[TAPE 1, SIDE A]

PAMELA DEAN:

This is Pamela Dean. The date is 9 September 1986. I'm going to be talking with Mary Turner Lane, recently retired associate professor in the education department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I'm going to be talking to Dr. Lane in her home in Chapel Hill. If you would, just start off and give me your name, where you were born, names of your parents, your mother's maiden name, and we'll get the genealogy down.

MARY TURNER LANE:

All right. I am Mary Turner Willis Lane. I was born in New Bern, North Carolina. My parents were Mary Turner and Albert Willis. My name reflects one of the few things that Southern women did, consciously or unconsciously, to pass on their own maiden name. My mother's maiden name was Turner, so I was given her name, and yet was called by both names. After I married, I really dropped my maiden name, Willis, and was simply known as Mary Turner Lane. After I became a feminist, it was interesting to note that my mother had acted in a very feminist way, although she was totally unaware of it. I think this was a practice that was done in the South, as a way of maintaining names from the mother's family.

PAMELA DEAN:

It didn't have any feminist motivation?

MARY TURNER LANE:

No, oh, no. Only in retrospect do I see it as feminist.

PAMELA DEAN:

It was really a traditional concept?

MARY TURNER LANE:

It was a tradition. I had many friends who were given their mother's maiden names, and that's the way that part of the name stayed in the family.

PAMELA DEAN:

Were your parents from New Bern?

MARY TURNER LANE:

My parents had lived in New Bern probably five or six generations on both sides, so the family in many ways was very traditional, with roots that go back to the Revolutionary War, to the Civil War. I had a mother who was active in all of those organizations: the Daughters of the American Revolution, the United Daughters of the Confederacy, and all other organizations that were considered "good works," the church being a very prominent one. My father was essentially the same way, in terms of a broad community commitment. So I grew up with a great sense of participation in a community, and I grew up in a time when the Christian ethic was really not what you said but what you did: your good works were supposed to show that you were—quote—a Christian—unquote. There was no talk about being a Christian; it was just that you behaved in particular kinds of ways, toward the needy and the poor. And living in a small town, you knew those people on a one-to-one basis; you knew who was poor, who was ill, who needed a bag of coal or a bag of food, or something of that kind. So I've always felt lucky in that I had parents who were always involved with the cultural and the community aspects, the social needs of a town, in a way that could be a model for one to follow.

PAMELA DEAN:

Could you give me some further specifics? You say, bag of food, coal—were there official church organizations, or was this a very informal…

MARY TURNER LANE:

No, all church organizations in small towns in the South had, as their component, the women of the church, who fed families, and provided Christmas boxes, and did all kinds of things like that. All small towns had civic organizations, such as the Women's Club, and there were a number of men's organizations. So the towns were organized in many ways, so that groups of people could respond to needs. There were also people who came to your homes at that time, asking for food, asking for clothing, and it was not unusual, particularly toward the end of the Depression—the Depression came late in the South, or maybe we stayed in a Depression, and never knew when we were in one or out of one—but it was not unusual for men to come to our back door and ask for food, and ask for clothes. It was routine: my mother would see that they were fed, and would give them clothes. Charity was done in a very personal way, as well as in an institutionalized way.

PAMELA DEAN:

What did your father do? What was his occupation?

MARY TURNER LANE:

My father had served in the first World War, and then had been Clerk of Court in New Bern. His father was a funeral director, and my own father joined that business not too long after I was born. He had no college education; most of his friends at that time did not have a college education. He had a remarkable knowledge of Shakespeare, of many subjects, of many subjects that I never knew, somehow, as intimately as he did.

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My mother was a college graduate. Her family had sent her to Salem College, which at that time was a very fine boarding school for young women in North Carolina and in the South. She graduated from Salem in the class of 1914, with a major in music, which was also traditional for young women of that time. In the research that I've done on Salem College at the time that she was there, and even in the research I've done on Salem College when I was there, there was a strong feeling that education was appropriate for women, because—quote—when you've educated a woman, you've educated a home—unquote. So education for women was justified in the early part of this century. There was no emphasis on vocational education, except as you might become a music teacher or a teacher. There were, of course, places where you could be trained as a nurse, but if you look at the liberal arts colleges, then you could either become a teacher, or could be a musician, or teach music from those.

PAMELA DEAN:

Back to your father for a moment: did he go through high school?

MARY TURNER LANE:

Yes.

PAMELA DEAN:

What school was that? Was it a private school?

MARY TURNER LANE:

No. New Bern High School. He and Mother would both have attended that school. Interestingly enough, when I went to school, my brother and I went to the same school in New Bern, the same elementary school, and we had the same teachers that they had, so tradition was long in that little town. And these were all spinsters, all known by their first names. And there was never any question when we went to school as to who we were, and

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what was expected of us. Because we were Mary and Albert Willis's children, and we had to behave in particular ways. And this is something that we know we've moved away from completely, today, in terms of schooling in the same place, schooling with the same teachers, people in the community who knew exactly who we were and who helped set up standards for us. That's another story; I could go a long way on that one.

PAMELA DEAN:

Do you think that that sort of change is a loss?

MARY TURNER LANE:

Well, I think it's like all change: there are positive things about it, and there are very negative things about it. I've done a lot of research on how we acquire our values, and what some of the problems are with youngsters today, and in the past, we always saw a number of institutions as being responsible for helping individual children acquire beliefs and values. And we always said the family, the home, the school, the neighborhood, the community, the church, et cetera. Well, in that case, in that setting, it was certainly true that all of those institutions operated as tempering forces on us, and on all children, because neighbors would let you know exactly what was expected of you, as would Sunday school teachers, as would schoolteachers, as would all parts of the community. Today, children not only do not have these other influences, but in many cases, the influence of the home has been diminished too. So I think there's some values, perhaps, for the anonymity in which we grow up, but there are also some values about being known, and about having an identity, and about knowing some of those things for which that identity stands.

PAMELA DEAN:

So, for yourself, that was not a limiting…

MARY TURNER LANE:

Well, I'm sure I thought it was at the time. Oh, and that was one of the joys, I suppose, of going away to college. You were free, in some ways, of some of the restrictions of growing up in a small town. And so it's back to what I said: there are positive and negative things about it, but certainly, those are molding and shaping forces, that are very powerful influences on the socialization of children. Some good and some bad. But they do help you know who you are. Early on. They give you direction.

PAMELA DEAN:

They give you a sense of identity.

MARY TURNER LANE:

Yes.

PAMELA DEAN:

The only one that you could then rebel against.

MARY TURNER LANE:

That's right. And there is some notion that part of the confusion of children today is that they do not know what they stand for, or who they are, or what they believe. In the work that Louis Rotz has done on values, he describes this part of this characteristic of life today as really a very significant one. Even television does not help them come forth with a single sense of identity, because they may see twenty different lifestyles in a day's programming, whereas in their own home and with their own family, and with their own neighborhood, they were very sure of what one lifestyle was. But unless there's a lot of dialogue and discussion, then it is much harder, he says, to arrive at some sense of what I believe, and why I believe it, and why I want to act or behave in a particular way.

