[This text is machine generated and may contain errors.]

Julie Gorman [0:00]
Gorman interviewing Anne Maxwell on October 5th, 2001 at her home and we're gonna talk some about ECU today.

Alright, so when were you born and where did you grow up?

Anne Maxwell [0:20]
I was born in 1948 in Beaufort County. I grew up at Blounts Creek, North Carolina, on a farm, a tobacco farm. And I was the oldest of four children. I have two sisters and a brother.

Julie Gorman [0:42]
And what kind of community was it was a real small Blounts Creek, a real small community?

Anne Maxwell [0:47]
It's actually a big rural area. There was a at Cox's crossroads, the nearest to our house, had to store that store was run by my uncle. But it's just a large farming community where people that the biggest moneymaker was tobacco, and people of course, raised soybeans and corn and different things during the years. Sometimes it was sweet potatoes, sometimes cucumbers, depending on what people thought there was a market for though and daddy raised hogs, not a lot of hogs like we have now he certainly didn't have the big hog houses or the kinds of production that that goes on now. And we always had a cow so that we had fresh milk. And every winter there was a hog killing so that and we had a smokehouse and kept their own meat. And of course had a large garden in addition to all the other farm things we did.

Julie Gorman [1:30]
Now, did you work out in the on the farm sometimes when you're growing up,

Anne Maxwell [2:00]
We always had to work. In fact, we didn't like for school to be out. Because when school was out in the spring, then Daddy would tell us all of the things that needed to be done. And usually school would be a half day, and we would get home. And we rode the bus for about an hour and 10 minutes. So, you know, it's now when people talk about busing, there's always been busing. It's just that when you lived in a rural area, everybody had to be bused somewhere and we were bused to Chocowinity to go to school. And it was 13 miles from our house to Chocowinity, but because you had to go down on all the other little dirt roads all the way from our house to Chocowinity until you got the bus full. That's why it took so long is because you would go up and down little roads an hour to school.

Julie Gorman [2:53]
So you it was Blounts Creek is close to Chocowinity in Beaufort County. What kinds of chores that you have to do. Around

Anne Maxwell [3:04]
Well during the summertime, we had to work in tobacco starting early in the spring, there were tobacco beds, and now tobacco beds are gassed to kill the weeds, but then we'd get home in the afternoon and we'd have to go and help pull weeds out of tobacco beds. And then as soon as it was time to plant the tobacco, we would have to go and pull plants and help plant the tobacco. Usually daddy and another man they would they had a piece of equipment that was pulled by tractor where they would drop the tobacco plants. But it was called the tobacco setter. But we would have to go and pull plants you had to pull them on to go to the plant beds and pull the ones that were a certain size and put them in baskets. And, and then you dip the bottom of them down in water to make sure they stayed wet until they took them and put them in the field. And then after that we'd come home from school and we'd oftentimes have to chop if the grass if if there would be a rainy time and the grass would grow faster than daddy could plow and cover up the grass and we'd have to chop we would have to follow the tractor and uncover tobacco because when he would plow, he'd set the plows to throw up a certain amount of dirt. And if you had some plants that were tiny that hadn't grown as fast as the others, you had to go and take the dirt off them. So we would have to take turns. Since my youngest sister was six years younger than me and there was a period of time she didn't have to do it and the oldest three we'd have to take turns every time we had to go down a row one of us would take that row and then the next person would take the next one and we literally worked every day.

Julie Gorman [4:43]
Every single day. Did you have to do the infamous burning tobacco first people in this part of the state yes talk about that often.

Anne Maxwell [4:53]
We always had to do that. And we would have to get up at four o'clock in the morning to take the dry tobacco out of the barn before daddy would go and pick up the other help that would come to get the green tobacco. So, my goal this summer that I was in the 11th grade was to never touch a another piece of tobacco when I graduated.

Julie Gorman [5:16]
Did it push you further to go on to college? Was that a pushing factor? You think?

Anne Maxwell [5:21]
I think so. I think I was ready to do anything today on the farm, anything anything.

