Randall-David, Betsy - interviewed by Rose Norman
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Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
- | And I've got every color friend I could possibly get | 0:00 |
in New York City | 0:02 | |
'cause I was sure that in Gainesville, Florida | 0:03 | |
they only had two colors. | 0:05 | |
(Rose laughs) | 0:07 | |
I mean, I had no idea where I was going. | 0:08 | |
And I went in nursing school there, | 0:11 | |
and I already had a undergraduate degree | 0:15 | |
and a masters degree, | 0:18 | |
but I went in nursing school | 0:19 | |
because I was interested in going into nurse midwifery. | 0:20 | |
And while I was in nursing school I met | 0:24 | |
the women who started the Gainesville Women's Health Center. | 0:28 | |
And I had worked in New York City | 0:31 | |
at the Eastern Women's Health Center, | 0:34 | |
which is one of the first abortion clinics | 0:37 | |
in the United States, | 0:39 | |
right after Roe v. Wade passed. | 0:41 | |
And so I knew about | 0:44 | |
working in a abortion clinic | 0:49 | |
and knew what kinds of counseling | 0:51 | |
we get at Eastern Women's Center. | 0:55 | |
And so I started as the head of counseling | 0:57 | |
at the Gainesville Women's Health Center | 1:00 | |
when it opened in 1974. | 1:02 | |
So eventually the person | 1:06 | |
who had been hired to be the director of the clinic left | 1:10 | |
and I became the director of the clinic. | 1:13 | |
But my first job was as the head of counseling, | 1:16 | |
and not as the director. | 1:19 | |
- | Do you remember how many years, | 1:21 |
or what years you were director? | 1:22 | |
- | I was the director from '75 to '78. | 1:24 |
- | Okay. | 1:29 |
- | And then I left in '78 | 1:30 |
to go back to graduate school to get my PhD | 1:33 | |
in medical anthropology at the University of Florida. | 1:36 | |
So it was a wild, crazy time. | 1:41 | |
I loved every minute of it, | 1:46 | |
and it wasn't easy by any means. | 1:47 | |
So, I don't know, do you have specific questions | 1:51 | |
about my work at the clinic | 1:53 | |
that you wanted to ask? | 1:55 | |
Or do you just want me to sort of talk? | 1:57 | |
- | No, I don't have a list of questions. | 2:01 |
I'm interested, now you've already said | 2:04 | |
that you were already interested in nurse midwifery | 2:07 | |
when you went to nursing school. | 2:10 | |
So you had an interest in these things before you met, | 2:13 | |
I guess in would have been Judy and Margaret | 2:16 | |
and Byllye Avery. | 2:19 | |
- | Right, exactly. | 2:20 |
Yeah, and, quite frankly, one of the things that happened | 2:22 | |
was that I went out to Kentucky, | 2:25 | |
to the Frontier Nursing Service, | 2:29 | |
and they told me, | 2:31 | |
"Well, you know you need to be a nurse first. | 2:33 | |
"You can't just be a midwife." | 2:36 | |
And so that's why I went back to nursing school. | 2:38 | |
And while I was in nursing school I met those three again, | 2:41 | |
but I also discovered that the nurse midwifery program, | 2:44 | |
the closest one was gonna be in South Carolina. | 2:48 | |
And I just was really having a hard time | 2:52 | |
imagining how I would be leaving my two two year olds | 2:56 | |
with my husband at the time | 3:01 | |
and go off to something as intense | 3:04 | |
as a nurse midwifery program. | 3:06 | |
So I sort of transferred my interest | 3:07 | |
to a women's health clinic | 3:12 | |
as opposed to doing midwifery. | 3:16 | |
- | Well it was very much not just an abortion clinic, | 3:21 |
that's one thing I've been gathering. | 3:24 | |
- | Oh, absolutely. | 3:26 |
No, we provided well women care | 3:27 | |
three nights a week, | 3:32 | |
and then we did abortions two days a week. | 3:33 | |
And then we ended up | 3:37 | |
eventually doing a vasectomy clinic | 3:41 | |
once every couple of months. | 3:43 | |
So we expanded our services | 3:46 | |
after we got our feet on the ground. | 3:50 | |
But it was a challenging thing | 3:54 | |
because our medical director lived in Jacksonville, Florida, | 3:56 | |
which is an hour and a half away. | 4:00 | |
And we had a local guy, | 4:01 | |
I didn't see his name mentioned | 4:05 | |
in any of the transcripts you sent me, | 4:07 | |
but his name was, interestingly enough, doctor Menzies. | 4:08 | |
M-E-N-Z-I-E-S. | 4:12 | |
(Rose laughs) | ||
He was our backup doctor, | 4:16 | |
but we were very, very, very aware | 4:20 | |
that if we overused him | 4:22 | |
that he probably wouldn't stay with us for very long. | 4:25 | |
By overusing him I mean | 4:28 | |
that when women call | 4:31 | |
after they've had an abortion | 4:34 | |
with a concern about whether they were bleeding to heavily, | 4:36 | |
or the pain was too intense, or whatever. | 4:39 | |
That if we called him about every single woman | 4:42 | |
who called us, that he'd get tired of it. | 4:46 | |
And, literally, at the time | 4:49 | |
we were paying him $25 a month to be our backup. | 4:50 | |
- | Wow. | 4:54 |
- | So we took an incredible amount | 4:56 |
of responsibility on our own shoulders | 4:59 | |
and really tried to | 5:02 | |
evaluate as best we could over the phone | 5:05 | |
before we called him, | 5:10 | |
so that we really did not get him involved | 5:11 | |
in most of the follow up care. | 5:14 | |
Because we were concerned it would be too much for him. | 5:18 | |
So that was challenging. | 5:21 | |
And it was a lot of responsibility. | 5:23 | |
And I swore after that time | 5:26 | |
that I would never wear a beeper again in my life. | 5:27 | |
(Rose laughs) | 5:30 | |
- | Yeah. | 5:31 |
- | You know, it really | 5:32 |
it colors how you're gonna spend your evenings. | 5:34 | |
I mean, when you're on call you have to be | 5:37 | |
of very sound mind, | 5:42 | |
and be able to really evaluate carefully. | 5:44 | |
So pretty much meant not drinking any alcohol. | 5:48 | |
It just did color how we could spend our time. | 5:56 | |
I don't think any of us regretted it, | 6:00 | |
but I think those of us who carried the beeper, | 6:03 | |
which were the nurses, | 6:06 | |
did find that a challenging part of the clinic. | 6:09 | |
And that's something that Byllye and Judy and Margaret | 6:12 | |
just hate like hell wearing this, you know? | 6:16 | |
I mean it was interesting to read the transcripts | 6:19 | |
because everybody's experience is different. | 6:22 | |
And, of course, it's 40 years ago, | 6:26 | |
and so many of us may have | 6:28 | |
sort of a halo effect | 6:32 | |
after 40 years. | 6:35 | |
But there were some tensions, | 6:36 | |
and it wasn't as rosy (laughs) | 6:40 | |
as I felt like some of the people were describing it. | 6:44 | |
There was one quote about how | 6:50 | |
there were no differences. | 6:53 | |
We all got along. | 6:54 | |
We all felt the same about everything. | 6:56 | |
And that was just really not my experience. | 7:00 | |
So, some of the tensions that I feel existed | 7:03 | |
was one between the clinical and the non-clinical people. | 7:08 | |
