<Begin Segment 24>

BF: Let's go back to, you mentioned that you decided to go back to the university, and it sounded like there were, your plate was very full at that time --

AS: Yes, it was.

BF: -- and yet you still really needed to do this. And I wanted to know where you found the courage to make that decision, or what, what really was prompting that?

AS: Okay, well, it was something that I had wanted to do -- I truly regretted that I had dropped the education. All the reasons were understandable, but I should have kept going. But anyhow -- and I was feeling, because so many of my friends had college educations, and the people that we associated with had college educations, and I don't think they realized that I didn't have a college education. But I felt, "Well, I should." It's something I had always wanted to do. I remember as a small child, one of my favorite cousins -- who's now ninety-six years old, or ninety-seven -- was a social worker, got her degree at the University of Washington. I just thought she was the nicest, nicest person. Although when I first got to know this cousin, I'm sure I was -- she may not have been in college at that time, but I knew that she did go to the university. Well, there were, yeah, sixteen years' difference, she would have been. And so, but it was hard to, after two kids and my mother's health wasn't great and so I was helping her and I was helping my husband, and my grandparents, my grandmother, especially, was not doing too well, and so there was just... it was hard. And, well, actually, I did become very depressed, and I was fortunate enough to be referred to a psychiatrist. Actually, it was a clinic, and it's gone now, but started by a psychiatrist from Menninger Hospital, and it was called Pinel, and people from way back, that would have been... see, Marilyn was six, she was born in... it would be about 1954, and it was, you pay what you could afford. I mean, it was a situation that was just incredible, and I had this wonderful psychiatrist. And it was through, working through issues that... and the psychiatrist said, "Well, what's stopping you from going to the university?" And I thought, "God, I never thought of that." [Laughs] I mean, it always just seemed like a huge obstacle. It was just too much... you know. And so I thought, "Okay, as soon as Marilyn is in the first grade, I'm gonna go."

BF: And did you get much support once you made the decision?

AS: No. [Laughs]

BF: No. [Laughs]

AS: So I did it on my own, and I loved it. Oh, just loved it.

<End Segment 24> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.