Julie Gorman [5:28]
So Blounts Creek, was it? Would you say it was a real close community? Or were people spread out enough that maybe they didn't have as much contact with one another.

Anne Maxwell [5:41]
Probably the greatest contact you have in a community like that is church activity. The only time in fact the two things that bring people together in a community like that would be relatives. A lot of people are related. So you keep in contact with my grandmother lived half a mile from us. So you have your network of kin, I guess. But anyway, you're cousins, everybody. And then outside of that there's the church network. And then school.

Julie Gorman [6:22]
What were your early schools like were they was it were they Chocowinity is not a very big town. So what was it? What was the school like? There? That elementary

Anne Maxwell [6:32]
I went to the same school for 12 years.

Julie Gorman [6:34]
Oh, really? So it was a K 12 school? Was there many students there was it really a very small?

Anne Maxwell [6:41]
We were part of the baby boom, that happened after all the guys came back from World War Two. So we had a large class for Chocowinity, there were three classrooms of my class as we went through.

Julie Gorman [6:58]
So you decided to pursue going to college? Did many people in your class decide to go to college from-

Anne Maxwell [7:08]
I was the only girl to go to college.

Julie Gorman [7:12]
Were there many girls in your class or they must um, just decide to stay at home.

Anne Maxwell [7:16]
There were 69 students in my class and I imagined we were about equal male to female. Well, some of them even got pregnant and got married before we finished high school.

Julie Gorman [7:32]
And so you decided to go come to East Carolina? Were you the first generation to your first generation, your family? And what was it like getting ready to come to school? Were, were your parents happy? Were they disappointed that you wouldn't be living at home anymore?

Anne Maxwell [7:49]
I think they were excited for me. I think I think they were very excited. And the summer after I graduated, I had never been away from home. And so I have an aunt who lives in Richmond. And she got me a job working for the Virginia State Park Service. And so I lived in Richmond and worked in downtown Richmond that summer. And that was a really good experience for me because excuse me, I had never I guess it was just good to live in a large urban area and see what that was like. And I would have to catch a bus every morning to go into Richmond and to be able to take city transportation and learn my way around. I certainly had never experienced stores that covered entire blocks right. And so the first time I went in, it was either [Millen Road or Talheimers?]. I came out in on a different door and I was completely turned around and had to ask somebody how to get back to where I worked.

Julie Gorman [8:59]
Right. So did that make the transition you think easier over to the college life after going away for summer?

Anne Maxwell [9:08]
I don't know if it made it any easier. I think that I was so excited about the idea of getting away and experiencing anything but I was thrilled.

Julie Gorman [9:30]
Okay, so we're talking about leaving home and so you came here. And where did you live when you first came? I'm still I'm still doing what was that like then? Is it the same dorm that's outside there now.

Anne Maxwell [9:42]
It's been remodeled since then. But the things that were different. Of course, there were certainly no co-ed dorms and girls could only could wear skirts or dresses to class. And if you wanted to wear long pants or something like jeans on the weekend, I don't think at that point I even owned jeans. I had slacks. And you could only wear those on the weekends and you had to wear a raincoat over them. But to go to class, you definitely had to wear a dress or skirt.

Julie Gorman [10:20]
Now this was 1966. Is that right? Okay. Were the dress code for guys a lot more strict also?

Anne Maxwell [10:33]
I don't, I don't remember specifically what it was. But what I do remember is that it seemed to me guys were wearing things like button down collared shirts and pants and long pants, right? I don't remember ever seeing a student with shorts on. It's interesting. I don't remember ever asking what the dress dress code was for guys. Probably knew it at the time. And so a tip would be a good question to ask Pat, my husband.

Julie Gorman [11:03]
Oh, really? Did he go to school here also? Okay. Did the when you're a freshman, what was like a typical day that you could think of kind of as a freshman in the dorm?

Anne Maxwell [11:20]
Well, you got up and you went to class. And of course you ate in the cafeteria. I guess you had something similar to the current meal plan. You didn't have a card like you have. Of course, there was no computer system wasn't in effect. But I just remember going into the cafeteria to eat my meals and going through the line. And it was the cafeteria then was in the same building as the financial aid office. I guess in the cashiers office.