Because the clinical people were assuming | 7:11 | |
a very different level of responsibility. | 7:13 | |
And, you know, we all were getting paid shit. | 7:16 | |
I mean, you know, literally, | 7:18 | |
as the executive director of the clinic | 7:20 | |
I was making $12,000 a year. | 7:23 | |
(Rose laughs) | 7:26 | |
That kinda gives you some idea. | 7:27 | |
And of course it was 40 years ago | 7:30 | |
so I'm not saying that, I mean, | 7:33 | |
I don't know what that would be in today's money. | 7:36 | |
But it sure wasn't a lot of money. | 7:40 | |
- | My first teaching job I made $10,000. | 7:42 |
And that was 1974, I think. | 7:46 | |
And that was not a particularly responsible job. (laughs) | 7:50 | |
Nothing like running a clinic. | 7:52 | |
- | Yeah, so that was one of the tensions. | 7:56 |
Another tension was really between | 8:00 | |
the lesbians and the straight women. | 8:03 | |
And it was kind of amusing. | 8:07 | |
I did notice that somebody talked about this | 8:12 | |
South Eastern Women's Health conference | 8:16 | |
that we planned and executed, | 8:19 | |
which was really wonderful, | 8:24 | |
but one of the workshops that we had there | 8:25 | |
was straight and gay women | 8:28 | |
conversation, or something, | 8:32 | |
I can't remember what the actual title was. | 8:33 | |
And it was so popular | 8:36 | |
that we actually did two sessions of it. | 8:39 | |
And it was so successful at the conference | 8:42 | |
that a number of us continued meeting after the conference. | 8:44 | |
Just as a sort of an ongoing group | 8:49 | |
to talk about some of the issues. | 8:51 | |
And ironically, or maybe not so ironically, | 8:55 | |
every single one of the straight women, | 8:58 | |
myself included, became a lesbian. | 9:00 | |
So that's what those kind of groups get ya. | 9:03 | |
(laughs) | 9:06 | |
- | Yeah. | |
- | But there were tensions about that. | 9:09 |
And there were tensions about people who had male children. | 9:10 | |
I had two male children | 9:14 | |
and there were some events | 9:16 | |
that some of the more radical lesbians | 9:19 | |
really didn't want male children to be there. | 9:22 | |
And I mean these children were like seven years old. | 9:27 | |
I get not bringing 17 year old young men | 9:31 | |
to some of these events. | 9:36 | |
But, really, seven year old boys? | 9:38 | |
C'mon. | 9:41 | |
So there were definitely tensions. | 9:42 | |
And then there, of course, were some racial tensions. | 9:45 | |
And I did see that Deborah David's name was mentioned. | 9:48 | |
She was an African American woman | 9:52 | |
who was pretty militant. | 9:53 | |
I think we were in a pretty | 9:55 | |
early evolutionary phase | 9:58 | |
of really understanding a lot of the | 10:02 | |
racial tensions and understanding | 10:07 | |
how we needed to be working more on our stuff | 10:11 | |
related to racism. | 10:15 | |
So one of the solutions to that | 10:19 | |
was to, basically, change the locks from the front door | 10:22 | |
and get her out, | 10:25 | |
which isn't, to me, the most social updative way | 10:26 | |
to handle that. | 10:29 | |
I was not there. | 10:30 | |
I had already moved on the graduate school. | 10:32 | |
So there are people, literally, in Gainesville now | 10:35 | |
(coughs) | 10:38 | |
that will not come to anything | 10:39 | |
that Byllye or Margaret might be at | 10:41 | |
because of what happened during that period | 10:43 | |
where the staff got locked out of the clinic. | 10:46 | |
So it wasn't like we were all | 10:51 | |
totally homogeneous and everybody was loving each other. | 10:56 | |
On the other hand, those of us who worked at the clinic | 11:00 | |
tend to socialize together. | 11:03 | |
Even when we were married to men | 11:06 | |
we kind of drove that. | 11:10 | |
And we'd work all day at the clinic of Saturday | 11:11 | |
and then, Saturday evening, | 11:14 | |
we'd get together with our husbands and children | 11:17 | |
and be all one big social group. | 11:20 | |
As things moved along, | 11:29 | |
I think there probably were more people | 11:31 | |
were not, well, copacetic. | 11:34 | |
Which is understandable. | 11:38 | |
I'm not trying to paint a black picture of anything. | 11:40 | |
But I did find it amusing when somebody said, | 11:44 | |
"Oh, we all got along and everything." | 11:47 | |
But then it's like, oh yeah? | 11:49 | |
Well that wasn't my experience. | 11:50 | |
So, it was a very interesting | 11:53 | |
and wonderful time. | 11:58 | |
And we all worked really hard. | 11:59 | |
And one of the transitions that happened | 12:02 | |
is that the first group of us really all | 12:05 | |
were very committed to the politics of the clinic. | 12:09 | |
Yeah, we literally cared about how many women | 12:15 | |
were on the schedule | 12:19 | |
because we knew that the ability of the clinic | 12:20 | |
to continue functioning | 12:24 | |
required a certain amount of money. | 12:25 | |
As we moved along, | 12:28 | |
(coughs) excuse me, | 12:31 | |
in the history of the clinic, | 12:33 | |
more people got hired who were not | 12:37 | |
what many of us would consider staunch feminist. | 12:40 | |
They saw it more as a job, | 12:46 | |
and the tone shifted a bit. | 12:48 | |
I mean, they were all very nice women, | 12:51 | |
but they were not radical feminists | 12:55 | |
and they saw it more as a job | 12:57 | |
than as a calling. | 13:01 | |
I think the first group of us | 13:02 | |
absolutely saw it as a calling, and a mission, | 13:05 | |
and something that we cared deeply about. | 13:08 | |
Having those services available for women. | 13:14 | |
After a few years I think that got diluted, | 13:18 | |
which doesn't mean that weren't other people | 13:21 | |
who had that philosophy. | 13:23 | |
But those people were maybe more in the minority. | 13:26 | |
It sort of shifted to people who | 13:32 | |
went to nursing school, wanted a job, | 13:36 | |
it seemed like a groovy place to work, good job, | 13:38 | |
let me work there. | 13:42 | |
Which is different than the first group. | 13:44 | |
- | When do you think that shift occurred? | 13:48 |
I mean, it was after you left, I think, or was it? | 13:49 | |
- | Yeah, it was after I left. | 13:52 |
Well, I think, yeah it's hard to know exactly | 13:56 | |
what led to it. | 14:01 | |
And there were some | 14:02 | |
kind of unfortunate things that happened. | 14:05 | |
We had two different cases of embezzlement. | 14:07 | |
Where people working at the clinic | 14:10 | |
embezzled money from the clinic. | 14:13 | |
(coughs) | 14:15 | |
I apologize, I am at the tail end, | 14:17 | |
or maybe not tail end, | 14:20 | |
but I'm at the end of a cold. | 14:21 | |
I'm coughing a lot. | 14:23 | |
So I'm not sure. | 14:26 | |
Part of it, and of course Byllye and Judy and Margaret | 14:29 | |
sort of broke off and started the birth center, | 14:36 | |
so their presence wasn't there anymore. | 14:39 | |
- | Was that after you left, or what? | 14:43 |
