. Would you take a minute to describe what those two organizations are and what they do?
North Carolina Equity Incorporated is a foundation funded for women's
issues. I serve on the board of the organization as does Jane Patterson,
whom you have already interviewed, and Betty McCain, whom I think you
have already interviewed. Wilma Woodard, former Senator Wilma Woodard,
is the Chair of that group. This organization was set up for the purpose
of concentrating on the inequities that women in North Carolina are
subjected to, define those inequities and do necessary research,
educational programs in regard to certain injustices, and to try to find
ways and promote ways to improve the economic environment or climate for
women in North Carolina. It's two years old now, I think, and it's had
some growing pains, as most organizations do when they're trying to find
themselves, but it is well on the way now. I'm feeling very positive
about it because we have been able to define some very specific things
that need to be addressed and are now fully staffed—almost fully
The Women's Forum, I was not involved in it's beginning, so I can't tell you as much about its beginnings, but I have been a member of the Forum for several years. It's main benefit to me has been to give me an opportunity to know other women across the state who come together for meetings to discuss issues of interest and to share with each other. So it's been, for me personally, more of a network of contacts and people that I wouldn't have had the opportunity to know otherwise. It tries to seek out women that have an involvement, who have some reasons for being called, perhaps, outstanding in the areas in which they operate. And that's a wonderful kind of group of people to be a part of. They're women, some of us, who have done most of our work in politics. Others who have done a great deal of work in the business world, in the world of education. So it's given me a chance to, it's just a great group of people who have a lot of different experiences to share. For me, the Forum has been an opportunity to know other women who have been extremely involved in different areas and to come together with them and look at various issues and try to share our experience in our particular area of involvement.
It sounds, then, somewhat as though it's a network of women from a variety of area of work who share experiences and trade information. Are there any activities that the Women's Forum takes on?
We always have topics for our meetings, timely topics, and bring in some experts to talk about those, and there are some pretty lively discussions, and that's of an educational nature. We also are involved in finding outstanding women and giving awards to outstanding women in recognition of their contributions to North Carolina. That's an annual event, and the Women's Forum does take positions on certain issues that seem appropriate to them. It's a bipartisan group, and so it's not a Democrat or a Republican position, but positions on things that impact all women. So, from time to time, when there are issues of an outstanding nature where a consensus is possible, or near consensus at least, the Forum does take a position on some of those issues on behalf of women and expresses that to the public.
What would you say would be some of the women's issues that there have been a consensus on?
When the Forum first started, and I don't know that it's still true, but
I think it is. . . . There's someone else you'd have to ask who is an
officer and looks at the constitution and by-laws more carefully than I
do. A requirement of being in the Forum, and people are voted in, or not
voted in, the Forum. . . . Everybody who's invited to join by another
member must go through a process of getting the entire Forum's approval
to be a member. So in that way, I guess it's a little bit an exclusive
organization but for some very particular reasons. In the beginning, and
certainly when I became a member, the person was required to support the
ERA to be a member. I don't know if there is any laxity in that now
since ERA is not quite as hot
I actually recall that because that was my first semester here at Chapel Hill. So that was in the fall of 1986, at least that's when the trustees made the comment, so I would imagine you would have responded soon after that.
It was soon after that. We happened to have a meeting scheduled quite soon after those comments came forward so a letter did go—and that was by action of the Forum—a letter did go to express our distress with that kind of attitude, that kind of thinking. That's one thing I can remember we did have a consensus on. The others are just not coming to me right now.
Let me ask you this. In the last question, I said that more people were
probably aware of the North Carolina Women's
I'm not as closely involved with the Caucus, particularly in recent years
when I've had so many other things. I hope that the Caucus will be
regenerated. It was at its height, I believe, during the ERA movement.
Since that time, I suspect, and you'd have to ask someone more directly
involved than I, I suspect the Caucus doesn't enjoy quite as large a
membership. I do attend some Caucus meetings, particularly when we were
invited. The Caucus makes a real effort to keep in touch with the
people, the women that are elected, the women who run. I have been
fortunate to have the endorsement of the Caucus all of the times that
I've run for the General Assembly. Then they invite us to a dinner,
whether we've won or lost, to recognize those persons that they endorse,
and that's always a very nice event. I feel very honored because of it.
