As part of Darlington's Centennial Celebration, the first Chapel of each month features an alumni guest speaker. Read the full text of the speech given by Joyce Riddle Neely ('62T) at Darlington's April 6 chapel service:
Thank you! Good morning.
Institutions have indefinite beginnings – they usually exist in the dreams of strong leaders before existing physically. Let’s just enter the “Birth Stream of Thornwood” about 50 years ago. Like today, it was spring – the spring of 1958.
Since 1905 Darlington had offered college prep courses to young men. There had been rumors for years that some of the town fathers thought something ought to be done about the inequity of education offered to their sons and not their daughters, and I’m told going co-ed at Darlington had been considered, as had establishing a female counterpart. But the critical mass had never materialized – perhaps parents reasoned that the girls just got married, might distract the young men, or couldn’t do the same level of work, and besides they were not admitted to some of the more competitive universities like UVA and Princeton, so why go to the expense?
Limited economic resources in a small north Georgia town probably combined with questions about women’s innate intellectual ability to delay creation of a female college preparatory academy. And lest you think that this line of reasoning is dead … ancient history not related to you … just ask Dr. Summers, the president of Harvard, if the female intellectual ability, at least in physics, is a settled question. Harvard’s discussion of this subject has been headline news for weeks. And I’d love for Darlington to have an open forum on the subject because I think Dr. Summers has a point – that political correctness may stifle – but that’s for another day.
Today we want to talk about Thornwood, and her confluence with and strengthening of Darlington, beginning in the ’50s.
Certainly this question of innate intellectual ability was alive and well in the ’50s, then the Brown vs. Board of Education line of cases were working their way through the courts. The issue there, of course, was equal public education in schools separating students by race. But if separate but equal was unconstitutional, public schools would be integrated, the first few years might be chaotic, and lowering of academic standards might result.
In the spring of ’58, looming integration of the public schools created the critical mass sought so long and Thornwood was to open in the fall. As rumor had turned to reality, I realized many of my friends were going to the new school, and while no one had come right out and said it, I was pretty sure my family’s budget would not stretch to accommodate such an expense. In those days, when a cherry Coke was a nickel, a hot dog a dime, movie ticket a quarter, private school tuition of a few hundred dollars would buy more than a pair of designer jeans!
I had secretly hoped, against the odds, that somehow I would find myself at Thornwood on opening day, but I was learning that life was what happened while you were planning something else. And I was, not unhappily, attending East Rome (High School) near the future Riverbend Mall. Things went well – weekends were still full of events that mixed students from Darlington, Thornwood and the high schools.
Then in the spring of ’59, on a day every bit as beautiful as today, my parents called me into the kitchen and asked if I had any interest in going to Thornwood for my sophomore year – my father had arranged to trade out my tuition in copy paper – and what did I think? I just sat there. Speechless. Mine was a family that valued education almost as much as religion and had sent women to college as far back as the 1800’s … intellectual snobbishness was a badge of honor. A great moment of longing merged with reality and set the stage for three years of opportunity that I never for one second took for granted.
The grand old sea captain’s home where many of you went to Lower School was a wonderful place, with dedicated teachers headed then by Randall Storms. Mrs. Primm taught four years of Latin, and Madame Monique sprinkled a little feminism in with the French grammar by refusing to wear bras, saying they were the devil’s invention to punish women. We entered chapel yelling, “The first of the gray and blue, Thornwood’s Class of ’62.” We wore uniforms on Fridays, blue blazers, gray pleated skirts. We must have looked a little like gray/blue boxes, topped by teased hair, balanced on thick bobby socks in solid shoes! It’s hard to relate that to the skin sight and skin tight jeans of high schoolers today. Ours was a time when neither jeans nor skin were seen on either campus.
There are other differences between the Thornwood of the ’50s and the Darlington of today. Chewing gum led to more disciplinary measures than any drug consumption. We knew drugs were out there – parents involved in medicine and law enforcement warned us and some of us had parents who had problems – but “Just say no to drugs” was a slogan none of us would have related to; drugs had never been offered. Few males drank alcohol and almost none of the girls, ever.
Elvis Presley with his suggestive hip gyrations worried our parents – viewed on the tiny four-inch black and white TV screens or in Vista vision at the movies, he threatened our innocence. Of course, parents will always be concerned about teen sexuality – how to treat it as the beautiful gift that it is, yet protect it from youthful indiscretion. We didn’t have any of Victoria’s Secrets; in fact, that catalog would have arrived, if at all, in a plain brown wrapper, been seen as pornographic, and secreted between the mattress or rafters. How we moved from Elvis to “Sex and the City” and rampant TV violence you are likely to find relaxing in front of the TV today still astounds my generation. It is our oversight; I apologize and hope you will help us correct it.