- | Yes, un-huh, yeah. | 14:46 |
It was right after they locked the doors | 14:47 | |
and kept all the staff out. | 14:50 | |
I had already gone. | 14:53 | |
And, by the way, Byllye and I are extremely close friends. | 14:55 | |
- | Oh, good. | 14:58 |
- | You know, Judy had died. | 14:59 |
And I don't keep up with Margaret. | 15:00 | |
But, as I said, there are people | 15:03 | |
who are so bitter about what happened during that time | 15:06 | |
that they wouldn't dream coming. | 15:10 | |
And, of course, Byllye goes back to Gainesville | 15:14 | |
a fair amount to do public speaking. | 15:17 | |
And, so, that caused a lot. | 15:20 | |
So I don't know if that was part of it | 15:24 | |
or whether we weren't good about keeping, | 15:29 | |
front and central, the personal is the political. | 15:34 | |
The sort of reasons | 15:40 | |
of why we had the clinic. | 15:44 | |
I mean it got to be that it was a good thing to have, | 15:46 | |
but not that it was all part of the women's health movement, | 15:50 | |
and about women reclaiming their bodies. | 15:54 | |
But all of the philosophy, I think, | 15:58 | |
got littered somewhat along the way. | 16:02 | |
Now, having said that, | 16:04 | |
there certainly were plenty of feminists | 16:07 | |
who continued to work there over the next 20 years, but | 16:09 | |
there were also a lot more people | 16:15 | |
who weren't what I would call a feminist | 16:17 | |
who worked there too. | 16:20 | |
So it was a wild and wooly time. | 16:23 | |
And then, you know, part of the issue, | 16:27 | |
my partner, who I'm with, and who I was with back then, | 16:31 | |
really one of my first experienced with a (coughs) | 16:36 | |
relating to a woman, is my current partner. | 16:41 | |
So we've been together like 34 years or 35 years. | 16:43 | |
And we often laugh about all the consensus decision making | 16:47 | |
that, literally, we would make every decision by consensus. | 16:52 | |
Which is such a pain in the ass. | 16:56 | |
I mean, you know, what color toilet paper should we buy? | 16:59 | |
Oh, we gotta reach consensus on that. | 17:04 | |
(Rose laughs) | 17:06 | |
Like, no. | ||
(laughs) No, we don't. | 17:07 | |
I mean, about things that are really important | 17:08 | |
political decisions and strategy, yeah. | 17:10 | |
But we kinda overdid some of that consensus decision making | 17:13 | |
and I think that drove some people a little crazy. | 17:18 | |
(laughs) | 17:20 | |
- | Sure. | 17:21 |
Do you want to mention, | 17:24 | |
I was thinking in the biographical introduction about you, | 17:25 | |
that we could mention your partner by name? | 17:28 | |
Or that you've been with your partner now for that long? | 17:30 | |
I mention that in several other people's introductions. | 17:35 | |
I think I mention it in Byllye's. | 17:38 | |
Do you want me to mention her name? | 17:40 | |
- | Her name is Sara. | 17:42 |
Oh, well actually her name was Vicky at the time, | 17:44 | |
but now it's Sara. | 17:46 | |
Her name was Sara Victoria, | 17:47 | |
and when we moved to North Carolina | 17:49 | |
she decided to claim the Sara part of her. | 17:50 | |
But when we were in Gainesville her name was Vicky. | 17:53 | |
Vicky Jarvis. | 17:57 | |
- | Jarvis, okay. | 17:58 |
Okay, and you've been together since Gainesville then? | 18:02 | |
- | Yeah, yeah since the clinic. | 18:05 |
I hired her, actually. | 18:08 | |
She was a counselor at the clinic. | 18:10 | |
- | So you met your partner at the clinic. | 18:12 |
That's one of the things I wanted to | 18:13 | |
get you to talk about a little bit. | 18:16 | |
About how that clinic served not just | 18:17 | |
for women's physical health, | 18:21 | |
but you had CR groups, and it was a social and | 18:24 | |
it was a place where political change happened | 18:29 | |
just because you worked there. | 18:33 | |
- | Yeah, absolutely. | 18:35 |
And we really, as I said, we all socialized together. | 18:36 | |
We all supported each other through what was going on | 18:40 | |
in the rest of our lives. | 18:44 | |
It was a whole lot more than a job, | 18:48 | |
let's just say that. | 18:51 | |
I mean, I've never had another experience like it. | 18:52 | |
Where the borders were permeable | 18:56 | |
between the personal and the professional. | 19:02 | |
It was all one. | 19:06 | |
- | And what do you think, is it because of the times | 19:11 |
and the movement? | 19:14 | |
- | Yeah, I think so. | 19:15 |
Because a lot of people | 19:16 | |
who weren't even working at the clinic also, | 19:17 | |
other women who were straight at the time, | 19:21 | |
became lesbians too. | 19:25 | |
My best friend, Bonnie Coats, she became the director. | 19:26 | |
I dunno she became the director right after me. | 19:32 | |
She might have come right after me. | 19:35 | |
(coughs) | 19:37 | |
She wasn't working at the clinic. | 19:41 | |
She owned the women's book store for a while. | 19:43 | |
- | Women's book stores work that way too sometimes. | 19:50 |
- | I'm sorry? | 19:53 |
Yeah, yeah right, exactly. | 19:54 | |
Then there were women who were doing counseling | 19:57 | |
outside the clinic, | 20:00 | |
who were mainly seeing feminists and lesbians. | 20:02 | |
And so, there was really quite | 20:06 | |
a movement in Gainesville. | 20:11 | |
It was kind of impressive just how many people. | 20:14 | |
And it was also extremely incestuous. | 20:17 | |
I mean, we all were with everybody else's partner. | 20:20 | |
- | Right. | 20:26 |
- | We talked over (laughs). | 20:27 |
When we moved to North Carolina | 20:30 | |
and there's a pretty good women's community here in Durham, | 20:31 | |
but we absolutely are not involved with the women community. | 20:36 | |
- | Really? | 20:44 |
- | Yeah, we have friends who are lesbians, | 20:45 |
we have friends who are straight, | 20:47 | |
and we have friends who are men, | 20:48 | |
and then gay men, and straight men. | 20:50 | |
But, yeah, the Gainesville experience was so intense | 20:52 | |
that I think we felt like we needed a break from it. | 20:57 | |
And so we didn't really seek out | 21:03 | |
a recreation of Gainesville when we moved to Durham. | 21:06 | |
Just became friends with lots of different types of people. | 21:12 | |
And some of them are lesbians, | 21:15 | |
and some of them aren't. | 21:16 | |
- | Now, Corky Cover talks a little bit about | 21:20 |
the split in the movement between lesbian and straight. | 21:25 | |
And how closeted Judith Brown was. | 21:31 | |
And, apparently, Carol Geraldina is still closeted. | 21:34 | |
- | Oh, really? | 21:39 |
- | Well, I say that. | 21:40 |
We're not sure whether we should say in the chapter | 21:42 | |
that she was Judith's partner or not. (laughs) | 21:46 | |
She has a new book, Geraldina does. | 21:49 | |
- | Does she? | 21:52 |
- | Yeah, but she doesn't come in it at all. | 21:53 |
And there's like three pages | 21:55 | |
that have anything to do with lesbians. | 21:57 | |
It's about the women's movement. | 21:58 | |
(laughs) | 22:00 | |