But the numbers, I believe, are not as great now. There, perhaps, has
not been the one focus, the cause, which does tend to generate interest
when you have one particular cause, and the ERA did that for women all
over. The state was brought into some focus, and without that, it's a
little harder sometimes to keep the enthusiasm going. But I'm very
hopeful the Women's Political Caucus will get new energy because I think
it serves a role, it plays a role, it serves a purpose that no other
organization does because it gets directly involved, as an organization,
in campaigns. Now, Equity does not do that, and Women's Forum does not
do that. They're a different
We still have not nearly the numbers of women elected to positions in
this state as we should have. That takes a lot of encouragement for
women. Politics is tough. Campaigning is tough. It's expensive. People
need to have some kind of organization behind them that will help with
the expenses of the campaign. The Caucus does that. Women need a support
group. When you go out in politics, it's a scary experience sometimes
when it's your first time out, or you haven't been around it enough to
know that it's tough. There's a need to stick together and feel that
kind of support organization behind you. Women need more encouragement
to run for office, need more support once we get there. It's not easy
running for office, and I think that women tend to be more susceptible
to wanting to please, wanting to be popular. It's a part of our culture,
at least for women my age. Maybe that's becoming less and less true, and
I don't know if that's good or bad, but it's important to care about
pleasing. All of that's important. But in politics you can't please
everybody, and you have to be ready to take unpopular positions without
it getting at you personally, without it being destructive to your own
inner ego. It takes a lot of ego to be in politics. It's hard to be
humble in politics because you're forced all the time to not be. You
have to appear to be strong. You have to appear, in order to
It makes me wonder as you say that because it's certainly a lot of the things you hear generally about what might make it hard for women to succeed in politics. From what you know about the political climate for women in other states, what would you say about North Carolina? Is it easier for women in North Carolina? Is it harder? Is there something about North Carolina that you'd care to add?
Well, I don't know the statistics about, I know that there are larger
numbers of women in some other General Assemblies. The state of New
Hampshire has the most women elected anywhere. I don't know for what
reasons that's true, but I just don't know enough from state to state
about that. I do know that there are other states, some of them in the
South, who have elected women statewide, to statewide office. That has
not yet happened in North Carolina. I think that makes us very far
behind. I don't know the reasons for it. I don't know the
You mentioned that, conceivably, part of the problem might be in the Party structure, and I've heard before how entrenched, especially in the Democratic Party, the leadership is. Yet just recently there was the shake-up over the Speakership. Was it in the House?
Yes.
The House. Does that seem to you as a positive change or a negative change for women, or is it hard to say?
In so far as women are concerned, I don't know how that would impact on that particular situation. Of course, the Speaker that was elected is not a woman, but is newer to that position, certainly, and I think that there has been some feeling that people stay too long, maybe too long in those kinds of positions. I believe that one outcome will be that we will put a limit on the number of terms that a Speaker of the House can serve in that position, and I think that is a positive move and will provide more regular opportunities for any woman who would like to run for Speaker to run, or a man either, just by shortening that to two terms. As you know, Speaker Ramsey served for four terms and was going for a fifth term. So if a limit is put on that, then it will automatically create opportunity for anyone who would want to run for it, and I think in that respect it would be a positive aspect. What was the first part of your question about what you first started with this before you did the Speaker thing? Oh, people that get entrenched.
Right. I'm glad you remembered. I didn't.
I think that perhaps the Democratic Party has not done enough to nurture
or foster women candidates. Sometimes when the powers that be in the
Party are looking around for candidates to run for certain high
positions, I'm not sure that the thought is coming in their minds that
there are many qualified women and that for the Party's ticket to be a
balanced one, that women and blacks need to be considered for the good
of the entire Party. To
We can just hope that the Democratic Party will learn its lesson from this.
I certainly hope so.
Offhand, I can't think of another particular question along these lines. Would you like to add anything else about your political career at this point?
Well, there have been so many interesting experiences of learning the ins
and outs of politics. I hope that women can get to a place that we can
accept the fact that we do not have to be an expert in everything in
order to take on a responsibility. Men tend to say, "Look at me. Sure I
can do it," and they've had absolutely no experience at it. Women tend
to think, "Well, I've got to get twenty-five Ph.D's in this before I can
take on this responsibility." And while I think that it's important to
continue to broaden our education and our knowledge and our experience,
it is not essential to have all of the experience before you take on a
role. You can learn it. I didn't know everything there was to know about
being County Commissioner before I ran, but I've learned. I didn't know
everything there was to know about being in the legislature. I learned
every day
I'd like to say just a word about my mother. I talked about my dad
earlier because he was the one that was really interested more in
politics and that was your specific question, but my mother found some
way to make three girls, three daughters, had no brothers, feel that we
could take on almost anything, that we were ten feet tall. And though
there are times when "tall" people need to be chopped back down to size,
confidence, having it instilled in us early, that I have no
Thank you very much.
END OF INTERVIEW