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I guess I was a prototypical child of the sixties, went to Randoph-Macon Women's College in Virginia, where I stirred things up by doing a Freshman project surveying student attitudes about having Black students attend-which greatly upset the Administration but was then used by the Board of Trustees that Spring to announce an Open Admissions Policy, and one of the young women I worked with at the "Negro" YWCA became one of the first to attend, and later went on to serve on the Board of Trustees. I did a lot of acting, but after a summer in New York, hanging around actors in Greenwich Village, I realised I had neither the talent nor the drive to make it. I died on the vine living out in the country (small town) with only women at R-MWC, so desperately wanted to "get out of Dodge", and ended up at UCBerkeley just in time for the Student Revolution, where I immediately got arrested in the Free Speech Movement along with 800 plus other students, having been led into Sproul Hall (the Administration building) by Joan Baez, singing "We Shall Overcome"! My father later "disowned me" for all my political activity, and I ended up dropping out of school for a year----(also, because I had finished my requirements for my French major my junior year, (also having spent a summer at the Sorbonne is Paris), and realized I did not want to become a French professor, and didn't know what I wanted to do when I grew up). (I was almost ashamed of wanting to do something, because working for "The Man" was contributing to the "oppressive capitalist system")! I guess that whole period was the favorite part of my life...being so idealistic and working really hard to change to change things (while having plenty of fun at the same time - I won't mention the drug and psychedelic scene, but will say hitchhiking (the only time I ever did!) to see the last live Beatles concert was an incredible experience, as were all the other San Francisco psychedelic rock shows). I did not, however, have enough of an adventurous streak to travel the countryside with my long term boyfriend (with 2 master's degrees, but no job, in his panel truck, nor have his baby, so we eventually broke up! At year's end I went back to school, studying political science and sociology, and got a fabulous part time job thru Berkeley, as a low-income college student (remember the being disowned?although by then my father was sending me money every month as a loan, which he forgave after I graduated!), mentoring low income and minority high school students to attend college. After 3 weeks on the job, I turned to the high school counselor, and said, "you mean they actually pay people to do this?" I thought I had died and gone to heaven! And from that moment to this, I have not had a second thought about what i wanted to do, and I am still doing it, with no plans to ever retire, just work less and less, as I get older or get Alzheimer's! I started out in social work with welfare recipients, went to graduate school in social work at USC, worked in Child Protective Services, Foster Care, and Adoptions, Founded a Center for Abusive Parents, Worked at a hospital as a Pediatric Medical Social Worker, a Coordinator Of Evaluations for children with developmental or learning disabilities, in a psychoanalytic Clinic, coordinating treatment for children with emotional problems. Then 27 years ago I went into private practice, for a good while had one of my offices in a large pediatric practice, had a corporation that I headed with 2 clinical psychologists and a child psychiatrist, and now have 2 offices, one in San Francisco, and one in San Mateo (south of San Francisco) even though I live in the East Bay (Oakland) in a building I co-own! My private life has not been nearly so settled. Two guys in my 20's wanted to get married, but I thought I was going to suffocate. I got engaged in my 30's to someone I lived with for 6 years, but called off the wedding 3 months before we were to get married. i think my mother dying suddenly in the night when I was 13, made it impossible for me to commit to husband or children, for fear of what could happen. And years of my own therapy could not seem to dislodge the fear....( we know a lot more now about post-traumatic fears now!) I did have a lovely relationship with someone for 13 years until he died, but we never lived together. My "child fix" has been somewhat alleviated by having half of my therapy practice with children, and having my twin nieces whose mother (my sister-in-law) died when they were nine. Although they grew up in LA, I saw them at least every couple of months, and am still quite close. They have each recently gotten their PhD's in physics and chemical engineering (God love 'em) and one got married last year. The other married a man she met in the Peace Corps but that didn't work out. In the last 5 years, I have lost my oldest brother to esophageal cancer, my stepmother at 98, my stepbrother John Mandell, class of '63,on Christmas morning 2 years ago to a heart attack, and alas, my father died when I was 27 of Hodgkins Disease. I feel very grateful to be alive and kicking! I have a # of chronic illnesses, which I try not to let slow me down (though no more walking half-marathons, skiing, or backpacking. Still hike some, swim, and bicycle. Traveling is my most favorite thing; have been most all over Asia in 3 trips, including China and Tibet, Turkey 2 years ago, and just now am planning a trip to Palestine to visit a friend who is a Fulbright scholar there, and then go on a small ship up the Dalmation Coast from Athens to Croatia. Theatre, politics (I volunteered for Obama in Nevada in 2008, and will do so again this year), and friends round out my pretty full life. Oh Dear, hope I haven't bored everyone to tears, reading all this.....guess it's hard to sum up 50 years! The biggest thing is I can't believe it's been 50 years! Oh, well, it will be great fun to see everyone!