- | Really? | |
- | Yes! | 22:01 |
- | Oh my god, that's interesting. | 22:02 |
- | It's a good book though. | 22:04 |
It's about African American women in the movement. | 22:05 | |
She's answering the argument that said | 22:08 | |
that they weren't in the movement. | 22:11 | |
- | Right. | 22:13 |
- | And she's saying well, yeah they were. | 22:14 |
- | Well, Byllye is a good spokesperson on that one | 22:17 |
'cause she certainly had her ups and downs | 22:19 | |
in terms of the other African American women involved. | 22:23 | |
- | Yeah, she said she couldn't-- | 22:28 |
- | I mean, in the clinic, | 22:29 |
really we didn't have | 22:32 | |
nearly as many women of color as our clients | 22:35 | |
as Caucasian women. | 22:39 | |
And I think most of us really | 22:43 | |
paid attention to that. | 22:47 | |
And, of course, abortion was still relatively new | 22:49 | |
as this opportunity. | 22:52 | |
- | Byllye thought that about half the abortion clients | 22:57 |
were African American, | 23:00 | |
but that they didn't use the other services. | 23:02 | |
- | Well, I guess I don't really | 23:07 |
remember the demographic for all of them. | 23:11 | |
I felt like there weren't very many | 23:13 | |
African American women there, period. | 23:15 | |
But I know, of course, we didn't have (coughs) | 23:18 | |
a very diverse staff either, I'd say. | 23:21 | |
95% of the staff, at least, were white women. | 23:25 | |
Very few African American. | 23:29 | |
When I was there. | 23:31 | |
Maybe it got more diverse after I left, | 23:32 | |
but the first four years of the clinic, | 23:35 | |
oh, Deborah was in first. | 23:38 | |
Deborah David was the first African American woman we hired. | 23:39 | |
- | Oh wow. | 23:43 |
- | And we saw where that went. | 23:44 |
So then, I'm not sure after that | 23:45 | |
how many other African American women were hired. | 23:48 | |
But I actually was at Deborah's birth. | 23:53 | |
I mean, not at her birth, | 23:57 | |
but at the birth of her son. | 23:59 | |
I helped her deliver her baby. | 24:01 | |
And so I was actually pretty close to Deborah for a while. | 24:03 | |
- | I asked Byllye about that, | 24:08 |
because Pam had written about that. | 24:10 | |
And she talked about | 24:13 | |
understanding the perspective | 24:17 | |
of where she was coming from | 24:19 | |
as a black nationalist, and as someone | 24:21 | |
who didn't really know much about white people. | 24:24 | |
She had a good answer | 24:29 | |
to why Deborah woulda thought that white women | 24:33 | |
didn't need the women's movement. | 24:37 | |
That's what Pam says, | 24:40 | |
she said it was because | 24:41 | |
from her perspective white women had, pretty much, | 24:45 | |
what black women wanted. | 24:49 | |
Which was freedom and responsibility. | 24:50 | |
She didn't see the other side. | 24:56 | |
- | Uh-huh. | 24:59 |
Well, she was pretty wrapped up in her own stuff. | 25:02 | |
Yeah. | 25:07 | |
- | I should send you Byllye's interview. | 25:08 |
I've gotten the notes to it, | 25:11 | |
and I emailed them to her. | 25:13 | |
Her mother died. | 25:15 | |
- | Oh, she did? | 25:17 |
- | Yeah, I found this out because when I emailed them | 25:18 |
she had gone to the funeral. | 25:21 | |
Had gone down to Gainesville. | 25:22 | |
- | When was that? | 25:24 |
- | It must have been about maybe Saturday? | 25:26 |
Friday? | 25:28 | |
- | Oh my goodness. | 25:30 |
We'll have to call. | 25:31 | |
Her mother was really up there in years. | 25:32 | |
- | 104. | 25:35 |
- | Yeah, yeah uh-huh. | 25:36 |
Oh wow, oh gosh, that's tough for Byllye. | 25:39 | |
- | Yes. | 25:43 |
I interviewed her on a day when she'd been dealing | 25:44 | |
with Hospice care for her mother. | 25:47 | |
So I guess they knew it was-- | 25:49 | |
- | Uh-huh, eminent. | 25:51 |
Whew. | 25:54 | |
- | But, anyway, I don't wanna send you her interview notes | 25:55 |
until she's had a chance to look at them | 25:58 | |
to make sure they're right. | 25:59 | |
- | Uh-huh | 26:02 |
- | I'm assuming that your sample here | 26:08 |
is sort of a snowball sample. | 26:10 | |
Who was the first person | 26:14 | |
and how did you get to the first person? | 26:15 | |
- | Well, Women Writes is an organization of lesbian writers | 26:18 |
and we've been talking about this since 2009 | 26:22 | |
and making lists of people that we had to... | 26:25 | |
We started out wanting to solicit memoirs. | 26:28 | |
But people really don't wanna have to write their memoirs. | 26:32 | |
They just don't. | 26:34 | |
But they'll let you interview them. (laughs) | 26:35 | |
And then, in many cases it turns into something | 26:39 | |
that's more of a memoir. | 26:43 | |
Like Margaret Parish. | 26:44 | |
Her interview notes, | 26:46 | |
you know, the notes I sent her after her interview | 26:48 | |
were not very compelling. | 26:50 | |
But after she got those notes | 26:53 | |
she edited a whole bunch of stuff. | 26:55 | |
So that was a lot, maybe half, of Margaret's | 26:58 | |
was something she edited after the interview. | 27:03 | |
- | Uh-huh. | 27:06 |
- | But there's a bunch of gains for women | 27:07 |
that go to Women Writes. | 27:09 | |
That's why we got such a Gainesville connection. | 27:10 | |
- | I'm sorry, say that again. | 27:13 |
- | A bunch of Gainesville women. | 27:14 |
Corky comes to Women Writes. | 27:16 | |
Barbara Avery. | 27:18 | |
- | Oh, I see. | |
I see, uh-huh. | 27:19 | |
- | So there's a strong Gainesville connection there. | 27:21 |
In fact, we're kinda Gainesville heavy right now. | 27:24 | |
Florida heavy. | 27:26 | |
The fact that you're living in Durham is good, | 27:31 | |
because now we have someone-- | 27:32 | |
maybe you could say a few things about-- | 27:33 | |
(laughs) | 27:35 | |
We have nothing from North Carolina right now. | 27:36 | |
I know that we've got Mandy Carter | 27:37 | |
lined up for an interview, | 27:40 | |
but it's gonna be March or April before we get it. | 27:41 | |
- | So one of the things I did | 27:49 |
at the Gainesville Women's Health Center | 27:50 | |
is we started the Pelvic Teaching Program. | 27:51 | |
I don't know if anybody talked about that. | 27:54 | |
- | Somebody eluded to it. | 27:56 |
Tell me more about it. | 27:57 | |
- | Well, basically we | 27:59 |
taught medical students. | 28:04 | |
Medical students came over to the clinic | 28:05 | |
in groups of three. | 28:07 | |
And one of us would do an exam | 28:09 | |
on another one of us. | 28:13 | |
And they would observe, | 28:16 | |
and then they would practice. | 28:18 | |
They would do a pelvic exam | 28:20 | |
and get feedback from us. | 28:23 | |
It was a really wonderful program. | 28:29 | |
And the students just, you know. | 28:31 | |
And they actually paid their own money to come. | 28:34 | |
Which, interestingly enough, | 28:38 | |
things have really changed since then, but | 28:40 | |
they paid money for us to teach them. | 28:43 | |
Teach them how to do a humanistic pelvic exam, | 28:47 | |