If you got sick during class and had to call your parents for a ride home, you used one of two phone lines that served the entire school of over 100 – and that seemed quite adequate.
Some things never change – cheating has been and always will be an issue we must educate and guard against. But then as now we all struggled – teachers and students together – to train young minds for life’s challenges, to instill honor and nurture decision making based on principles.
I hope some of you can identify with this sense of gratitude and opportunity. As a trustee, I’m very proud of the scholarships held by many of you – scholarships that did not exist in 1958 at either school – and I want your experience to be as life enhancing as mine was. Thornwood gave me the competitive edge needed for an academic scholarship to Hollins and a smooth transition into university courses. Later, I was one of four women in a class of over 200 at Emory Law School – having one teacher tell me that women did not belong in law school; he didn’t care how good their grades were, while other professors helped us adjust. But belong there or not, women now make up close to 50 percent of the student enrollments in law and medicine, although apparently physics is still a bit of a challenge.
But to you that is old news and not worth the telling, except to illustrate monumental change between your life and mine – that is the “career outside the home” orientation of most of your female role models. From better washing machines to reliable birth control, science released women from many of the more confining household chores, putting pressure on businesses and educational institutions to admit women to their circles of productivity.
Thornwood’s first graduating classes were on the front edge of that new movement. We had almost no role models. There were very few women who could have stood before you, as I am today, with extensive experience educationally and professionally outside the home and personally as a homemaker. We had teachers and nurses, but the heavy hitters, Queen Elizabeth, Golda Maier, and Eleanor Roosevelt were not seen on campus very often.
As young women, we were confused by the new message that we were to be athletic, intellectual, and income-producing (traits considered male for the last few hundred years) while also being sexy, slim, and secondary, or risk missing out on the rewards of a long term relationship. You tell me if it has really changed.
In a few short years you’ll sort through the sometimes bewildering number of options open. I don’t know what the best choice will be for you. Career panels at your college will include famous men and women from almost every field, but few in my experience will mention homemakers. Please remember that parenthood is still an honorable option. I have had many careers from corporate wife, mother, political speech writer, to TV anchor woman, trial lawyer, and community activist. They have all had their hugely satisfying highs, but none as been more difficult, more demanding of every “talent-and-inspiration” I could muster than motherhood.
As long as being the primary caregiver to children and keeper of the home falls to women, we balance our self esteem only if we can weave homemaking into the mosaic of success. And I have tried. But the people the world respects most may not respect or relate to the homemaker’s choice. For example, I have dined with presidents and prime ministers and seen their eyes glaze over when I identified myself as a full-time wife and mom. I had a similar experience when co-chairing a $4 million Head Start campaign. I wanted “homemaker” on the letterhead corresponding to titles of other campaign committee members – request denied! Of all the careers that made the letterhead, I saw none as more satisfying or challenging than motherhood. I failed with the letterhead – you, as moms and Mr. moms will find a way to succeed.
In summary, life is what happens while you’re planning something else. But of course you must have a plan, and review it often to be sure it fits your view of the future. Expect life to intervene and, occasionally, your plan to fail. You can fall back on the principles Darlington has worked for 100 years to instill, 50 of them in partnership with the Thornwood legacy. Seek the advice of people you respect, then take time alone to hear the voice within you, letting it lead you to the right course. When dealing with a particularly subtle decision, it may help to imagine your options as headlines in the local newspaper. Will it be, “Student faced with losing class ranking decides to cheat just this once”or “Student resists temptation.”
Take strength from this School, where intellectual experience is the purpose but religious experience is valued and encouraged. A strong religious system promotes healing and eases death. Love releases endorphins, increasing our sense of well being and self-worth. Don’t waste a second feeling guilt over the tremendous opportunity known as Darlington – just use it for good. You, one person among billions, have never been more powerful. The internet allows anyone to write the e-mail that sends a good idea ’round the world.
And, speaking of writing, please write to me – Jan Harrison has my address – tell me what you love most about Darlington and what you want to see changed. Help your trustees make this wonderful place even better in her second century. Corresponding is not something I do well, so I don’t promise a personal answer, but I do promise to read what you write and share it with the trustee education and student life committee – anonymously if you prefer.
Believe that regardless of race, sex, religion, or sexual orientation, you have a bit of the power of the Creator alive within you – whether your family calls it Yahweh or Allah or something else – and that may be what scares us the most is that potential.
My thanks to President Hendrix for inviting me here today; to those who honored me with a place on your Board; to Joe, my husband and friend of 37 years; my daughters who were merciless editors; to Ford, Andrea and Brennan, whom I hope I haven’t embarrassed too much; and to you for traveling with me through these remembrances and ruminations. God bless.