PAMELA DEAN:

You've got no mechanisms to help you select from an incredible variety of options, with no guidelines.

MARY TURNER LANE:

Yes, yes. I think that that's a very insightful comment on his part about what children face today, and about how television contributes more to confusion of who I am and what I am, than it may contribute to the enlightenment.

PAMELA DEAN:

Back to the biographical discussion: you mentioned that you have a brother.

MARY TURNER LANE:

Yes.

PAMELA DEAN:

Could you tell me something about your brother?

MARY TURNER LANE:

My brother was two years younger than I. For some strange biological reason, my four best friends all had brothers two years younger than we were. I don't quite know how that came about, but it did. As I've learned more about the socialization of boys and girls, I appreciate more what those four little boys went through in school, because they had to follow four girls who were bright, and made good grades, and tried to please, and did all of those things. So these four little boys came along, and were always told, "well, you're not as good a student as your sister was." And so they had a hard time.

PAMELA DEAN:

What was your brother's name?

MARY TURNER LANE:

Albert. Named for his father. We did this again; again, this was customary; he was Albert Thomas Willis, Jr. He graduated from high school in New Bern, then went on to the Citadel, and graduated from college there, as a second lieutenant. This was in World War II, and so headed straight into military service, and served in China and Burma.

PAMELA DEAN:

And what was his subsequent career?

MARY TURNER LANE:

He came back to New Bern, and went in business with my father, and then left that business and got a master's in political science, and taught in the high school in New Bern, with a particular focus on government and history. He's still living in New Bern. He and his wife are the last members of the family that are there.

PAMELA DEAN:

Let's go on and talk a little bit more about your high school experience. Do you remember what classes you liked, specifically, or teachers that you liked especially?

MARY TURNER LANE:

As I said earlier, girls were expected to do well in school. I'm not sure that boys were expected to do as well as girls, and that seems strange in retrospect, because, they were much more likely, it seems to me, to go away to college. So the focus in high school, for girls, was academically, that you would get good grades, but certainly, the social pressure was such that you really couldn't be too smart, intellectually or academically. So high school was seen much more in a boy-girl context. It was very important that you be socially acceptable, that you be invited to the dances, and if you grew up in the South, you grew up with lots of dances, and lots of parties, and things of that kind.

I did well in high school; I particularly liked English, always did well in that—history, French. Math was a problem, but it was for all of us who were female, it seems to me. But I always knew that I would be going away to college, and all of my friends, my girlfriends, went away to college—most of us, as I

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recall. And that was remarkable, because money was not that available. I've often thought that my father did a remarkable thing, to send me to Salem College, which was more expensive than any other school that we knew of at the time. I went away on money that had been set aside for me at the time I was born, plus a scholarship at Salem. As I recall, Salem cost $750.00 a year, and the scholarship provided $250.00 a year. So that was a significant contribution, and also, I recall that my father even borrowed money to see that I went away to college.

PAMELA DEAN:

He very seriously valued….

MARY TURNER LANE:

Yes. And I have often thought what a remarkable thing that was. Both parents valued education, and so I've often thought it remarkable that my brother and I were given such fine college educations as we'd had.

PAMELA DEAN:

Absolutely. What schools did your friends go to, do you recall?

MARY TURNER LANE:

I had two friends who went to Greensboro, to Woman's College—that's what it was known as at the time—two or three friends, maybe more than that. One went to Flora MacDonald, which was a Presbyterian college in Red Springs, North Carolina, which no longer exists. Her family was a staunch Presbyterian family, and her mother had gone to Flora MacDonald, so she went to Flora MacDonald.

I was told by my parents that I could go anywhere I wanted to, if I went to Salem the first year. And I had very positive feelings about Salem because I had gone with my mother to Salem on a number of occasions. My mother had been the alumnae

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president, and the president of Salem had often visited in our home. The alumnae secretary had visited in our home, and had asked me to room with her youngest sister, who was going to Salem. So I went, thinking that it must be a good place, and that I would go, and then if I wanted, to change to Duke—that was the other option that I was interested in.

Most of my friends went to schools in North Carolina. One went to Greensboro College; and then one went to Catholic Junior College in Washington, DC.

PAMELA DEAN:

What year did you graduate from high school?

MARY TURNER LANE:

I graduated from high school at age sixteen—we had all of eleven grades at that time—in 1935. And then graduated from Salem College in 1939.

PAMELA DEAN:

Were there any of your teachers in elementary school or high school that were of particular inspiration to you? Obviously, your mother was a model and an inspiration to you. How about other people in the community that you would look back and say… ?

MARY TURNER LANE:

I'm one of the few people alive that can name all—give you the names of my schoolteachers for the first six years. Although I have found…

PAMELA DEAN:

It must have made an impression.

MARY TURNER LANE:

I have found that most of us that are my age, and certainly all of us that grew up together in New Bern, can tell you exactly who they were. The teachers the first and second years were wonderful, loving human beings. I think of them more than I think of high school teachers perhaps. And yet, I had a

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splendid English teacher. It's strange, I don't remember their names as clearly as I remember the names of the others.

Mother had very good friends—one had been a college classmate of hers at Salem but who was also from New Bern—who was a very positive influence in my life. She was a vivacious, strong woman who began her own business in her own home, for a while sold children's clothes, then sold antiques. She was a survivor. I learned a lot from her. At the time I grew up, my mother's friends were known to us as Aunt Bess and Uncle Haywood. They were very much a part of a kind of extended family. Even though we had our own aunts and uncles and grandmothers and grandfathers. But these couples, I suppose, were the adults that I knew better than anybody else.

PAMELA DEAN:

Well, tell me about Salem.

MARY TURNER LANE:

I thought Salem was wonderful. I don't know how to describe it, except that it was so beautiful. Do you know Salem College?

PAMELA DEAN:

No, I haven't seen it.

MARY TURNER LANE:

It is an eighteenth-century village school. And the setting was just exquisite to me. The town of Winston- Salem was the first city that I had ever been in or been a part of and that was exciting to me. To be in a city, to be introduced to what we take for granted now, symphony concerts, theater, opera, the cultural attributes of Winston Salem were very exciting to me as well as the cultural aspects of Salem College. The speakers who came to campus that we got to know. The professors, both male and female, that we got to know in very warm and intimate ways

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were both dear friends and role models as I look back on that. The close friendship of girls was something that just made it a very happy experience for me. I liked everything about it.

Someone said at the end of his college that he wanted somebody to say to him, "don't go." I sort of felt the same way. But the learning was exciting too. I do think that there was something very positive about being in classrooms with all females, where you were never competing or never being concerned about asking too bright a question or probing for an answer on something. There was a good deal of intellectual freedom there because the classes were all female, or at least I thought there was. In retrospect, as we're trying to weigh the advantages of coeducational and non-coeducational schools, there has certainly been enough research to support the notion that females students behave differently when they're in all female classes than they do when they're in coeducational classes.