and really involve the woman in her own experience | 28:51 | |
and not just see her as some body | 28:55 | |
that they were gonna do their thing on. | 28:59 | |
And so then, eventually, that program in Gainesville | 29:02 | |
got what I call co-opted by the medical school | 29:07 | |
and they started, | 29:10 | |
well, it was a series of different things that happened. | 29:12 | |
First of all they asked us to come over | 29:15 | |
to the medical school | 29:18 | |
and be the teachers, | 29:19 | |
but with a medical faculty person in the room with us. | 29:22 | |
And I think some of us did that once or twice, | 29:29 | |
and just really balked at that experience | 29:32 | |
because we weren't really the teachers. | 29:35 | |
We were really more the bodies. | 29:38 | |
And that's totally not what we were all about. | 29:39 | |
But when I moved here to Durham | 29:45 | |
it turns out that there is a women's health | 29:48 | |
teaching group here. | 29:50 | |
And so I was really excited. | 29:51 | |
So I joined that group. | 29:55 | |
And that group's still going. | 29:56 | |
And it teaches almost all the medical students | 29:58 | |
in the state of North Carolina, | 30:02 | |
and physicians' assistants, | 30:03 | |
and some nursing students. | 30:05 | |
So I think there's probably about 8 to 10 women | 30:10 | |
now in the group. | 30:12 | |
I haven't been in the group | 30:13 | |
in probably 10 years or so. | 30:15 | |
Maybe, probably not 15 years. | 30:17 | |
But I was in it for 10 or so years here. | 30:20 | |
It's a wonderful experience. | 30:28 | |
It's a really great service, I think, | 30:28 | |
for all women. | 30:31 | |
Because these jerks (laughs) learn | 30:32 | |
how to do a really good exam. | 30:36 | |
And we give 'em lots of really targeted feedback. | 30:38 | |
Like, no way, you're not doing that. | 30:42 | |
And then you need to ask the woman's permission | 30:45 | |
before you touch her. | 30:49 | |
And you need to pull down on the pelvic muscle, | 30:50 | |
I mean the vaginal muscle, | 30:54 | |
before you insert the speculum, | 30:57 | |
and you need to do it slowly, | 31:00 | |
and you need to do this. | 31:01 | |
I mean, just step by step. | 31:03 | |
And the students here, | 31:07 | |
the medical school staff pay the group. | 31:11 | |
The students themselves don't have to pay for it. | 31:15 | |
But in Gainesville the students paid for it. | 31:17 | |
I think that there's not that many programs left. | 31:23 | |
Because Byllye and I actually went back to Gainesville | 31:28 | |
about four years ago | 31:31 | |
and spoke at a program | 31:33 | |
at the medical school | 31:36 | |
about the Pelvic Teaching Program. | 31:37 | |
And now it's been, as I said, co-opted (coughs), | 31:40 | |
the medical school actually is the one that does it. | 31:45 | |
And it's more of a standardized patient approach. | 31:48 | |
Which, I don't know if you know anything | 31:54 | |
about medical education, | 31:56 | |
but more and more they've started this teaching technique | 31:57 | |
of using people who are just regular people | 32:02 | |
as surrogate patients. | 32:08 | |
And then they teach medical students and residents | 32:11 | |
all sorts of skills, and not just GYN skills, | 32:15 | |
but how to do | 32:19 | |
a well person workup, | 32:24 | |
and how to do | 32:26 | |
a patient history to determined | 32:31 | |
risk for diabetes, or heart disease, or whatever. | 32:33 | |
I mean, it's pretty general now. | 32:35 | |
When I was going back with Byllye four years ago | 32:40 | |
to do that talk, | 32:44 | |
I started doing some research | 32:45 | |
to see what groups | 32:46 | |
like ours existed today, | 32:49 | |
and there's really not very many. | 32:52 | |
So this group here in Durham is actually | 32:54 | |
one of a very few groups that are still doing that. | 32:57 | |
And they're going strong. | 33:03 | |
They've been, gosh, | 33:05 | |
well I've been here for 25 years, | 33:06 | |
and they'd been going for about eight years | 33:10 | |
before I got here. | 33:14 | |
It might be 10 years. | 33:16 | |
So it's probably | 33:17 | |
35 years old as a group. | 33:20 | |
Not the same women, | 33:24 | |
but that's pretty impressive. | 33:24 | |
- | That would have been 1978. | 33:30 |
That's 35 years ago. | 33:32 | |
- | '78 was 35 years ago? | 33:35 |
Oh, okay. | 33:37 | |
Really? | 33:38 | |
- | Yeah. (laughs) | 33:40 |
- | No, 'cause wait. | 33:41 |
Oh, yeah yeah, '78, right, is 35 years ago, right. | 33:44 | |
We've been here 25 years, but (coughs) | 33:46 | |
it was going for quite a while before I joined the group. | 33:50 | |
So, that was a group of, | 33:55 | |
I'd call, radical feminists | 34:02 | |
who started that group here in Durham. | 34:04 | |
So when you say that you don't have anything going, | 34:06 | |
you know, not really anybody has done much | 34:10 | |
about North Carolina, interviewing some of those people. | 34:11 | |
Especially the earlier people. | 34:15 | |
Like Margie Stead. | 34:17 | |
- | Now, we're only doing lesbians in this activism. | 34:21 |
You don't have to have been a lesbian at the time. | 34:24 | |
Like the fact that you weren't a lesbian | 34:26 | |
when you first went to the clinic, | 34:28 | |
that doesn't matter. | 34:30 | |
But we're not interviewing people | 34:31 | |
who were just activists and are straight. | 34:33 | |
And have always been. | 34:35 | |
- | Uh-huh. | 34:36 |
- | Kinda limits us. | 34:38 |
But then they're covered well elsewhere. | 34:39 | |
- | Yeah, well Margie, whose name I just mentioned, | 34:43 |
she's actually a psychiatrist, | 34:47 | |
and she's a lesbian feminist, | 34:49 | |
and is very active in the American Psychiatric Association | 34:52 | |
as a lesbian feminist. | 34:58 | |
- | Okay, give me her name | 35:01 |
and if you have her contact information I'll call her. | 35:02 | |
- | Okay, you know what, I'll send you by email | 35:05 |
her email contact. | 35:10 | |
I'm not sure if I have her, | 35:12 | |
I know Sara, my partner, has a number. | 35:13 | |
- | Okay. | 35:16 |
- | But she's not home right now. | 35:17 |
- | Okay. | 35:18 |
- | I will. | 35:19 |
Because, actually, Margie's | 35:20 | |
one of the reasons that we're in Durham. | 35:25 | |
When we wanted to leave Gainesville, | 35:28 | |
I was actually giving a paper | 35:31 | |
in an anthropology conference | 35:33 | |
at the beach. | 35:39 | |
Waynesville Beach in North Carolina. | 35:41 | |
So we took that opportunity to drive | 35:43 | |
totally from one side of North Carolina to another | 35:47 | |
to see if North Carolina was a place we might wanna move. | 35:50 | |
And Byllye was already in Atlanta | 35:54 | |
and really urging us to come to Atlanta. | 35:55 | |
It's like, ugh, big city, | 35:57 | |
I've already done that. (coughs) | 35:59 | |
- | Yeah. | 36:00 |
- | So we actually came to Durham. | 36:02 |
Of course, I'd been in your college. | 36:05 | |
And a friend of Sara's knew Margie and said, | 36:08 | |