Julie Gorman [11:52]
Yeah, just the cashiers, and I think the student media is right there too, so.

Anne Maxwell [11:57]
Where the goldfish pond is in the center. That's where we ate. And there were, there was the north cafeteria and the south cafeteria, because you went in on the side where the library is now. And that was one cafeteria, that would have been the south cafeteria. And then you had the north cafeteria, and then seems like there was a main cafeteria. I don't remember exactly. But that's where you would go eat. And probably very typical to the way it is. Now. Most of the time. If I had an eight o'clock class, I didn't go to breakfast first because I was always running late. The dorms were so crowded, there were three of us in a room as freshmen, and that was way too crowded because you had. In fact, that's that's one thing that stands out for me was just how crowded it was. But you had groups of girls in the dorm and you had a big system. And there were a lot of meetings, there were mandatory meetings. You had a whole meeting every Sunday night. And I think everybody had to be back in the dorm by nine o'clock on Sunday night for the hall meeting. And your first semester was actually a quarter system then, in the first quarter, you had to have closed study. And everybody had to study from seven to nine. And you either had to study in your room or there was a large room with a big table where you could go study if you wanted to study with other people and get some help. But nobody could do anything but study from seven to nine. If you didn't have a C average, at the end of the first quarter, you had to be on closed study for the remainder of that year. I don't know how long that lasted. I don't know how long you had to stay on closed study if you never got past a C average, I didn't want to have to be on close study again after the first quarter. So that was my whole goal was to make sure I had grades good enough that I didn't have to do close study again. And then and you went to class and you ate and you talked and for me, because I had grown up at Blounts Creek and had had so little exposure to anything. Everything was exciting. Everything I loved I particularly loved being able to walk downtown and go to a movie. And in that point, there were two theaters, it was the Pitt Theater and the Park Theater. Right. And I loved that. So that was one of the things I always wanted to do was go to all the movies and tried to make sure I had enough money to do that. I had a North Carolina Prospective Teachers Scholarship too, and I I didn't have a lot of money, but I would try to make sure I have enough to go to a movie. And there was a place downtown where I guess now it's where they do the tattoos and the body piercing stuff over in that area. There was a restaurant called Old Town Inn and that was a really neat place to go eat. It was owned by Greeks.

Julie Gorman [13:51]
Oh okay, so did campus life, probably changed some time you're here. So what will be the kind of the differences that changed between time when you're a freshman to when you were a senior or graduate student here later, in the early 70s?

Anne Maxwell [15:21]
By the time I was a senior, we were very much affected by the Vietnam War. Because so many, all the guys were scared, because they were worried about going to Vietnam, and a good number of them were.

I mean, people were being sent off, and then you would have the people who were in for two years coming back to go to school. By the time I was in graduate school, there were a lot of people back from the military who had not started college or who had dropped out, or were drafted, I suppose, and had to go, and then they were coming back to finish. And there were some advantages to that, and that they had the GI Bill, right, when they got back to help them go to school. So what I remember and of course, it's so difficult to to really know for sure, because when you come as a naive freshman, and you come from a remote area, and I was just trying to feel my way through things, I'm not sure how much rebelliousness there was on campus that I didn't know about. Because, but I didn't become aware of it. Until at least, I would say my senior year is when I became much more aware of the turbulence. And certainly from that time on through my graduate school experience. What I remember so significantly, was that there was a lot more marijuana on campus. I can remember going to concerts, the first concert that stands out in my mind that I went to was in the old gym over here, because there was no Minges Coliseum, right, right. And in this old gym over here, I went see the Righteous Brothers. Oh, and that was really cool. And I really enjoyed that. And I just remember this is what's so strange. I remember going with some guy, but I don't even remember how he asked me or how I ended up with the date or even his name. I just remember that I went with somebody. And what's even stranger is that I remember the dress that I wore, because it was a dress that I bought in Richmond, and wondered when I would have an opportunity to wear it. And it was kind of a dress you dress wear to church, right. And to think that that's how we dressed, you know that you would think of going to a concert, like the Righteous Brothers and wearing a dress up dress, but that was how we went to that. And it was a very calm, sedate, kind of I mean, well people cheered, but it was much different. That concerts I went to later after Minges was finished, I can even remember going over to the stadium, for I think it was a Jimmy Butler concert. And everybody's sitting out on blankets. And every blanket you see people were passing joints. And obviously, the campus police knew it because it was in the air, it was everywhere. And certainly the dress had changed, right? Because then people were wearing jeans. And I have skirts from that period where I took my jeans and cut them and put the put a slit in them and put fabric you know how you take the inside of the bag out? Right? The paisley print in, right? I have a skirt like that and melody has gone and found my old skirts. Right. But I mean that was and then when I was in graduate school girls were wearing their skirts way short, just like people do now or did more last year in the year before than they are now and it's I think now.

