LifeWriters Talk About LifeWriting

In the fall of 2002, the University of Texas Press published SCN member PJ Pierce's ground-breaking book, Let Me Tell You What I Know: Texas Wisewomen Speak (see our book review and interview with PJ in the March 2003 issue of the SC Journal). Leading the distinguished assembly of notable Texas women featured in the book is Liz Carpenter, veteran political journalist, onetime right-arm to a U.S. vice president and a First Lady, equal rights activist, writer, and public speaker. Thanks to PJ and her book, a new collaboration was born between the ever-energetic Liz Carpenter and Story Circle Network.

For attendees at the February 2004 SCN conference, a treat is in store: Liz Carpenter will give the keynote address and offer a sampling from her wealth of extraordinary wisdom. To whet your appetite, here is an excerpt from Liz Carpenter's wise words as collected by PJ Pierce in Let Me Tell You What I Know.

TEXAS WOMEN: My mother always admonished me: "Remember who you are. Make something of yourself." She was really proud of her family that was here in Texas in 1829. She was a very calm woman of faith. I knew something was expected of me.

We Texas women are close to our history—to those women who came across the river carrying a rifle. The ranch woman is in all of us to a degree. Women on the frontier were in charge because we had to be. The open spaces made us a lot spunkier. I think Texans are shaped by blue skies, optimism, and more space. And I think Texas men like spunky women.

MENTORS: I seem to have chosen as mentors outspoken women who worked to change things for everybody, rather than women who quietly followed the rules and worked to change things just for themselves.

Minnie Fisher Cunningham of Waller, Texas, who was active in the suffrage movement, told me all about it so vividly that I thought I had been there. (Texas made women's suffrage legal before it became legal nationally.)

She told me, "To have a stepping-stone, you have to be one." It is glorious when you make the phone call that gets somebody the interview. My first boss—a woman—taught me lots of things. One that has stuck with me through the years: Never make a decision solely on the basis of money. If you really want strawberries and they are $5 a pound, get the strawberries!

POLITICS: During my Washington years, I began to realize that it will take women to make important changes in society because we are the nurturers. We make a difference in politics when we speak up, because we try to find the common-sense basis for doing things.

I watched and learned from Frances Perkins, secretary of labor under Franklin Roosevelt. Frances used common sense and created most of the New Deal legislation. She walked into FDR's office with a little handwritten list: unemployment compensation, minimum wage. All those things made up the New Deal. And it wasn't all those swashbuckling Harvardites that pushed it through the Hill. Instead, it was a woman who insisted on it. Most people don't know that.

And then during the 1970s and 80s, we campaigned for the Equal Rights Amendment. We came to understand that we couldn't realize our feminist potential unless we did it through politics. We had to have more clout.

So Shana Alexander summoned me to that meeting at the Statler Hilton in July 1971 where 271 women founded the National Women's Political Caucus. Our mission was to urge women to run for office, to get the Equal Rights Amendment passed, and to organize caucuses in all the states. I was put in charge of handling the press and getting what was said by these women leaders into the newspapers—Betty Friedan, Shirley Chisholm, Gloria Steinem, Bella Abzug, Virginia Allen.

I remember saying to Shana, "These women shouldn't be using such strong words." And she said, looking philosophical and beautiful, "But these are strong times!"

And that convinced me that the ERA movement would soon find its way into the population. And it did—to such an extent that I doubt that young women today have any idea of how much sweat and sacrifice was given.

Campaigning for the ERA went on for about 15 years. It was the most exciting thing that I had ever done because it was such a gamble. I was terribly disappointed when the ERA didn't pass. But still I have faith that it will pass because it is right. I think it will probably pass in a whisper sometime.

ANGER: Anger is a good motivator. You need to use the adrenaline that anger engenders in a constructive way. Women used to be taught to take whatever is said to them and remain silent. But you need to talk back. You shouldn't take somebody's orders or arguments, simply to be polite, when you know what has been said is unfair and untrue. If you can do it with humor, you do better.

For example, when Pat Schroeder of Colorado was a young woman in the U.S. Congress in the 1970s, a male representative said to her, "How can you be a congressman and the mother of two small children?"

Schroeder said: "Because I have a brain and a uterus, and I use both!"

PRINCIPLES I LIVE BY: "See humor in the situation," my mother would tell me. She had a good sense of humor and valued it. So humor has always been a part of my life, maybe because you needed it in such a big family. And you certainly need it in politics and in all of the other fields I have been associated with.

