Support from young families in the community
Though she had support from the families around her, Lane discovered toward the end of her career that she had broken ground for many younger women. Very few other women of her generation, however, had made choices similar to hers.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Mary Turner Lane, September 9 and 16, 1986; May 21, 1987; October 1 and 28, 1987. Interview L-0039. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
- MARY TURNER LANE:
-
I always lived where there were little girls next door. That was one of
the ways I overcame the guilt of not being home in the afternoon. I
always lived where I had wonderful friends next door who were the
parents of these little girls. And these women really created an
extended—well, the women and the men, the couples in all of
these houses—became our extended families. Mary Ellen was as
free to go to their homes in the afternoons as their children were to
come to my home any time I was there. So that was really how I managed.
If I had not had good friends who were full time wives and mothers, I
couldn't have done it. They were the key, in addition to my
own family who were always supportive, who could always step in. Mary
Ellen could go to them, or they could come to me. But it was those couples. It was those non-working women that made
it possible for me to study, to go to school, to work full-time.
- PAMELA DEAN:
-
Were there any other women that you knew at this time who were in a
position similar to yours?
- MARY TURNER LANE:
-
No. That's another facet that has been very difficult. There
were no women; it's strange. I did not know any young widows.
I did not know any widows who were my age who were single parents or who
were working. I was very much alone in that sense.
- PAMELA DEAN:
-
That must have been very difficult.
- MARY TURNER LANE:
-
I didn't realize how difficult until I began to think about
retiring. As I was working through with a counselor, we picked up on
this. She said, "This is strange." You've
never had a woman in exactly your position, even when I retired. I
wasn't working that out with other women who were retiring at
that time. Because the women I knew at the university are fifteen to
twenty years younger than I. They're not ready for
retirement. So there's so few women, and there certainly were
none in New Bern when I went back as a widow. There were none in Chapel
Hill when I was working this out. So it was a strange set of
circumstances.
- PAMELA DEAN:
-
I would think that there would have been other women, war widows.
- MARY TURNER LANE:
-
Yes, that's interesting. So many of them, even my friend whose
husband was killed at Pearl Harbor, married again.