Julie Gorman [19:31]
Yes but their shorts are short now and skirts are long.

Anne Maxwell [19:36]
I look back at the pictures back then and I wore skirts that were really short.

Julie Gorman [19:40]
Now is this to class or was it still kind of more strict when you went to class or had that almost had to dress code almost kind of falling apart by the late 60s, early 70s?

Anne Maxwell [19:50]
The dress code had to have fallen apart because people didn't dress differently for class. I think that must have been the first two years I was in school.

Julie Gorman [19:57]
Okay. So there's kind of a big change

Anne Maxwell [20:00]
Cause, because the first year I was at Umstead, and I remember all this rules, and then the next year I lived in Fletcher had ever lived in Fletcher for three years until I graduated. And during that time there when it was a real interesting period, because you had you still had fraternities, right. But most of the fraternities or a good number of the fraternities on campus were incredibly wild. And out of control. I can't really make a comparison to now because I don't know how controlled they are now. But the teeks, not the teeks, the sigma nus. They had a thing where they all wear khaki pants that were pulled way up high. And they all wore alligator belts, and button down collar, oxford blue oxford shirts, and tassel bloggers. And if you were the epitome of cool and the reason I know all this is that I had a good friend in the dorm who would not date anybody unless they were a sigma nu, or unless they if somebody would call because there were people constantly calling to get you a blind date, go to a fraternity party or go somewhere, they come yell down the hall. And her answer would be how high are their pants? Somebody would have to go back and ask and if they wore their pants high, and if they could shag she would go out with them. That was her measure of coolness was you... That's just what her thought but then you had. And I was not really into that scene. I was more into the I don't know what you would call it at that point. But there was a real movement away from the conformity of sororities and fraternities. And there was a whole group of people who made fun of that conformity. So so that dissension was very much happening by the time I was a senior. And I never was in a sorority. Never chose to even look at a sorority. Because I was very aware of that. And and probably if I had to be leaning one way or the other, I would have probably been leaning more to the rebellious radical side.

Julie Gorman [22:48]
So where do you think that came from? Concern you grew up in a small Beaufort County community?

Anne Maxwell [22:58]
I wouldn't have known how to answer that at all. If Lewin hadn't already asked me that. She did. She She just was kind of getting a feel for whether or not I was kind of person that she needed, I think to have you all. And at first, the only thing I could think of is that my father was very, very strongly opinionated. And while there were many, many things that I didn't agree with, because he's very was very fundamentalist religion, religious and I couldn't, I couldn't really buy into a lot of that.

Julie Gorman [23:28]
Now what religion? What, what particular denomination?

Anne Maxwell [23:33]
Let's say, Baptist. Baptists very much into your bornus Center. Very negative. We couldn't wear shorts, even to go swimming we had to wear pedal pushers, really. So of course, the first thing I did when I left home was bought a bathing suit. But so even in telling you that, I guess the series the way that he was so so strict, I guess in some ways that because the thing that's interesting about us there are four children, and we're all incredibly strong willed but so is he, so was he. And I've come to realize after my father died, just how strong willed my mother is also. So I think perhaps while we didn't agree, we were having individuality very much modeled, because when the Klan reared its ugly head. My senior year in high school was the year that schools were integrated at Chocowinity. And the Klan became active. And people would come and want my dad to join the Klan and he refused. And he would say, how can you bring me this literature that says you must be white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant. And a Christian to join, and Jesus was a Jew. And they would just wheel around and leave. And we would get Klan papers thrown in our yard at night. And daddy was, I didn't know how afraid daddy was until he was dying. And he told us about how afraid he was that there was going to be a cross burning in our yard and that we would be hurt.