"You might wanna get up with this friend of mine | 36:12 | |
"and she can tell you all about living in Durham." | 36:15 | |
And, yeah, she became one of our friends. | 36:18 | |
And she was a big reason that we're here. | 36:20 | |
- | Whoa. | 36:25 |
- | Yeah, and then she kinda told me | 36:26 |
about the women's health group. | 36:28 | |
She wasn't in it anymore, | 36:30 | |
but she was one of the founders. | 36:31 | |
I think of the early group, | 36:35 | |
most of those women were lesbians. | 36:38 | |
But certainly that's not, | 36:40 | |
I mean there were lots of women who, I'd say | 36:44 | |
it was more likely that are not lesbian | 36:47 | |
who are in the group this point. | 36:50 | |
I mean, they don't differentiate, let's just say that. | 36:53 | |
Some of the women are lesbians, | 36:56 | |
but I think most of them are straight women. | 36:57 | |
- | So you grew up in Baltimore, Maryland, | 37:00 |
and then you went to Chapman here? | 37:03 | |
Or Duke, or...? | 37:05 | |
- | I went to Duke, yeah. | 37:06 |
And then when I graduated from Duke, | 37:08 | |
then I moved to New York City. | 37:10 | |
That's where I met my ex husband. | 37:12 | |
And I had my kids there. | 37:14 | |
And then we moved to Gainesville. | 37:17 | |
- | In what year did you move to Gainesville? | 37:20 |
- | We moved to Gainesville in '72. | 37:22 |
In the fall of '72. | 37:29 | |
And I started nursing school in '73. | 37:31 | |
And the clinic opened in '74. | 37:36 | |
- | Okay. | 37:39 |
- | I was the valedictorian in my class | 37:43 |
and the people in the nursing school | 37:45 | |
were so ready to get me outta there | 37:48 | |
because I was such a damn trouble maker. | 37:51 | |
(Rose laughs) | 37:53 | |
Well, part of it was that I was a lot older | 37:55 | |
than the rest of the students. | 37:57 | |
I was like (laughs) right now | 37:59 | |
saying how old I was, it seems so young. | 38:01 | |
At the time I was 33, | 38:05 | |
and most of the other students were like 22. | 38:08 | |
So they all came to me for support and counseling. | 38:12 | |
When they didn't like what was going on | 38:19 | |
in the nursing program | 38:20 | |
I got to be the spokesperson | 38:21 | |
for everything that was wrong with the nursing program. | 38:23 | |
So the dean was like, | 38:25 | |
"Ugh, let me get you outta this place!" | 38:27 | |
But, unfortunately for her, | 38:30 | |
I had been chosen to be the valedictorian, | 38:32 | |
so I gave this speech at our nursing graduation | 38:34 | |
that was all about how nurses | 38:39 | |
are not the handmaiden of physicians. | 38:40 | |
And, you know, I cited Barbara Ehrenreich | 38:42 | |
and all these people that, probably, | 38:45 | |
the people in the nursing school | 38:48 | |
hadn't even heard of before. | 38:48 | |
(Rose laughs) | 38:51 | |
They were really ready to get me outta that place, | 38:52 | |
I'll tell to what. | 38:56 | |
- | Is that University of Florida, or another school? | 38:58 |
- | It's Florida. | 39:01 |
- | Yeah, right. | 39:03 |
- | University of Florida. | 39:05 |
Just regular bachelors of nursing program. | 39:07 | |
- | All right. | 39:10 |
That was your orient, and then | 39:11 | |
did you get the PhD there too? | 39:12 | |
- | I'm sorry? | 39:15 |
- | Did you get-- | 39:16 |
- | I got my PhD in anthropology | 39:17 |
from the University of Florida, yeah. | 39:19 | |
- | Oh, okay. | 39:21 |
- | So when I left the clinic I went into the | 39:22 |
PhD program and then, yeah. | 39:26 | |
So, Byllye and Margaret and Judy used to tease me | 39:30 | |
about all my different degrees | 39:33 | |
and that I was going backwards, | 39:34 | |
'cause of course I, you know. | 39:36 | |
(Rose guffaws) | 39:39 | |
Getting two bachelor's degrees, | 39:40 | |
and two masters degrees, only one PhD. | 39:42 | |
(Rose laughs) | 39:44 | |
Yeah. | 39:45 | |
- | At the end of this. | |
- | So now one of the things I do, | 39:47 |
I'm an independent consultant | 39:51 | |
so I do lots of different things, | 39:52 | |
so one of the things I do is teach a course | 39:54 | |
in empowerment education at the University of North Carolina | 39:56 | |
at the School of Public Health. | 39:59 | |
Which, you know (coughs) | 40:02 | |
makes for an interesting watching of basketball games. | 40:05 | |
'Cause I have a split allegiance between | 40:08 | |
Duke, where I graduated, and UNC, where I'm teaching. | 40:13 | |
Anyhow, so any other questions | 40:19 | |
or things that you wanna know about the clinic, | 40:22 | |
or the times, or the people? | 40:25 | |
- | Yeah, there's just one thing I wanna go back to. | 40:27 |
You were with New York Radical Women, | 40:30 | |
and that didn't last very long. | 40:32 | |
So you must have been there at the very early times. | 40:35 | |
- | Yeah, I was there in 1970. | 40:39 |
We moved to Gainesville in '72 | 40:43 | |
and, so, yeah, I was a New York Radical Feminist | 40:46 | |
from '70 to '72. | 40:52 | |
And then, at that same time I was working at-- | 40:55 | |
Well, actually, it was probably more like '70 to '71. | 40:58 | |
'Cause in '72 we lived outside the city. | 41:02 | |
We lived up in | 41:06 | |
a place called Golden's Bridge (laughs), | 41:11 | |
which you probably haven't heard of. | 41:12 | |
Yeah, and then I would ride the train then | 41:15 | |
on Saturdays and work at the Eastern Women's Health Center. | 41:18 | |
And ride back at night. | 41:23 | |
- | So you must have had your consciousness-- | 41:28 |
- | Quite a long day, I'm willing to say. | 41:30 |
I think I got up at something like 6:00 and fed the babies. | 41:32 | |
'Cause of course I nursed with the twins | 41:37 | |
til they were three years old. | 41:40 | |
So I would nurse them and take the train into the city, | 41:42 | |
and work all day and take the train back, | 41:45 | |
and nurse 'em and put 'em to bed, and do that. | 41:48 | |
Usually Saturdays and Sundays. | 41:52 | |
Sometimes just Saturdays. | 41:55 | |
For about a year. | 41:56 | |
- | What year were they born? | 41:58 |
- | They were born in 1970. | 42:01 |
- | Oh, the very year that you, | 42:03 |
that they joined you at a women right. | 42:04 | |
- | Yeah, I actually had to keep my Saturday, | 42:07 |
that and the public radio station were my salvation. | 42:11 | |
'Cause I went from being a professional person | 42:15 | |
and doing work in the world | 42:18 | |
to kind of being at home a lot, with two little babies. | 42:21 | |
And there's a lot of drudgery that's associated | 42:26 | |
with changing diapers and watching two little kids. | 42:29 | |
So, yeah, the New York Radical Feminist groups | 42:34 | |
were really my salvation anyways. | 42:38 | |
And WBAI, the radio station, was on the whole time too. | 42:41 | |
It would put it on so I kept my contact | 42:46 | |
with the world beyond babydom. | 42:49 | |
And, don't get me wrong, I loved | 42:52 | |
having babies and being a mother, | 42:56 | |
but it was a big adjustment for me | 42:58 | |
to just be home all the time. | 43:00 | |