PAMELA DEAN:

And you saw at the time…

MARY TURNER LANE:

I felt that. I don't know that I compared it with what I had done or had not done in high school. But I did feel a true intellectual awakening in the pursuit of subject matter that I just don't believe I had experienced before. I'm not sure that I felt that the setting was that safe, because I was still concerned about grades. It was a new intellectual enquiry that I had not been caught up in before.

PAMELA DEAN:

Wonderful.

[TAPE 1, SIDE B]

MARY TURNER LANE:

You asked about Salem, what I thought about Salem, what I found at Salem. I found wonderful friendships. I found teachers that were exciting. Teachers that were kind. I found a lot of stretching and growing that I felt good about and seemed to thrive on.

PAMELA DEAN:

Tell me about some of the teachers. You said that they were both male and female teachers.

MARY TURNER LANE:

Yes. Our English teachers, as I recall, were all female. I hadn't realized that, but they were— Elizabeth Lily and Jesse Byrd, who were both unmarried at the time. Elizabeth Lily did marry later. They were fully committed to introducing us to the beauty of poetry and literature in a way that I had just never known. The French teacher was—I guess I knew less well—his classes were challenging. I felt less adequate there than I did in other classes simply because my oral use of French was very limited. That was true of most of us.

PAMELA DEAN:

You had had French in high school?

MARY TURNER LANE:

I had had two years of French in high school, and I then had two years of French in college, and was quite good at writing and reading it, but very bad, very poor at speaking it. But that was a problem with all of us.

PAMELA DEAN:

I just wondered, do you happen to know what your French teacher in high school, what sort of—was it a woman?

MARY TURNER LANE:

Yes.

PAMELA DEAN:

Do you know what sort of training she had had?

MARY TURNER LANE:

No. I think she had been trained at Woman's College in Greensboro, and had probably never heard a true French—anyone from France speak. And suddenly I was with a professor who had studied in France and was speaking gibberish as far as I could tell. We had a physical education teacher, who was female, who was a great human being that had favorites among us. She was a great tease. Taught us a lot about being "good sports."

PAMELA DEAN:

What sort of things did you do for physical education?

MARY TURNER LANE:

Oh, funny. We played field hockey. Raced up and down a field hockey court. Played basketball, tennis. There was horse-back riding. You would pay extra for that. I did not take that. But I was very active in basketball every year and in field hockey. There was swimming, tennis. I enjoyed all of that. Other teachers? I can't think—I have faces but I don't have names, really, to go with some of them.

PAMELA DEAN:

Were any of the women teachers married?

MARY TURNER LANE:

I don't think so. I don't think so. We had one couple who lived on campus in a faculty house, and she taught English. I had forgotten about her and he taught French. That was almost the only married teacher that we had. The sociology professor, with whom I took a course my senior year entitled "Marriage and the Family," was not married. We never mentioned anything in that course about the family except budget. That's about all that course was made up of.

PAMELA DEAN:

It was an economics course.

MARY TURNER LANE:

Economics and sociology. No human reproduction whatsoever.

PAMELA DEAN:

You weren't supposed to know about that.

MARY TURNER LANE:

No, and we didn't. We knew nothing about that.

PAMELA DEAN:

How about the male professors, were they married? I would suspect that they would be.

MARY TURNER LANE:

Yes, two remarkable men who taught Bible. This was a required—one course in Old Testament and one course in New Testament. One was taught by the president of the college and the other was taught by Professor Ancome. The two men were truly scholars. The study of the Bible was quite interesting to me. A wonderful difference from my Sunday School study. So to look at the Bible in terms of history and in terms of literature was a new experience and I enjoyed that. History professors were men, and they were very good.

Somehow one of the best things that happened at Salem in my own education was something that doesn't happen with a lot of people today. The courses fell in a way that they reinforced each other. In my sophomore year, for instance, I took a course in French literature, in English literature, in European history, and I was taking an art and a music course that all tied together, and that had never happened. So that you looked at what a people were doing, and what they thought about themselves and about society, and how they were expressing themselves in art and music and literature, and it made sense. And then in my junior year, I took American literature and American history, and the same sort of thing came about.

And I've always had that commitment in my own teaching as I've helped people become elementary school teachers, in the area

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of social studies in particular. That I think that you understand the history of the people if you study the people in all of those dimensions. Now, I never knew whether Salem planned it that way or whether it was the way I selected courses. But its a way of learning that doesn't happen to our students today, because they take isolated courses, none of which reinforce the other. It's an integrated, unified way of learning that in a sense gave me a perspective on learning that I have been able to utilize. So that was the academic context in which learning took place that I think made it a better learning experience than some others had been.

PAMELA DEAN:

Well, that does sound like you were very fortunate in that experience. How about the non-academic environment?

MARY TURNER LANE:

The non-academic was significant for me. I think I'm probably a joiner, in that I like to be involved in whatever is going on. So I wrote for the newspaper; I wrote for the annual. I was in sports on the teams. We had a wonderful old tradition at Salem, which all colleges had at that time, which was a May Day Festival in the spring. I was active in that, in the planning and the operation of that. In my senior year I was chairman of May Day. So I was involved in many aspects of it—life.

PAMELA DEAN:

What was the residence situation; did they have dormitories or rooming houses?

MARY TURNER LANE:

Well, we all lived on campus. There were a few day students, as they were called. Young women who lived in town who came to Salem. Lovely, young women who added a very nice

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dimension to our lives in that they took us home with them, and we met young men through them. We could go to their homes—if we double-dated, we had a home to go to with a friend, so they added a great deal to our pleasure. And we became very good friends. I'm still in touch with some of those day students who were very much a part of Salem.

PAMELA DEAN:

So they were very much integrated into the social life. In some cases they aren't.

MARY TURNER LANE:

In some cases they aren't. But I think they were at Salem. The dormitories were very comfortable. When you were a senior, you could move into something that was called a senior dormitory that was set up with suites for people, two rooms and a bath. Suites are very common today, but that was just a very special treat then. The campus was very small and easy too. The food was wonderful. I'm painting a very glossy picture of it.

PAMELA DEAN:

Yes. Before your senior year, how was the physical set-up of the dormitories? How many people to a room?

MARY TURNER LANE:

Oh, they were small as you compare them with dormitories here at Carolina. Maybe there would not be more than 150 people in a dormitory. Well, there were about 100 people in the freshman class, and 53 students graduated as seniors. So for the people who were there for four years, maybe there wouldn't be more than 350 people in the college.

PAMELA DEAN:

How were the rooms set up—two people to a room?

MARY TURNER LANE:

Two people to a room.

PAMELA DEAN:

Bathrooms down the hall.

MARY TURNER LANE:

Yes, you had a lavatory in your room, but your showers and all other facilities were down the hall. One dining room. All of us could be seated at one time.

PAMELA DEAN:

For the whole college?

MARY TURNER LANE:

For the whole college. You were seated at tables of either ten or twelve. Moravian blessing was said at lunch and at dinner. Members of the faculty would eat at a faculty table. A senior would be seated at each table to be in charge, to serve the plates. Everything was served by them. The food was on the table and then the seniors served the plates and passed those.