Julie Gorman [25:39]
Oh, really? Were you aware of the stuff going on very much when you were in high school?

Anne Maxwell [25:45]
Well, the principal of the school came in because we were at the end of the bus ride, he got me to be the bus monitor. To make sure nobody bothered the students and students. So people on the bus would call me Abe Lincoln. And it's really interesting when I think back about it, because it was obvious I needed to leave Blounts Creek because I'll never really care. Think I can remember going home and crying and thinking that I didn't like being mistreated. But I also I don't know, I guess somewhere inside I must have felt they were all stupid.

Julie Gorman [26:28]
He didn't mind who was mistreating you because you didn't want to be part of that crowd maybe?

Anne Maxwell [26:35]
And I ran for student government president in my senior year, and I won. It's the first time a girl had ever won. And so while, so obviously, somebody respected me enough to vote for me. Right, you know, even if they so as I look back on it, it may have just been isolated more to my community than the whole community of Chocowinity High School. I don't know. I don't know but and then so we saw daddy modeling that kind of standing up for what you believe. So I suppose seeds of rebellion were planted back then.

Julie Gorman [27:20]
So even if you believed maybe something differently and he did you still kind of had the same will to stand up? Well, when you first came to East Carolina, we're reading cuz we read a there's a book on the history of East Carolina and I don't knowif you've seen this by Mary Joe Jackson Bratton. Anyways, we're reading about how and she had written about in the I think it was 67 when the university was struggling to get university status actually, they were a college. Were the students aware of the whole struggle going on? Were they were they part of it? Did you participate in any of the activities that went with that?

Anne Maxwell [28:09]
I think we all did. Because I think all of us wanted, I can remember being very proud. In fact, I think back and I wonder I, you know, I had a class ring and had my picture taken so it would be in the ECU yearbook, and just do people do that anymore?

Julie Gorman [28:30]
Not really. Maybe the class ring, there's some people get class rings, but I don't I don't even know of an ECU yearbook. But

Anne Maxwell [28:38]
I know it's really interesting because I was thinking about that with Nathan. And we had a yearbook. And we all were very proud of being a university student and wanting to be a university student instead of a college student. I do remember all of that. I don't remember what we did as students though, but I was very aware of it, but I can't remember what we did specifically.

Julie Gorman [29:00]
But the students in general were pretty much behind the whole the push to become a university they weren't apprehensive about moving up in that hierarchy.

Anne Maxwell [29:10]
I think everybody wanted it. I can't remember being around anybody who didn't want it.

Julie Gorman [29:14]
So as soon as the as the state declared that you could become a university and start getting funds, do you think that's when the the changes maybe started happening on campus?

Anne Maxwell [29:25]
I don't think it had anything to do with getting university status. I think it had more to do with the condition of with the situation in the world.

Julie Gorman [29:32]
So you mentioned Vietnam earlier, and I kind of wanted to go go back there. And just because you don't and of course, you know, I'm from the Raleigh area and so we always you hear all this stuff every time you hear about campus activism or any kind of, you know, campus activism its always UNC Chapel Hill. That's, you know, the only one they ever talked about, but what what was it here at East Carolina was their campus activism with the Vietnam without what's the conditions things going on in the world? Or was it not? Not as

Anne Maxwell [30:05]
There were things on the mall and students would ride their bikes on campus and have the flag upside down. There was a lot of you had the peace symbol stuff. And of course, you had a whole lot of marijuana. Sure, you know that it certainly came in at that time. But

Julie Gorman [30:30]
Was there a hippie crowd type thing?