So I was happy to have these other connections to the world. | 43:03 | |
- | Sure. | 43:09 |
What did you major doing in college? | 43:10 | |
- | I have a double major in psychology and zoology. | 43:15 |
When I first went to Duke | 43:19 | |
I wanted to be a physician. | 43:21 | |
And I was one of only a couple of women | 43:25 | |
in all my science classes. | 43:29 | |
It was really pretty segregated. | 43:31 | |
It was really segregated in terms of | 43:36 | |
there were no people of color when I started at Duke, none. | 43:38 | |
When I was a junior they admitted | 43:43 | |
five African American students. | 43:45 | |
And that was a huge deal. | 43:48 | |
In fact, they just had a celebration a couple weeks ago | 43:50 | |
of the first five students of color | 43:55 | |
that were admitted to Duke. | 43:59 | |
It was really segregated by gender too, | 44:04 | |
in terms of science classes. | 44:07 | |
A lot of the guys would say to me, | 44:09 | |
"Well you're the kind we'd like to marry, | 44:11 | |
"not somebody who should be a doctor." | 44:13 | |
(Rose groans) | 44:15 | |
And I really got discouraged. | 44:16 | |
And I also wasn't particularly strong in the sciences. | 44:20 | |
So it was tough for me academically. | 44:24 | |
And while I was at Duke | 44:29 | |
I got a job on the psych ward at Duke Hospital, | 44:33 | |
Duke Medical Center. | 44:38 | |
And, again, a job I loved. | 44:39 | |
And so while I got | 44:42 | |
involved in psychiatry, | 44:47 | |
I thought, well, psychology is... | 44:49 | |
You don't have to be a psychiatrist. | 44:51 | |
You can be a psychologist. | 44:52 | |
So I switched from being pre-med | 44:54 | |
to getting a degree is psychology. | 44:58 | |
But I already had so many science credits, | 45:01 | |
and that's how I got a dual major. | 45:05 | |
Really, the thing I was most interested in was psychology. | 45:08 | |
And then when I went to New York | 45:11 | |
I went to the new school for social research | 45:14 | |
and got a masters in psychology. | 45:16 | |
So I was heading in that direction | 45:20 | |
and then, really, the New York Radical Feminists. | 45:24 | |
That experience, really got me going | 45:29 | |
on wanting to be a nurse midwife. | 45:31 | |
Wanting to be a midwife, | 45:33 | |
and then I got the message | 45:34 | |
that had to be a nurse | 45:38 | |
before I could be a nurse midwife. | 45:40 | |
So that's why I went to nursing school. | 45:41 | |
I was not dying to go to nursing school, | 45:43 | |
but it seemed like the only way | 45:45 | |
I was gonna get to be a nurse midwife. | 45:47 | |
And then the clinic came along | 45:50 | |
and I changed directions again. | 45:52 | |
So I've done a lot of changing directions in my life. | 45:54 | |
I mean it all sort of hangs together | 45:59 | |
in some sense of the word, but I've been | 46:01 | |
various degrees of commitment to different | 46:07 | |
disciplines, I guess. | 46:12 | |
But, really, the medical anthropology | 46:16 | |
has really served my well. | 46:18 | |
And my nursing degree has opened a lot of doors, | 46:19 | |
even though now if someone's life depended on me | 46:22 | |
starting an IV, they would be dead in three seconds. | 46:27 | |
'Cause I'm really not a clinical nurse at this point. | 46:30 | |
Since the clinic I have not worked in clinical nursing. | 46:34 | |
- | What did you do as a medical anthropologist? | 46:39 |
Was it teaching? | 46:41 | |
- | Well, I've done some teaching. | 46:44 |
Really I've seen myself through | 46:46 | |
as a cultural broker. | 46:48 | |
Helping the health care system understand | 46:50 | |
the cultural belief and practices of clients | 46:52 | |
that they're there to serve | 46:56 | |
so that they weave their message into | 46:58 | |
the cultural context of the patient, | 47:00 | |
rather than asking patients to do things | 47:03 | |
that don't work in their own lives. | 47:06 | |
So one of the things I did in Gainesville | 47:09 | |
is I was employed by the Family Medicine Program | 47:11 | |
to take medical students out on home visits | 47:14 | |
so that they would see how their patients lived. | 47:19 | |
Because they would make recommendations like, | 47:23 | |
"Well, you need to take a sitz bath." | 47:25 | |
And it's like, these people don't have running water. | 47:28 | |
How are we gonna do a sitz bath? | 47:30 | |
You know, and just like, oh they don't have a bathtub, | 47:32 | |
or they don't have heat. | 47:34 | |
And so it was really eye opening for them | 47:39 | |
to go out and visit the patients on their own terms, | 47:42 | |
and not just what they felt of the patient | 47:46 | |
when the patient came to clinic. | 47:49 | |
So that was kind of a fun job. | 47:51 | |
And so, yeah I've done different things. | 47:54 | |
I do a lot right now of developing curricula and training. | 47:57 | |
I'm doing a lot of workshops for physicians, | 48:03 | |
or PAs, or nurses around different health issues | 48:06 | |
or different ways of communicating. | 48:11 | |
If you're a medical anthropologist | 48:16 | |
and you're not in academia, | 48:18 | |
you pretty much have to do a lot of educating | 48:20 | |
of potential employers | 48:23 | |
about how you might be able to help them. | 48:26 | |
Because most people don't put a sign up | 48:28 | |
saying looking for a medical anthropologist. | 48:32 | |
(laughing) | 48:34 | |
Yeah, so you have to kind of help them see how you can | 48:35 | |
offer something to them | 48:40 | |
or be an asset to their team. | 48:42 | |
Now I'm trying, | 48:45 | |
trying, trying, | 48:47 | |
my partner, more than me, is trying for me to | 48:48 | |
(laughs) lie down and do less work | 48:51 | |
'cause I'm 69 now and a lot of people my age are retired. | 48:53 | |
But I'm not ready | 48:58 | |
to just not work. | 49:02 | |
So I'm trying to slow down. | 49:05 | |
I'm not real successful at it, | 49:09 | |
but I'm helped in that process by the fact | 49:11 | |
that I have four grandchildren | 49:15 | |
who I take a lot of responsibility for taking care of. | 49:16 | |
So that helps me slow down | 49:21 | |
in terms of not working outside the home, | 49:25 | |
because I'm working inside the home taking care of them. | 49:28 | |
And, unlike raising twins, | 49:32 | |
these children are different ages. | 49:35 | |
And so they're at different developmental stages. | 49:38 | |
I was just saying to one of their mothers yesterday that, | 49:40 | |
you know, twins, I mean, | 49:45 | |
people think twins are so hard, | 49:47 | |
but twins are in the same developmental stage | 49:48 | |
so they kinda track each other. | 49:51 | |
But when you've got an eight year old, and a six year old, | 49:54 | |
and a four year old, and a three year old, | 49:57 | |
they're all sort of in different places | 49:59 | |
and what one will be happy doing for four hours | 50:01 | |
the other one will last 10 minutes doing. (laughs) | 50:06 | |
So they're keeping me young, let's just say that. | 50:09 | |