PAMELA DEAN:

There was nobody who waited on tables or that kind of arrangement?

MARY TURNER LANE:

No, I think that all of the maintenance and kitchen staff and the dining room staff were all hired help. Students did not work in the dining room. The way that students could earn money, I believe, was in an office or at the desk in dormitories, because there was no coming and going in dormitories from people on the outside. Somebody was always on the telephone desk and students were paid so much per hour that would be applied to their tuition.

PAMELA DEAN:

Let me go back for a moment to the staff; I'm just curious: was most of the staff black?

MARY TURNER LANE:

Yes.

PAMELA DEAN:

How about the dormitories, did you have to keep your rooms clean yourself or was there someone who did that?

MARY TURNER LANE:

No, they were cleaned weekly. And the staff for that was black.

PAMELA DEAN:

Were these people that you got to know at all or were they…?

MARY TURNER LANE:

Yes. You had favorites and they had favorites. Yes, and they had been there for years.

PAMELA DEAN:

I was just this afternoon looking through Educate A Woman, about Greensboro, and there were photographs in there of some of the black staff who had been there for years. It indicated that they had a very proprietary attitude toward the student. These were their, sort of their students.

MARY TURNER LANE:

Yes, I think that that would be true.

PAMELA DEAN:

I don't think that there is ever that sort of feeling these days. I mean there is the sort of janitorial staff, and so seldom do you even notice them, really.

MARY TURNER LANE:

That's an interesting question on your part, because I think we thought of these people as very much a part of Salem. And I think they saw themselves as very much a part of Salem. Now that may be a white Southern women speaking, and that might not have been the case at all.

PAMELA DEAN:

I'd really like to find someone who worked at one of the smaller colleges. It might be different here, I'm not sure, but a number of years ago my master's thesis was on the relationship between the summer people and the natives who worked for them, on the coast of Maine, on the big summer estates. I interviewed people on both sides of it, and it was very interesting to try and see both sides of the situation.

MARY TURNER LANE:

Well, in the pattern of the times, we knew all the women only my their first names. And I think that we had a good

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relationship. Maybe the time was such that if they even—if they had felt different, and I'm sure they did, there would have been no way for them to express those feelings.

PAMELA DEAN:

You knew them only in the context of the university, and didn't know if they had families.

MARY TURNER LANE:

No, only as we might talk about it, and I don't remember those details. But I'm sure if I went back through my pictures taken at Salem, I'm sure that I would have the same thing that you're speaking of. That there would be pictures where we had taken of them.

PAMELA DEAN:

Let's see, a senior would set at each table. Back to the dining…

MARY TURNER LANE:

Yes, a senior who served, and who really didn't guide the discussion at the table, but who was sort of in charge. It was as if there was always a certain level of decorum that had to be maintained.

And of course, we had a Dean of Women who was responsible for your social well-being, so to speak, who would check on you if you did not attend chapel. We had chapel, I think it was five mornings a week, and maybe it was cut back. But it was chapel—I think we called it chapel—but it was not just a religious service. It was not held in the chapel. It was held in an auditorium. I think there's another word for it, and suddenly I can't think of what it is. We went to chapel at nine o'clock, and we marched in. The seniors marched in in their caps and gowns all senior year, which was a very nice tradition. And they marched in, and we had taken our seats. I'm sure they marched in

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singing a hymn. And the chapel was used for announcements and sometimes—I don't really remember any sermons or preachings of any kind. But we had to have done something in chapel. You can see what a wonderful impression it made on us. But you had to go.

PAMELA DEAN:

You did this every morning before you began the day.

MARY TURNER LANE:

Yes, you could go to breakfast, and then it seems to me that chapel was either at 8:30 or 9:00. It didn't last very long but classes were scheduled around it, you see. And the Dean of Women had to check on whether or not you were skipping chapel and occasionally would check on how your room was kept, important things like that. And she would have to work with those students who came in late, because we were on a very strict regimen of checking in and checking out for dates, or just for going into town for a movie. You always had to sign in and sign out.

PAMELA DEAN:

You had to say where you were going, with whom you were going?

MARY TURNER LANE:

Yes. So the Dean of Women was the one that sort of supervised what was sort of your social life and personal concerns that you might have, or personal needs. She was a single woman, Miss Grace Lawrence, who was thought of very warmly. She was kind and there were—I guess there were always ways to get around what one is expected to do. But anyway…

PAMELA DEAN:

Did you?

MARY TURNER LANE:

Some. I think I really was a very good girl, a very good child. Sometimes I've regretted being so good. I think I was very good.

PAMELA DEAN:

No major pranks.

MARY TURNER LANE:

No major pranks, no, no.

PAMELA DEAN:

No breaking the rules.

MARY TURNER LANE:

No, no. I think the worst thing we ever did was to bring some new drink called Apple Ale—I don't even know what it was. In our senior year, we brought that in in a hat box. Well, today nobody even has a hat box. But that's about the worst thing we did.

PAMELA DEAN:

Sneak it in in your briefcase.

MARY TURNER LANE:

That's right. Today it would be a briefcase. I don't even think it was as strong as beer. I don't know what it was. That's just one of our jokes that we talk about when we get together.

PAMELA DEAN:

How about parties in your room or that sort of thing…

MARY TURNER LANE:

Yes, we had that. That involved food and keeping lights on later than you were supposed to. The traditional things that you might start off talking about, an assignment and the teacher, then your social life, then your love life or lack of it. All of those things that young women have talked about forever, I suppose. But fun to us.

I'm sure every generation looks back on its own youth and senses a kind of innocence. But I do believe that that certainly characterized life before World War II. There was an innocence as far as many things were concerned. And we were all girls who had gone to summer camps and could have that kind of fun—the group, the buddy, the good friend. That was fun.

PAMELA DEAN:

Were there girls that were really outsiders that didn't fit into the groups? Were there many of those?

MARY TURNER LANE:

Yes. You wouldn't have that many young women together without having a number of groups within a group. The class was still big enough so that—the original groupings occurred in terms of roommates, pairs. And then people who were paired next door to each other. A lot of the groupings came about informally in that way. Some of them came about in terms of the region of the state from which they had come, the group that had come from Tennessee. Not a lot of choosing, originally, because most students were put with roommates that they did not know. Most roommate pairs worked out rather successfully. So on a hall where you might have sixty girls or fifty girls, you would have a number of groups that would evolve. Then, by the time you were seniors, you were paired off sort of four to a group and then four people across the hall, so that would be another natural setting.

PAMELA DEAN:

By that time, did you chose your roommates?

MARY TURNER LANE:

Yes. You were choosing your roommates from then on. My roommate was chosen for me, and she and I are still good friends, still see each other, visit each other two or three times a year, which I think is rather remarkable. So that grouping worked, that selection worked well.

PAMELA DEAN:

Would you say that the student body was generally very homogeneous in social background, general background, and experience?

