Yesterday I attended a Tea where Vanda Krefft spoke about her book—a history of the Katharine Gibbs School. Invited by a good friend, I enthusiastically accepted. The Tea was a fundraiser for the local AAUW (American Association of University Women) scholarship program.

Plus, I had a special interest in the topic. Krefft spoke about the history of the legendary school that trained young women for key positions, as secretaries to important and powerful executives. Early in the twentieth century, such positions were exclusively held by men and coveted, as they were viewed as spingboards to upward mobility. But Katharine Gibbs changed all that, with college-level academic courses, exacting requirements in stenographic skills, demanding rules regarding dress and comportment.

I was there simply to socialize, to support a good cause, and to enjoy the tea sandwiches and scones. I hadn’t expected to be asked to speak. But I made the mistake of mentioning, when I checked in that I was, in fact, a “Katie Gibbs girl.” Thus, at the end of very end of the program I was handed a microphone and asked to say a few words.

This is a bit of an expansion on what I said:

I completed the School’s two-year liberal arts program in 1966 and earned a Merit Certificate (which meant I got straight A’s, could type 100 words a minute, and take shorthand at 140 wpm).

My first job was secretary to a partner in a white shoe Boston Law Firm on State Street, just across from the old State House. Moving on, I was hired to be a secretary in the Technial Control Center, part of Polaroid Corporation’s Research Division, keeping track of the eight or so engineers who kept Polaroid’s film manufacturing plants running. I used to volunteer (once my own work was done) in the Color Lab, where I helped mix photographic reagents and test them in the dark room.*

My boss, a PhD Chemical Engineer was Polaroid’s liaison with Ansel Adams who field tested various film types as they were being developed or refined. And so my job, was shipping film samples off to Ansel. (He would send back memos detailing his observations.) Every once in a while, Ansel would come to Cambridge to confer with Dr. Land and “the boys” (as one of the older secretaries called all the engineers), and back then (in the early 1970s) when Tech Square was a food desert, a couple of us would drive over to Harvard Square to pick up sandwiches and pastry from The Window Shop (housed in Longfellow’s House on Brattle Street) or roast beef on bulkie rolls from Elsie’s.

It was an undemanding job, with here-and-there highlights–the day Ansel Adams stood by my desk with his cheerful smile, neat white beard and bolo tie as I typed up a letter he had hand written; the time Dr. Land asked for someone to take shorthand at a technical troubleshooting session with the team developing Polavision.

Some days I sat at my desk making paper Christmas ornaments, typing my recipes on 3 x 5 cards, writing short stories. Mr. Penfire and I had been married just a few years. We were both working. He was going to school at night. We had managed to put together a down payment on a two-family house. Our focus was on socializing with family and friends and making ends meet.

My mind was not focused on the upward mobility Katharine Gibbs had envisioned for young women. But it happened anyway.

I saw a posting for an after-hours opportunity: teaching classes two nights a week to employees studying to take earn their G.E.D. (high school equivalency) certificates. The job paid $6/hour I believe. ($6 went a lot further back then than it does now; just think, our budget for groceries was $25 a week.) I signed on and in doing so tapped into a new circle of colleagues. The woman who ran the program encouraged me to apply for a position that was open for an Editorial Assistant.

And so I became an Editor in charge of Polaroid’s Customer service publications. And two years later, when I left on maternity leave, my corporate career ended and my career as a freelance editor/copywriter began.

I’ve always been a writer. My lifelong dream (and fantasy) was that I would one day make money by selling stories and articles to newspaper and magazines. Little did I know that I could make money with far less uncertainty and hassle simply by writing what client wanted—product promotional materials, packaging and instructions, corporate brochures, speeches, and scripts. As an at-home Mom, community volunteer—AND freelance writer, I had no time to circle back to my original dream: writing whatever I wanted. Until now.

My freelance business is shuttered. My children have long since launched themselves into adulthood. My volunteer activities are pretty much limited to driving grandchildren hither and yon in the car I’ve nicknamed “the Nana-mobile.” And I write what I want.


A word on that just-out-of-school job search.

If you grow up in Boston, grow up knowing that Harvard University represents a pinnacle in terms of academic excellence, storied history, and, yes, prestige. With my Merit Certificate from Katharine Gibbs, I thought it made sense to go from what was sometimes called “the Harvard of Secretarial Schools” to the REAL Harvard. But when I applied for a job there, I was told I could not be hired, despite my stellar qualifications. “We owe it to the parents of our students to be certain that any young women they come in contact with on the campus will be college graduates.” My Merit Certificate meant nothing in that elite milieu.

Many years later, though, a colleague recruited me to join a team of instructors for an innovative writing workshop at the Harvard Business School. I spent two plus years teaching those HBS workshops and enjoyed the experience very much. And so, I am not bitter that Harvard would not hire me as a secretary back in the day.

I think Katharine Gibbs would be proud of me.