Interview with Carol Cole Kleinman - Childhood Memories

00:02 Okay, so we just had some technical difficulties and have lost part of this interview. So we're going to pick up again with this last question. And I'm not sure where it's cutting off, but the last question I was asking you about before it got cut off was what did you think your life would be like when you were older? And has your life turned out differently than you imagined?

00:29 I think I thought that I would have an interesting job. I thought that as a girl I had a right, just as much as a boy did to have work that interested me. And I didn't mind working hard to get the education to do that. But I think I really didn't want to be. I didn't want to be bored with my work. And I think because I had devoted so much time to school, I probably hadn't thought that much about what married life would be like. I have always been told that I was very beautiful. And so I kind of assumed that I would find someone to marry and have a family. And that happened. And I was very fortunate because Ted encouraged me to go to graduate school. What happened was when I met him, I was applying to medical school and he encouraged me. At that time I applied to University of Missouri and he encouraged me to apply to Georgetown and gw And I didn't think I'd get accepted to any of them because I hadn't even finished all the pre med requirements, but I had to squeeze all that in. And lo and behold, I got into the University of Missouri and then I got into Georgetown and GW and. But then it became clear to me again, I've always been the kind of person who tries to figure things out ahead of time. It became clear to me that we're talking about 1966, that I was marrying a man who was substantially older than I was. And I wanted him to be alive and be there for children. So I knew that going to medical school and residency would take eight years. So Ted was a lawyer and he had a lot of lawyers in his family. And we spent a lot of time with his sister and brother in law who were lawyers. And my sister in law at that time, she had a daughter and she was doing some part time legal work and she had become a lawyer. And so she was kind of a role model for me to see how a woman could combine having a career and a family. And I think all of that just seemed to click. I just kind of felt like this was meant to be, this relationship. But we then decided that I should probably not be a doctor. And the family had so many lawyers and they said, you know, they thought I would get the same satisfaction and like law just as much as medicine or my idea of medicine. I didn't know what lawyers did. Nobody in my family was a lawyer. But I did go to law school and I actually made law review and I learned some very good study techniques and made some good friends. But when I graduated from law school and took the bar, etc, I was pregnant with my first child and I decided I wanted to work, go back to work. And I had been working for the NLRB National Labor Relations Board in the appellate division and they had offered me a half time position after my daughter was born and I was going to do that. And I'd actually even started to hire somebody to take care of my daughter while I went to school, I mean, went to work. And it's kind of unbelievable to me now, but my sister in law basically said, and we're talking again, like I graduated from law school in 1969, so it was a different time. And she said any woman who would do babysitting, there must be something mentally wrong with her. Now I know that sounds crazy, but I'm not imagining that. And she went on to have a very, very successful career as a divorce lawyer. But she also had a different kind of support network that I had. She had her mother and her mother in law there to help her raise her children while she worked. And also she had the maid who worked in the household that her husband had grown up in there and was very much trusted. So anyway, being a very naive, eager to please person, I thought, well, I would be damaging my child if I went back to work. So instead I turned down my job opportunity and my husband and I had formed a little business with my sister and her husband who were living in Washington at that time because my brother in law was going to law school there. And so we had this little business called Federal Filing Service and I took that over and we kind of built it into a nice little money making thing that I did while I was home taking care of first Ellie my first child born in 1970, and then Alexander Alex, my second child born in 1972.

07:15 So. And then you went on to become a doctor. So we're going to get more of that in a future interview.

07:20 Okay.

07:21 Okay. So I guess life didn't turn out the way you imagined. Came out a little different in some ways.

07:28 Yeah. And the road was very different.

07:30 Yeah. Well, thank you so much and I love you and this has been great. And we'll do more.