MARY TURNER LANE:

Yes. In terms of those who were outside the group, which was your question early on, there were one or two girls who simply had—one dropped out her freshman year and another dropped out her sophomore year. Those were students who had either intense personal problems, or they were so different in their personality that they just did not make the adjustment. There were others that—you always have pairs and you always have people who—I don't know how to answer that question that well.

PAMELA DEAN:

Were there general gradations, the socialites, the grinds?

MARY TURNER LANE:

To a degree. I don't think it was as great as I hear students talk about it today. I've heard so many people classified in those categories, but I don't think I was that conscious of it. Oh, you always have the two or three girls who would date all the time. They were the most beautiful; they were the most popular. I was not one of those.

[TAPE 2, SIDE A]

PAMELA DEAN:

So, generally, what you seem to have been saying is that either you don't remember those sorts of people, or those you do, didn't stay long.

MARY TURNER LANE:

Yes, and don't think that I'm describing that accurately, but I don't really know how to go back and describe it. You then asked something about did we fall into these categories of the grinds and the beautiful or the popular. That's kind of hard to answer. I guess because that certainly by our senior year, we had this wonderful arrangement of four people living in a suite. So you never had any sense that anybody was left out because there were always four people who had come together for some reason or other. They might all be music majors, or they might all be home ec majors. That might be some way that they had come together. I don't really know how we paired off at the end or by our senior year. But I think because we did have this sort of dormitory grouping, then there was some sense that everybody was in a group of some kind. One might be a more studious group, and one might be the party group or the more popular group. Maybe that's a way to think of it.

PAMELA DEAN:

But for you, at least, it was a very pleasant experience all the way through.

MARY TURNER LANE:

Yes. I'm describing it that way without really talking about those times when I know that I was lonely and afraid and in pain and experiencing all of those times that we experience when we're first separated from home and when we're trying to find our way. This was also a time, as I'm afraid it

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still is today, that women still had to be validated by the male. And that is simply a rite of passage. So no matter how happy or how good I felt about classes and about friends at the college, it still was very important that you have a date on a weekend. That you come to Carolina at least in the fall and the spring for games or for dances or something of this kind. That was just essential.

PAMELA DEAN:

And who did you date, people, boys in town?

MARY TURNER LANE:

By my senior year I had gotten to know a number of young men in town. I dated a number of young men in town. My roommate at that time was dating a man in town and became engaged her senior year. So somehow we had shifted from the boys at Carolina—remember Wake Forest wasn't there then. Davidson was there. We mostly dated boys at Carolina, or they would come to Salem.

PAMELA DEAN:

Would these be boys you had known from high school?

MARY TURNER LANE:

Yes. Yes.

PAMELA DEAN:

Brothers of your college friends?

MARY TURNER LANE:

Or they might be friends of friends. The blind date worked then as it has always worked, I suppose. So they were mostly boys that we knew in some context. So, yes, Salem was happy but I was still struggling to be or to become or to know that I was somebody. And I felt that I had a sense of identity there. I think that that's the beauty of a small college. You can find something in which you can be successful. In fact, you can find lots of things in which you can be successful. And

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maybe that was why I didn't want to leave it. The outside world might not offer as much.

PAMELA DEAN:

Different challenges. But you did.

MARY TURNER LANE:

Yes. They said that after four years you have to leave it. You had to graduate, and you had to major in something. As I look back on it, most of my friends did exactly what I did and majored in elementary education. A number of my friends were in music, and so they either graduated in voice or graduated in piano. Salem had a strong music program, and they went on to choral work or concert work. Several people majored in home economics. That was a strong major at Salem. Some of them went into work in that field. I can't remember exactly what they did. But the rest of us majored—well, when I say major, Salem didn't have a major in education. You majored in a discipline. I majored in English and then took the courses necessary for a primary teacher's certificate.

In your senior year, you took those courses as well as did practice teaching in local classrooms. That was a very good year. I enjoyed that, and I liked to work with children. I had excellent teachers. I was successful in that. So I felt good about being a teacher. I was going to be a teacher as all of my friends were until we married. That was all you were going to do. You could work until you married. And then after you married it was full-time wife. So a friend and I both got jobs in Fayetteville, North Carolina, where she was to be the music teacher, and I was to teach the second grade.

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So she and I went to Fayetteville, and we got a room in a lovely, private home. Many teachers did that at that time. We were served our breakfast and dinner. There were two other teachers who lived there. We had no car. Neither one of us owned a car. Of course, nobody did. The teachers that lived at the home got us to school. We worked it out some way. So I became a teacher.

PAMELA DEAN:

And how did you like teaching second grade?

MARY TURNER LANE:

I liked it. I had a wonderful old teacher across the hall who told me everything that Salem had not told me. I liked it.

PAMELA DEAN:

Practice as opposed to theory.

MARY TURNER LANE:

I liked it. I thought it was wonderful. The children were responsive. So the teaching part was fine. I earned, I think, $99.00 a month for the first nine months. That's the salary we got. On that salary we paid our room and board, which I think was $30.00 a month. I bought a $1,000 insurance policy and a fur coat in the first year. I don't think I've ever had so much money. And my darling father sent me $10.00 occasionally as just extra. So we lived well. We did well—when I say we, I'm speaking of my friend, Edie McClain Barton. And we had a wonderful social life because Fort Bragg was there. Young men were just beginning to be drafted, and everybody we had known in college began showing up in Fayetteville. So we really did have a very good time. We were successful teachers and our social life was very satisfactory. I taught there for two years. Then my father had gone with the

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National Guard. He was commander of the 113th Field Artillery. The Guard had been called out and was to be stationed in Columbia, South Carolina. So he and mother had gone there. After a year or two, she went back to New Bern, and I joined her in New Bern for a year. Taught school there, also.

PAMELA DEAN:

What year did you teach then?

MARY TURNER LANE:

Third grade. And during that year I met Tom Lane.

PAMELA DEAN:

As I said, we were going to talk about the general culture that you grew up in that helped shape your concept of yourself, especially as a woman.