Anne Maxwell [30:32]
Oh, yeah, there was very much a hippie crowd. And you had, you know, you can go down to Ripple City now. And you see everything we saw. You know, you go into parties, and there were the bongs. And there was Jimi Hendrix playing, then there was Cream playing and Janis Joplin, of course, and and then you had the John East contingency, the very, very conservative people that were just really ripped out of their frame about Jane Fonda. And about the fact that anybody would fight against us being in the Vietnam War. And it was really interesting for me, because I didn't believe in the war, and yet my brother went, and I was really sad about him having to go. And then I ended up dating a guy for four years who came back and he had been a corpsman. And had seen so many of his friends die, that he was just so so angry anytime he saw anybody do anything that was anti war. And I really understand now that he had to believe there was a reason for their dying. Right. And to accept that, that they had died for nothing was was too hard for him psychologically to deal with, right then. I think he's come to grips with it now. But it was it took in. And during that time, when he first came back, he always slept with a gun under his pillow. He was really messed up psychologically. And he called me about four weeks ago that we've been we've maintained a friendship through the years, but I just knew he was not the kind of person I could ever marry because he was, he was just so uptight. And I think, probably a compulsive personality, whether he had gone to the, to Vietnam or not, you know, in that. But I think that had also played a part in what he was like. And so the way the whole thing played out for me was that here I was dating somebody who was strongly into the leaving, and he had his group of people who had returned from the Vietnam War. And so I was here in the veterans perspective. That was actually when I was in graduate school that I started dating him. After that was the last part of my graduate school, the first part of my graduate school, I was dating a guy who rode around on a motorcycle, and he wore a sheepskin vest. And it cut a sheepskin and put it on his helmet. And he had an apartment at Village Green, that had posters on the into every single wall, and black lights, so that when people walked in, all you saw was posters. So so I don't know if you could classify who I was, I guess I've always been curious. You know, it was always interesting. Maybe in a way, I think I still avoid it, you know, I think it's really fun to learn about different groups of people, and how they think and, and then you take the pieces of each other and decide, what of it you believe. But when I was gonna tell you about this guy, calling me. I know I was gonna finish what I was telling you about that. But anyway, the guy called me and he thanked me. He said that the reason he's alive today and not in prison is because he's not dead or in prison is because of me because he would want to go and shoot the people who would have the flags on their bikes upside down. And so I would just start telling him I didn't believe in the war either. And that I thought that it was wrong. And so he returned his anger towards me and he wouldn't hit me or kill me. And so he did, he called me, and he said he was having a reunion with a group of the corpsman that had survived Vietnam. And that he wanted to thank me for saving his life and keeping him alive and out of prison. And he said, that obviously, there was a reason that he met me when he did so that I didn't believe anything he believed. But anyway, and why he cared enough about me in spite of what I believe is so interesting.

Julie Gorman [35:27]
That's a, must've been a special kind of phone call, just typed by was someone Yeah. And so when you You graduated, being an English major, and then you went to grad school in English also is that what you got? That's right, you told me.

Anne Maxwell [35:44]
Oh, then I, I taught in Roper, North Carolina, and I taught English, believe it or not, to special ed students. Okay, so almost like I've invested to work with that population. And I realized how little I knew, I felt incredibly inadequate in knowing how to meet their needs. And so I thought, I have to go back to school, and I have to take some exceptional children's courses, no matter what I do, so that I will better. So I will be better able to serve all students. And the only reason that I really knew about even coming to East Carolina or how to put it all together, even though I knew I needed to get away from Blounts Creek was because the counselor at Chocowinity High School came to me one day and said Ann, you need to go to college, you need to get out of here. And set up an appointment for me to come here to talk to the finance financial aid office, helped me fill out my application and do all of that stuff. So I decided that I wanted to be a counselor, so that I could help people the way I had been. And so then, so that's why I decided when I went back to graduate school to go in counseling.

Julie Gorman [37:00]
So did you ever do counseling, or did you stay with special ed?