Hate will devour you if you let it. I don't allow myself to hate people.

Be there for others. It's a pleasure to share other people's needs. It's the sins of omission that haunt people.

Be loyal to your friends. I'm heavy on loyalty and on not letting people down. Lyndon Johnson reinforced that lesson in me. He never asked you to do something he wasn't willing to do. He gave friendship and he got it.

CAREERS: I went into Washington when World War II was underway, in June 1942, and men were leaving. So, for the first time, a newswoman could get a job doing something other than being a society reporter. We knew that Eleanor Roosevelt had made it possible for us to have a job because she made news, and she held press conferences that were limited to women. By discriminating in this way, she forced newspapers to hire women reporters to cover her. In my generation, you just walked through the open door or backed away from it. And I generally walked through it.

FAITH: When my plans start falling into place, I begin to think that it must be an affirmation from God or from some spirit greater than myself, telling me that I am on the right track. When nothing is going right, I begin to question whether I have made the right decision. When everything starts getting in your way, that may be a way of telling you, "Kid, you are on the wrong path."

So many things I need fall right into my hand, unexplained: a book that tells me something I didn't even know I was looking for or a phrase in a paper. I listen for words because that is my business. And they come my way, so I know that it's not just an accident. It happens too often.

I am surprised that some of my contemporaries are agnostics and atheists. I think that they just haven't realized that there is some order to the universe. I've always had faith that there is a God, and the closer I get to what hopefully will be heaven, the more I listen for it. You are better off if you walk hand in hand with the universe.

FRIENDSHIP: Without all of my good friends, life wouldn't be nearly as grand. Families are often not around to be supportive when you need them, and friends have been a salvation to me.

You have to create a network of friends or you can't operate in the world. Wherever I have lived, I have always had good neighbors. Networking was important before it was a word. I could call my neighbor and say, "Go pick up Christy. She's sick." We did that for each other. It was about being a friend.

I count among my good friends both men and women. My group of singers (Getting Better All the Time Singers—GBATS)—our bodies are beginning to fall apart, and we are trying to be there for each other.

I have four really good male friends. But women friends are usually my first choice because I can talk about anything with them. We women have gotten to where we really bare our souls with each other, and men have a harder time doing that. Women have discovered that women friends are the best friends. However, females seem to be associating more with males on a platonic level today. That's good. Since I have been raising my two teenage nieces and my nephew, I have seen young men—like my nephew, Tommy—becoming gender blind and color blind. He has friends of both sexes and all colors. I know because they are around my house all the time.

MARRIAGE: I was lucky to have been married to my best friend. We worked together and we played together in Washington, but we also gave each other some space to do our own thing. I learned some things a long time ago from psychologists who were gathered at Betty Friedan's house. (She always had a lot of psychologists around her; they liked to study her.) I said, "What's the main cause for divorce?" They said, "Two people who don't grow at the same rate." I saw that problem happen especially with marriages in the political arena.

WIDOWHOOD: When Les died, I spent two unsettling years trying to deal with life without him. Then someone gave me the best advice I ever got about being widowed: "God has given you a chance at a second life." (Since then, I have passed that message of freedom on to a lot of other widows.) Death had robbed me of my husband. But it also allowed me to change my life.

During my marriage, I got cut off from some real characters I enjoyed whom Les didn't like. After Les died, I began inviting some of those characters into my house and life. By having them at my house, I felt almost like I was getting back at death. That sounds heartless to say, but it's true. It's a way to cope.

GETTING OLDER: I have just been to the White House Conference on Aging. The fastest-growing age group in America is the 80-and-up group. And they are staying vital longer. There are 34 million people over 65 and only 5% are in rest homes. So we are living vitally and changing, and are able to follow our bliss longer. I think it is a market that hasn't been recognized. I try to sell magazine stories about people who are as old as I am. The editors say, "Oh, that person is yesterday. We are playing to the 35 year old." The magazine industry just hasn't figured out yet that people my age buy magazines, too.

RETIRING: I wouldn't urge anybody to retire and do nothing, because when you stop being productive, you don't feel needed. And the need to feel needed is primary in us. When I go to nursing homes with the GBATS, my group that sings (somewhat), I see so many empty faces. I feel that I always need to find something else to lose sleep over!

—Excerpts compiled by Jane Ross

Last updated: 12/14/03