MARY TURNER LANE:

In thinking back on those forces that were important in my life. I thought particularly of war and wars, and I thought particularly of the movies. In terms of the war or wars, I guess its important to recognize, or it is for me, that I was born in 1918 in a war, and I married in 1942 in a war. And by strange situation which I think was certainly part of the South, even the Civil War was a significant part of my life. It's hard to believe, but in New Bern, North Carolina in the 1920s and the 1930s, children were still very much involved in memorializing the Civil War and in honoring the Civil War dead. One of the strongest memories I have as a child is that of marching with other little girls on Confederate Memorial Day, which was May 10. We were dressed in white dresses, carrying red roses. We marched to the cemetery, dropped these roses on the Confederate Monument, and sang this marvelous song, which I can almost sing today, and covered them over with beautiful flowers. Now, that went on all the way through high school. In fact if I tried to put it in a chronology, I would say it went on until World War II. And so much of it was done by women. These were the strong women in the social and cultural life of the town who organized the United Daughters of the Confederacy, organized the Children of the Confederacy. They saw to it that we were brought up knowing that poem, "The Sword of Lee," singing the songs that were supposed to

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be part of the war, and being very conscious of the great sacrifices made by the men of the South. Then the first World War, at the time when I was born, I had a unique situation in the town of New Bern because my father was overseas serving in France. I was, according to the newspaper, the first war baby born in New Bern. In a very small town where everybody knew everybody else, my mother said that was a very important event. People came to the hospital to see this little baby whose father was in France. When the nurse pushed the carriage out later on, there was much to-do about this little baby who was born then. So my father came back from France when I was six months old. When he returned, he organized or began with other men to organize the National Guard. So I grew up seeing parades on Armistice Day, which was November 11, of seeing men in uniform, not particularly hearing stories of World War I. That was not really part of my background. The men didn't tell stories of the war, but we were constantly honoring the dead, seeing men and little boys in uniforms. All of the little brothers in the different families had little soldier uniforms that they wore. And then in 1941 came Pearl Harbor. Two years before that we had had the draft, and I was married in 1942 to a man in uniform and in a sense was faced with another war. So somehow or other the glory, the sense of duty as it related to war, was a strong thread in the messages that I received from the community, from friends and family. I never had really tied that all together until now, but I think it was important.

PAMELA DEAN:

You said something that was very significant when you were talking about the Daughters of the Confederacy, and the women were the ones who organized and perpetuated this awareness of sacrifices the men had made for the South, and parades, and glorification of the war, and memorials to the war dead. What does this say to a young girl about the reciprocal responsibilities of women in war?

MARY TURNER LANE:

Well, it was very clear that the role of women was really to support the male. To take care of the home front, to mind the children, to bear the children even while the man is away fighting the war. Now that we have gone back to look at the role of woman, we have learned so much about what women truly did in war, in running plantations, in serving in so many ways. But truly, the woman served the man in war. The woman had no discussion, or no role in a discussion as to whether or not men would go off to war. They were to support the decisions and to take up whatever the situation was.

PAMELA DEAN:

It seems to be that the chief public message was that women were simply to admire men and honor them for what they did. That was a prime component of what….

MARY TURNER LANE:

Yes, that truly is what we were doing. We were honoring men all of those years.

PAMELA DEAN:

That was an important public function for women.

MARY TURNER LANE:

Yes, it was, it was. It was done in the community, and it was done in the home as well. So even as I married I knew that this man that I married would shortly go overseas. As it turned out, we were together maybe six weeks. He was sent

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overseas for two years, during which time I wrote a letter every day of my life. That's exactly what all of my friends were doing. I had friends whose husbands were gone three years. At the same time, I had a job and was doing the community things such as knitting for the Red Cross. I was a plane spotter once a week, which seems strange now, except that the town was located near the largest Marine airbase on the east coast so it was reasonable. We were also thirty miles from the coast, and there had been a number of submarines, German submarines, that had been attacked, as well as a number of American ships that were attacked on the coast, not by planes but by other submarines. But for there to be that was reasonable. The concept of war certainly was one that was significant in my life.

The other influence, it seems to be, is that of the movies. I don't really remember my first movies. I have no sense of that. There are people who can say, oh, I saw this picture and I saw that picture. What I do remember about the movies is that they were a family event. One night a week, the whole family went to the movies. On Saturday afternoons; this is all sort of pre-high school, this was when I was in elementary grades. On Saturday afternoons, all of the children went to the movies to see two western shows, two comedies, newsreels, all for ten cents. Then when I got in high school, you went to the movies on Sunday nights with dates. So that was the pattern. As a child I remember lots of comedies that we saw, and I remember some of the sort of frightening, scary movies. But in high school, I remember the romantic stories, the love stories which were so

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beautiful and so tender, so truly romantic. There was a lot of boy-pursues-girl. Never girl-pursues-boy. Much working out of relationships, but nine out of ten movies ended in marriage which was happy.

PAMELA DEAN:

And that's the end.

MARY TURNER LANE:

The movie ended right there.

PAMELA DEAN:

I wonder if any of them ever started there.

MARY TURNER LANE:

Maybe a few started with a family and young children, and there were problems with the children and there were many things to work out. But the clear image is a very romantic image of a beautiful girl, a handsome, attractive young man who had a very happy romance or courtship. Some problem maybe with parents or something of that kind but it worked out, and you saw the beautiful bride and the handsome groom and that was it. Life would be happy. Everything sort of had a happy ending. What we saw of war pictures seems to me was very limited. I do remember the film, All Quiet on the Western Front with Lou Aires, it seems to me. Oh, how long ago that was, I don't know. I remember it with—I seem to remember something with Gary Cooper—I don't know whether he did a later version or not. We never really saw the horror of war. If anybody died in the movies, it was with a little trickle of blood that came from the mouth. I remember seeing Robert Taylor dying in some war, I don't know what war it was. We saw lots of Civil War pictures and other wars, European wars. But the death came not in a grisly or ghastly or obscene way—the way that we have come to view it with M.A.S.H.—but just a trickle of blood from the mouth and the closing of the eyes and

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the head went back. And that was that. Always with the last message sent out to the loved ones. But somehow or other the idea of war and the honoring of the dead and movies and the honoring of living happily ever after, those two things were part of the romanticism, it seems to me, that I grew up with and that my friends grew up with. And that somehow or other were unrelated to the reality of life as I had come to know it. And probably made it as difficult for me to be a woman, facing the reality in life, as almost anything else. Now I think I'm out of sequence. But that's what I wanted to catch up on.

PAMELA DEAN:

I think that's very appropriate, because it seems to me that at the beginning of the Second World War you met your husband to be, he's in uniform; you are living the fantasy.

MARY TURNER LANE:

Oh, yes. True. True.

PAMELA DEAN:

You are living the romance you had seen in the movies. You had a nice ready-made scenario to place yourself in. Things were going just as they should. You had gone to school. You had worked for a few years.

MARY TURNER LANE:

Now it was time to marry.

PAMELA DEAN:

It's perfect.

MARY TURNER LANE:

And the new movie was — World War II.

PAMELA DEAN:

Yes. Yes. Well, let's talk a little bit about just the…

MARY TURNER LANE:

Well, I think I said earlier that I had been living in Fayetteville at the time, after my graduation from college. It was at that time that President Roosevelt had started the draft. Many young men that I knew came through Fort Bragg to be

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drafted or to go through officers' training school or something of that kind. So there were many young men there in uniform that we knew. So there was that sort of heady excitement of preparing for war, but not really knowing what war was. There is an excitement that's generated by pulling men together, putting them in uniform, marching them up and down streets and on parade grounds.

PAMELA DEAN:

And it still fitted into the romance that had surrounded it in the past and hadn't gotten to the grisly part because not too many had yet been shipped over and killed.

MARY TURNER LANE:

So in the fall of 1941 I went back to New Bern to my home, and my mother was there then. My father was still in Columbia, South Carolina. His battalion had been called out in 1940, I suppose it was. He was officer in charge of the 113th Field Artillery. He was a Lieutenant Colonel at that time. So in the fall of 1941 I was teaching school in New Bern. I had gotten a job there and then Pearl Harbor came in December of 1941.

