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I have lived in California with my husband, Derek, for 33 years, after moving every few years in our early careers. We met at Yale when we were graduate students in psychology. After getting our PhD's, we moved to Durham, England where our daughter, Linda, was born and then to Washington, D.C. where our son, Ian, was born. We went on to Chicago and Milwaukee and finally to Berkeley.
Except during our year in Washington, I taught psychology every place we lived. St. Xavier's College, a small Catholic woman's college on the south side of Chicago, was my favorite teaching job. I had never even met a nun before going there. I soon got over my stereotypes and found myself in a world of social change. Nuns were dumping their habits and donning street clothes and moving out of the Convent and into apartments. We spent hours talking about how differently they were treated without their habits. The college went co-ed. It was exciting.
When we moved to Berkeley, I decided to go to law school, partly because I had been doing research with delinquents and wanted to understand the legal system better, partly because the law school at Berkeley was within walking distance of our home, and partly becase I saw an ad saying the law school wanted women.
After graduating, I joined the Public Defender's Office in Alameda County and spent 23 challenging years there. I never tired of the job, but was ready to retire in 2000. Since then, I've enjoyed the life of leisure, doing some traveling and a lot of gardening.
Left to right: Louise Simpson Hendry, Martha Robertson Adams, Frank Ellis, Bonnie Princehorn Plyler, Nancy Walter Carlson, 2/2001.