- | Yeah, no that sounds good. | 50:14 |
- | Yeah, I love it but it's a lot. | 50:16 |
In fact, my sister was visiting recently | 50:22 | |
and they happened to be here | 50:24 | |
and when they left she said, | 50:25 | |
"Wow, that's a lotta energy in that house, isn't it?" | 50:27 | |
And I said, sure is! | 50:29 | |
(Rose laughs) | ||
- | Right! | 50:31 |
- | It's a lot of energy! | 50:32 |
- | Yeah, a lot of that flows, I get it. | 50:34 |
I wanted to check the spelling of your partner's name. | 50:39 | |
Sara with an h? | 50:42 | |
- | No. | 50:43 |
- | No h? | 50:44 |
No h, okay. | 50:45 | |
- | I was known as Betsy David when I was at the clinic. | 50:48 |
I noticed in a few different transcripts | 50:51 | |
that that's how people refer to me. | 50:53 | |
I only sorta reclaimed my birth name | 50:55 | |
when I got divorced. | 51:00 | |
- | So that's the boys' last name? | 51:02 |
Your son's last name is David? | 51:04 | |
- | Uh-huh, yeah. | 51:06 |
- | So Randall's your birth name. | 51:07 |
- | Yep. | 51:10 |
- | Okay. | 51:11 |
- | Yeah, my name was Betsy Randall, | 51:12 |
and then we got married, | 51:16 | |
and then I just dropped, I dunno why, | 51:17 | |
but anyhow I dropped my maiden name | 51:19 | |
and just went to Betsy David. | 51:22 | |
And then when I got divorces I hyphenated Randall. | 51:23 | |
- | When did you get divorced? | 51:28 |
- | Official name. | |
- | Was that while you were at the clinic? | 51:31 |
- | No, I was still married | 51:36 |
the whole time I was at the clinic. | 51:39 | |
Just was Betsy David then. | 51:41 | |
But then I changed from. | 51:44 | |
Well, I got divorced (coughs) | 51:47 | |
officially when the boys were 13. | 51:49 | |
And I left the clinic when they were eight. | 51:52 | |
So for five more years I was still Betsy David, I guess. | 51:57 | |
Then when I finally did get divorced | 52:02 | |
it was just, really, a formality. | 52:06 | |
I was living with Sara. | 52:08 | |
But I still was married. | 52:11 | |
And then my ex husband decided to get married, | 52:15 | |
and so we needed to get divorced. | 52:18 | |
That was the impetus for changing my name. | 52:22 | |
I wanted to have some name, | 52:26 | |
a point of identity with my kids. | 52:30 | |
So both of my guys are here in North Carolina, | 52:33 | |
and they're both district attorneys. | 52:36 | |
So elected officials. | 52:38 | |
(Rose laughs) | ||
- | Wow. | 52:40 |
- | Yeah, and their districts | 52:42 |
are conjoining districts. | 52:44 | |
So one of 'em has two counties | 52:48 | |
and then the three counties | 52:51 | |
on the side of those two counties | 52:52 | |
are the other guy's district. | 52:54 | |
- | That worked out. | 52:57 |
- | They're a lot of fun. | 52:59 |
I love being a Randall now. | 53:01 | |
We're very close. | 53:04 | |
So then one of 'em had three kids, | 53:07 | |
and one of 'em has one and a third kids. | 53:09 | |
So we're gonna have one more baby in our family. | 53:12 | |
- | Wow. | 53:15 |
- | And I think that'll be it. | 53:16 |
Well, we'll see. | 53:18 | |
- | Well, that's nice. | 53:22 |
- | So I've got | |
a lot of little children around. | 53:23 | |
(laughs) | 53:25 | |
- | Yeah. | 53:28 |
- | Yeah. | |
- | Well, okay, I think I have plenty here. | 53:30 |
I'm gonna-- | 53:32 | |
- | Okay. | |
- | I'm going to-- | 53:34 |
- | Did take a while-- | |
So you're gonna type up the transcript | 53:36 | |
and then send it to me, | 53:39 | |
is that how it works? | 53:40 | |
- | Yes. | 53:40 |
And it won't be an official transcript | 53:41 | |
word for word everything we said. | 53:44 | |
Although, you know what I forgot to say | 53:46 | |
at the front of this tape? | 53:48 | |
I'm gonna have to add it to the front. | 53:50 | |
This is Rose Norman, | 53:51 | |
I'm interviewing Elizabeth Randall-David | 53:52 | |
on February 25, 2013, by phone. | 53:55 | |
I hate it when I forget to say that. | 54:01 | |
Because we are gonna work on these audio tapes at Duke. | 54:05 | |
They have the Sallie Bingham Center. | 54:08 | |
- | Uh-huh, great! | 54:11 |
- | So we've got that release form was for that. | 54:13 |
But we need a grant to get somebody | 54:17 | |
to do the official transcripts. | 54:20 | |
It takes a very long time. | 54:23 | |
Like, it would probably | 54:25 | |
take eight hours. | 54:26 | |
- | Believe me, I know. | |
(laughing) | 54:27 | |
- | But what I will do is | 54:29 |
I'm gonna transcribe my notes. | 54:30 | |
I've been taking notes while talking to you. | 54:33 | |
And then I will rearrange things in such a way | 54:36 | |
that I think it will read well. | 54:38 | |
And then I'll send that to you. | 54:41 | |
And I can send you a CD with the audio | 54:43 | |
if you wanna listen to it. | 54:45 | |
But I will listen to audio | 54:46 | |
with places where I knew you said things | 54:48 | |
I wanted to write down | 54:50 | |
but I couldn't write fast enough. | 54:51 | |
- | Right, uh-huh. | 54:52 |
- | So it's sort of a hybrid. | 54:53 |
It's not a transcript, | 54:56 | |
but it's a fast way of getting to what we can use published. | 54:57 | |
- | Uh-huh. | 55:02 |
And when are you thinking that you'll have something | 55:03 | |
to give 'em to publish? | 55:06 | |
- | Well, we have a November 1st deadline | 55:08 |
for the spring issue of Sinister Wisdom. | 55:11 | |
One issue is 35,000 words, | 55:16 | |
and we've already got about 50,000 words. | 55:18 | |
So I've talked to them about that. (laughs) | 55:20 | |
And they said, "Well, send us what you have in May. | 55:23 | |
"And we'll tell you whether it can be | 55:26 | |
"a double issue or not." | 55:27 | |
Social Wisdom is our immediate publication | 55:32 | |
for this time next year, | 55:34 | |
but we've also got a lesbian publisher | 55:35 | |
who we figure anything we don't publish in Sinister Wisdom, | 55:40 | |
that where it's gonna go. | 55:44 | |
So that's been our driver. | 55:48 | |
- | Looks like you have a lot of work cut out for you. | 55:49 |
- | Yeah, but it's fun. | 55:52 |
I enjoy it. | 55:53 | |
There's love. | 55:54 | |
It's working out. | 55:55 | |
- | I'm sure! | |
Yeah, sounds great! | 55:56 | |
- | Yeah, yeah it is. | 55:57 |
- | Alrighty, well I'll look forward | 56:00 |
to getting something from you. | 56:02 | |
And I know that you have a lot going on | 56:03 | |
in your personal life. | 56:05 | |
So I'll just get it when I get it. | 56:06 | |
- | And you'll look up Margie's information? | 56:11 |
- | Yeah, now I've made myself a note | 56:13 |
and I'm pretty good about follow up. | 56:15 | |
So I will send you Margie's email and phone number. | 56:17 | |
And then she has people | 56:20 | |
she could hook you up with too | 56:25 | |
in terms of that original group. | 56:26 | |
- | Yeah, that would be nice. | 56:28 |
- | Several of them stay in touch. | 56:30 |
Yeah, good. | 56:33 | |
Okay, well Rose it was really fun to talk with you, | 56:34 | |
and I look forward to seeing-- | 56:36 |
Item Info
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