We knew no one at Pearl Harbor but my best friend's husband was on Wake Island, and he was killed on Wake Island. They brought us the news at a big party that we were having at my house. And that really was the beginning of the reality of war for us in New Bern, because this was a young man who had gone through high school with all of us. We were very close to him. So that was really the beginning of the war. Pearl Harbor was December 9 and the bombing of Wake Island came two or three days after that, and then I guess it was a week or more before the

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news came to us. New Bern was filled at that time with young men in the Marine Corps, because the all of the Marine Air Corps on the Eastern Seaboard was collected in New Bern at a very small training camp.

Then again in 1941, before Pearl Harbor, the Navy had sent construction officers into New Bern to begin building of the Cherry Point Marine Air Base, which would become the largest Marine air base. They sent seven naval officers, and Tom Lane happened to be one of them. We met, and I was very busy dating a number of people that year, but Tom asked me to marry him and so we were married in August of 1942.

PAMELA DEAN:

When did you meet him?

MARY TURNER LANE:

In August of 1941.

[TAPE 2, SIDE B]

MARY TURNER LANE:

I guess our married life during the war was like that of all my friends, all of the Army wives, the Navy wives, the Marine wives. We were together about six weeks, I think. We had two weeks on this coast, four weeks on the west coast. Then he went to Alaska and on to the Aleutian Islands. My role, or the way I handled my life at that time, was to write a letter every day, do the volunteer work of plane spotter, a knitter for the Red Cross, and to work—first in the New Bern Recreation Department, arranging recreation for service men, and then in the public health department.

PAMELA DEAN:

So you weren't teaching at this time.

MARY TURNER LANE:

No. As I look back on it, it's interesting that the superintendent would not hire me because I could not guarantee that I would complete a year. When I said that I would leave if my husband came back from overseas, then I was not a good risk.

PAMELA DEAN:

You couldn't predict what you would do because you were—it would depend entirely on what the Navy did with your husband.

MARY TURNER LANE:

Oh, absolutely. So better not to hire the person. After the war, Tom got out of the Navy. I guess in 1945. Got a very good job with the Civil Aeronautics Administration and was assigned to the state of Pennsylvania, living in Harrisburg. After a year with that organization, he was made chief engineer for the state of Virginia. But for the first year we were living in Harrisburg or living in Camp Hill, Pennsylvania, in a new residential development filled with couples that were exactly

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like we were. Straight out of military service, all with there first jobs, their first babies, these were their first homes. So it was wonderful. It was, as you said, the fulfillment of the dream. The war was over, and I often said that I could suddenly let my breath out and relax and believe that all was wonderful ahead. Toward the end of that time Tom, was sent to Virginia to take over that state, which was really a wonderful situation for him at age 31 to be in charge of all civil construction for an entire state.

PAMELA DEAN:

Excuse me. When would this have been?

MARY TURNER LANE:

This would have been in the summer of 1946. I forgot to say the baby was born.

PAMELA DEAN:

Yes, I was going to….

MARY TURNER LANE:

No, that would be the summer of 1948. I forgot to say that Mary Ellen Lane was born.

PAMELA DEAN:

A very important point.

MARY TURNER LANE:

Yes. December 9, 1946. Interestingly enough, I was back home with my mother again. We could not find housing in Pennsylvania. So the only transportation between cities then was by train. And we had lived in a hotel for two months and we really couldn't have a baby in a hotel. So the doctor sent me home by train from Pennsylvania to North Carolina, and here I was back with my mother and father to have this wonderful baby girl. So it was while I was gone that Tom bought the house in this neighborhood that proved to be so wonderful. So then it was in 1948, in the fall of that year, that he had been sent to

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Virginia. It was in the first week that he was there that he had a automobile accident and was killed instantly.

PAMELA DEAN:

Had you moved down there by then?

MARY TURNER LANE:

No. He was traveling the state to assess what his work would be, and then we would find a place and go. My phone rang and the voice said, "Is this Mrs. Lane," and I said, "Yes," and he said, "I hate to tell you, Mrs. Lane but your husband is dead." So that's what happened. In retrospect, I know that it took a year to believe it. It was about as shattering a blow and delivered in as shattering a way that I could ever imagine. So family and friends moved in and took care of me. I was twenty-nine and my child was twenty-two months old. So we simply went home to my mother and father, back to New Bern, and how fortunate we were to be able to go back.

There was really nothing else I could do. There was no reason to stay in Pennsylvania. Our friends there were only friends of a year or year and a half, and I needed to be cared for, and the child needed to be cared for, because death is like a wound, a terrible wound, a searing, gaping wound. Someone needs to bandage that wound and keep that wound as protected as possible. So I was very fortunate to go home where there were people who would love us, and comfort us, and carry us really until I could emerge and begin to think about what we would do.

At the time I really didn't know what grief was. I didn't know what grieving was. I knew it was all right to cry. I knew it was all right to pray and do a number of things, but at that time we didn't know it was all right to be angry. And it's only

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in retrospect, as we've learned so much about grief and written so much, that I realize that I was so angry. I was angry at this man for dying. I was angry that he had gone away, and I had no dream. Everything was gone.

PAMELA DEAN:

All the promises were broken.

MARY TURNER LANE:

Gone. Then I realized it was not just the man I was angry at, it was society. It was all the movies. It was all of the myths and the notions about what a woman could do with her life or was supposed to do, and what life was supposed to be. So I really had to do a great deal of healing.

One of the most amazing things to me was I felt that I had absolutely no sense of identity. Suddenly I was back at home, and I was Mary and Albert Willis's daughter. I was Mary Ellen's mother. I was somebody else's granddaughter. I was somebody's sister. I didn't really have any sense of I was somebody. Now that was curious to me because I had always had a sense of who I was growing up. I had had a sense of identity in college. I was a leader. I was a good student. I was all those things. But as a widow I was no one. I was nobody. There was nothing. So that loss of identity was a startling thing to me. It took me a while to figure out that that's really that it was. But that's what it was.

PAMELA DEAN:

Because the role that you were supposed to be playing had been taken away.

MARY TURNER LANE:

Yes. And if you're not a wife what can you be? So after the anger and the grief and the horror, there began to be

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some searching inside me that there should be more in life than to be Mary and Albert Willis's daughter and Mary Ellen's mother.

So at the end of three years, three very comfortable years in a way, because I was living in a lovely home—Mother and Daddy were wonderful to me. My father took over the father's role so beautifully. He came in at 5:00 every afternoon and went back to the nursery and played with her. So all of that was good.

