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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 L-0039, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
Mary Turner Lane was the first director of the women's studies program at the University of North Carolina. In this interview, she discusses the events that shaped her career, including the importance her parents placed on education, and her experience at Salem College. After graduation, Lane became an elementary school teacher. During this time she met and married Tom Lane, whose death in World War II left her devastated. After a period of mourning and appraisal of her life, she returned to school to renew her teacher's license. Lane discovered that she loved higher education and eventually entered the Ph.D. program at Duke. Though she had support from the families around her, relatively few other women of her generation had made choices similar to hers. Once she graduated, she joined the faculty at UNC. One of the first committee responsibilities Lane had involved changing the curfew rules for women. When the chancellor formed a committee to examine the feasibility of launching a women's studies department, Lane recalls, the appointed male and female faculty were divided by age, experience, and passion. She discusses how the women overcame those barriers. Though Lane did not actively seek the position as the first director of women's studies, she accepted it when the dean offered her the position. One of Lane's primary objectives was to publicize the existence, purpose and achievements of the new program. Lane does not remember having any steady male support during this time, though a few faculty and administrators were generally friendly. She also recalls the resistance that she encountered from the female students and speculates about what caused them to feel as they did. Lane believes much has changed since then but that much more needs to be done for female students and faculty at UNC. She discusses what she believes to be the key issues for both groups.
Mary Turner Lane was the first director of the women's studies program at the University of North Carolina. In this interview, she discusses the beginnings and the evolution of the women's studies program at UNC.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
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.
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.
It didn't have any feminist motivation?
No, oh, no. Only in retrospect do I see it as feminist.
It was really a traditional concept?
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.
Were your parents from New Bern?
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.
Could you give me some further specifics? You say, bag of food, coal—were there official church organizations, or was this a very informal…
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.
What did your father do? What was his occupation?
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.
Back to your father for a moment: did he go through high school?
Yes.
What school was that? Was it a private school?
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
Do you think that that sort of change is a loss?
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.
So, for yourself, that was not a limiting…
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.
They give you a sense of identity.
Yes.
The only one that you could then rebel against.
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.
You've got no mechanisms to help you select from an incredible variety of options, with no guidelines.
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.
Back to the biographical discussion: you mentioned that you have a brother.
Yes.
Could you tell me something about your brother?
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.
What was your brother's name?
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.
And what was his subsequent career?
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.
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?
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
He very seriously valued….
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.
Absolutely. What schools did your friends go to, do you recall?
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
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.
What year did you graduate from high school?
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.
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… ?
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…
It must have made an impression.
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
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.
Well, tell me about Salem.
I thought Salem was wonderful. I don't know how to describe it, except that it was so beautiful. Do you know Salem College?
No, I haven't seen it.
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
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.
And you saw at the time…
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.
Wonderful.
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
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.
Tell me about some of the teachers. You said that they were both male and female teachers.
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.
You had had French in high school?
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.
I just wondered, do you happen to know what your French teacher in high school, what sort of—was it a woman?
Yes.
Do you know what sort of training she had had?
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."
What sort of things did you do for physical education?
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.
Were any of the women teachers married?
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.
It was an economics course.
Economics and sociology. No human reproduction whatsoever.
You weren't supposed to know about that.
No, and we didn't. We knew nothing about that.
How about the male professors, were they married? I would suspect that they would be.
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
Well, that does sound like you were very fortunate in that experience.
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.
What was the residence situation; did they have dormitories or rooming houses?
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
So they were very much integrated into the social life. In some cases they aren't.
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.
Yes. Before your senior year, how was the physical set-up of the dormitories? How many people to a room?
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.
How were the rooms set up—two people to a room?
Two people to a room.
Bathrooms down the hall.
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.
For the whole college?
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.
There was nobody who waited on tables or that kind of arrangement?
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.
Let me go back for a moment to the staff; I'm just curious: was most of the staff black?
Yes.
How about the dormitories, did you have to keep your rooms clean yourself or was there someone who did that?
No, they were cleaned weekly. And the staff for that was black.
Were these people that you got to know at all or were they…?
Yes. You had favorites and they had favorites. Yes, and they had been there for years.
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.
Yes, I think that that would be true.
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.
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.
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.
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
You knew them only in the context of the university, and didn't know if they had families.
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.
Let's see, a senior would set at each table. Back to the dining…
Yes, a senior who served, and who really didn't guide the discussion at
the table, but who was sort of in charge.
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
You did this every morning before you began the day.
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.
You had to say where you were going, with whom you were going?
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…
Did you?
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.
No major pranks.
No major pranks, no, no.
No breaking the rules.
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.
Sneak it in in your briefcase.
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.
How about parties in your room or that sort of thing…
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.
Were there girls that were really outsiders that didn't fit into the groups? Were there many of those?
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.
By that time, did you chose your roommates?
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.
Would you say that the student body was generally very homogeneous in social background, general background, and experience?
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.
Were there general gradations, the socialites, the grinds?
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.
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
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.
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.
But for you, at least, it was a very pleasant experience all the way through.
Yes.
And who did you date, people, boys in town?
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.
Would these be boys you had known from high school?
Yes. Yes.
Brothers of your college friends?
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
Different challenges. But you did.
Yes.
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.
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.
And how did you like teaching second grade?
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.
Practice as opposed to theory.
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
What year did you teach then?
Third grade.
END OF SEPTEMBER 9, 1986 INTERVIEW
START OF SEPTEMBER 16, 1986 INTERVIEW
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.
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
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?
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.
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….
Yes, that truly is what we were doing. We were honoring men all of those years.
That was an important public function for women.
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
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
And that's the end.
The movie ended right there.
I wonder if any of them ever started there.
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
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.
Oh, yes. True. True.
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.
Now it was time to marry.
It's perfect.
And the new movie was — World War II.
Yes. Yes. Well, let's talk a little bit about just the…
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
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.
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
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.
When did you meet him?
In August of 1941.
[END OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE B]
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.
So you weren't teaching at this time.
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.
You couldn't predict what you would do because you were—it would depend entirely on what the Navy did with your husband.
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
Excuse me. When would this have been?
This would have been in the summer of 1946. I forgot to say the baby was born.
Yes, I was going to….
No, that would be the summer of 1948. I forgot to say that Mary Ellen Lane was born.
A very important point.
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.
Had you moved down there by then?
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
All the promises were broken.
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.
Because the role that you were supposed to be playing had been taken away.
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
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.