All I knew to think of doing in terms of work was to renew a teacher's certificate. My mother had good friends in Chapel Hill who used to visit us every summer at the beach. And she began saying to me why don't you come to Chapel Hill? Why don't you come to Chapel Hill? There are bound to be some nice men there that you can marry. Well, that wasn't all bad. I didn't know what else to do. That seemed entirely appropriate that I should marry again. Also it seemed very appropriate that I should have more children. To have only one child did not seem right. I'm not sure what the forces were that mitigated that, but an only child was not a good thing to have. So this child must have brothers and sisters, and I must, in order to fulfill myself, have more children. Well, anyway, I came to Chapel Hill, moved into a very wonderful, small neighborhood again, again with people coming back from service, back into jobs in academia. And did not marry in my years at Chapel Hill, but began a interesting progression of study and jobs that led me into a career. I really think I backed into a career. I knew nothing about career planning. The word career was not even part of my vocabulary.

PAMELA DEAN:

Women had jobs, not careers.

MARY TURNER LANE:

Women absolutely had jobs. I had a little bit of financial assistance from social security and from a pension that came because of the federal security agency. So I was very fortunate in that respect. But I began taking courses at Carolina, and over a two-year period, I had the courses necessary for a master's in education.

PAMELA DEAN:

Going well beyond simply renewing a teaching certificate.

MARY TURNER LANE:

Oh yes. I got interested in the work. I didn't start with education courses. I started with English and drama courses. Something that would be intellectually stimulating after having been in New Bern for three years. I really, I guess, wanted to see if my mind could still function on some ideas. So I had that degree.

Then I was asked by a professor at the university to stay on in an experimental reading program that we had started. And I found that very interesting for a year or two. Then I was asked by my major professor in elementary education to become an instructor in the teacher education program. So I sort of backed into those two jobs. So I began the sort of the full-time work when my daughter was in the third grade, I believe it was.

And I was frightened to death. I was frightened because I was leaving this child. I wasn't going to be home every afternoon. For so many years, that was my abiding sense of guilt. It was the afternoons. My mother had been home every afternoon or a wonderful cook or housekeeper had always been there, mostly mother. Our home had always been open to friends

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that I could bring home, my brother could bring home. We had a wonderful downstairs room that was called the nursery for years. But that's where toys were. So suddenly I was going to take a full-time job, and I wouldn't be home in the afternoons. I found that the greatest source of guilt was just the afternoons. It wasn't so bad in the mornings because she was going to school. But to come home in the afternoons—for her to have to come home in the afternoon—I found that difficult. I was also very much afraid of entering an academic institution as a teacher. That had never entered my head.

PAMELA DEAN:

You had done well as a student.

MARY TURNER LANE:

Oh, absolutely. And had had female professors at Salem College. I had not had any female professors at Carolina. But it was the idea that I could become or was being forced or was being asked to become more than a classroom teacher of ten-year-olds. That was forbidding.

PAMELA DEAN:

And you were being asked to do it in an institution where there weren't a lot of women as students or teachers at that time.

MARY TURNER LANE:

There certainly—well, the few women professors that were at that time—I guess would be in education. There weren't—and the students, the female students, were all clustered in education. Because that's when students were really coming here as junior transfers. And they were still the young women who were going to teach until they married. They were transferring from—they were coming from Salem, and they were coming from St. Mary's, Peace, and Converse, and Meredith.

PAMELA DEAN:

Now this would be the late fifties. No, mid-fifties if your daughter's in third grade.

MARY TURNER LANE:

Yes. Born in 1946, and so we're talking about 1953, when she would be in about the third grade.

PAMELA DEAN:

Let's talk a little bit about your experience as a graduate student working on your on master's, about the kind of classwork you did, the other students, and teachers.

MARY TURNER LANE:

I did not find that too difficult or too threatening. I was older to some degree but in education you did not seek a master's unless you were older.

PAMELA DEAN:

So mostly people who had been out and taught for a while and were coming back.

MARY TURNER LANE:

Most of them were men, as I recall. I don't remember many women.

PAMELA DEAN:

These would be men who would be wanting to perhaps move up into administration.

MARY TURNER LANE:

Yes, who wanted to be principals of their elementary schools. So I did not find the course work as threatening as I found suddenly trading positions with professors and becoming a professor. So that was very frightening.

PAMELA DEAN:

So, if you were going to be teaching mostly undergraduates, you would be teaching mostly women, you did have something of a model in your teachers at Salem.

MARY TURNER LANE:

Yes, that was all right, but that was at Salem. To be at Carolina, at the University of North Carolina, somehow that was intimidating for me. That was very intimidating for me. It was a great hurdle somehow for me to overcome. I don't think

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they had even invented tranquilizers at that time, but I think if they had, I would have been a good customer for them. Just a great sense of anxiety. Am I worthy of this, can I do this. It was difficult, very, very difficult.

PAMELA DEAN:

That feeling that you had put something over on your professors, that they thought you could. That somehow you had fooled them. That they hadn't really seen the real you.

MARY TURNER LANE:

Well, it was moving into a new role. A role that I had never been conditioned for. That moved it, I suppose, into a kind of career without really putting a label on it. But it was a shifting of roles, or a shifting of career vision perhaps, that I really found very frightening.

PAMELA DEAN:

Perhaps it was in part an admission that perhaps you were not going to marry, that you were going to have a career, that your life was not going to go along those traditional lines.

MARY TURNER LANE:

That could very well be it.

PAMELA DEAN:

A closing of doors as well as an opening.

MARY TURNER LANE:

Yes, that's true. I certainly saw it as an opening with an access to the university in a variety of ways. So there's a basic social interaction quality in me that sort of has always pushed me out toward people. So that to be able to be in a different social setting was all right. I didn't mind the apprehension connected with that. That was all right. I was accustomed to meeting different people, but it was the work part of it that I found difficult.

But after four years, the dean that had asked me to take the job, asked me what I intended to do with my life. Now this was a

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man who was truly very helpful. This was the Dean of the School of Education, Dean Arnold Perry. He was the one who had hired me, who had said, "you have qualities found in your liberal arts education at Salem that are appropriate for teacher education." He was the one that had read my master's comprehensive, so he knew what I had done academically. I had taken a course with him, and the school of education was so small that it was easy to know the people and for them to know you. So his comment really was an interesting one, that with your liberal arts background from Salem plus your master's in education from here, you have a strong background to offer a broader perspective to teachers.

PAMELA DEAN:

Let me ask you, for your master's, did you have to do some sort of thesis?

MARY TURNER LANE:

No, we didn't do a thesis. We wrote a comprehensive exam, which was a sort of six-hour exam. We had term papers in every course, and he would have read those, the ones that I had done for him.

PAMELA DEAN:

I just wondered if there was some reason in your project that you had focused on.

MARY TURNER LANE:

No. So he was the one who said if you really want to stay in a university setting you really have to have a doctorate, and then went to say that there were scholarships available. He told me about the Danforth Foundation fellowship. If you were at a certain point in a doctoral program, that was open to you. I applied. He wrote a recommending letter. To my great surprise I got it. I read the letter which came to my home, folded the

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letter up, put it in the envelope, and put it in the drawer because I wasn't sure it was real. Two days later I took it out, and it still said the same thing.

It was a very good scholarship. It was for twelve