Anne Maxwell [37:03]
Then I, after I finished the counseling degree, and I got a job as a counselor in Snow Hill, and then the following summer. Ann Harrison who was head of Pupil Personnel Services for the it was the Greenville City Schools then. They had known me when I was in graduate school because I had come over and done some group work with some of her students in Elmhurst. And she had had me do a session on a sex education session with educable mentally disabled girls, again, but that same population, it's like I've. So then, she called me and asked me if I wanted to come and be the director of a learning center with a grant she had written. So I was hired at [ACOT?] that year to do that. And then I did that for two years. And then I was picked up by local funding and moved into the counseling office. And I did that for seven years, or eight years. And then I went to work for the Department of Corrections. And I worked for the Department of Corrections, setting up a program in eastern North Carolina, where actually the program was housed here in Greenville, for prisoners, just before they were released. I had them for four weeks, I had them all day long, five days a week for four weeks, so having 20 days, right before they were released, and I had to set up programming. So that was really interesting. Because I've loved I always love group work. And so that was really neat time for me to get to work with those guys. It was all men. And then after that, I I got married when I was 31. And I worked with program called Pre-Release and Aftercare until Nathan was born. He was born in 1981. And so in 1981. I took a six weeks leave of absence. And I looked at that little fella and I thought I cannot leave him. So I turned in my resignation. And then I started working the following year at ECU part time teaching in the counselor and adult ed program, teaching the course on interaction skills and education. And I taught that to primarily the first time I taught it, I taught graduate students in the counseling program and then after that I taught middle grade students and talk to them on how to have effective parent conferences and all that kind of stuff.

Julie Gorman [39:50]
Yeah, I'm in adult ed now in graduate program was very good class leadership communication type thing. So did you during that time when at ECU or was even before that, that you kind of became involved in the community politics question so that you were really involved in, in the stuff that goes on with the community and the fight to keep this neighborhood. And

Anne Maxwell [40:17]
That didn't happen until a lot later. I think I was just trying to find my own way back then. You know, I was I was probably just too caught up in sorting out who I was, and trying to, because life was still really interesting to me. And I was definitely not politically involved back in.

Julie Gorman [40:40]
But it just came to the just come up that you got involved and didn't mean to, or was it something that you decided, hey, this is something.

Anne Maxwell [40:50]
It's... Things just kind of happen don't they? I don't know if it kind of happened. Back when I was working as a counselor at a car, I suppose you have to look at the fact and I know I'm rambling a bit, but I'm thinking about your question. You either you either lead or follow. And at what point do you decide you're not going to follow. And I'm not sure that I ever wanted to follow anybody anyway. So if you're, if you're rebellious, that in itself makes you stand out. And if you figure out how to channel the rebelliousness so that you're not perceived as too crazy, you can automatically become a leader. It's not really hard to be a leader, because most people don't want to lead, right? You can do some really interesting experiments. You can do pretty much anything. And I guess going back to that whole [inaudible] thing, all that's been kind of interesting to make from a psychological perspective. And when I was a counselor at [inaudible] I think, and I was still single, trying to sort out, I guess, my dream always was to get married and have children, but hadn't met anybody that I needed to marry. You know, I think I told you about I dated the one guy who was very, very much into I mean, I guess if you had to categorize him, he was a hippy. I look back at it, I think he was incredibly bright, very sociopathic, and certainly not somebody that who I needed to marry. And then the other guy would come back from Vietnam, and I dated for four and a half years. I enjoyed, time spent with him. But there was a lot of time that he was just so uptight. I knew I didn't need to marry him. And I think as you get older, you start looking at, would this person be a good father, for children? And when you automatically say no, you knew you'd need to do you didn't need to be with him. But I think in the back of my mind, there was always this thing of, I really would like to be married and have children. And so you're looking for new opportunities to meet new people. And so I got this application on my desk at school, General Electric was sponsoring a, they were sponsoring five programs in the United States, they were going to be all expense paid for six weeks in the summer. And the one for the southeastern United States was in Columbia, South Carolina, at Capstone House, which was a graduate dorm at that time. And it was you had to answer questions you had to answer. Typical applications, you see, you know, you got to send your resume and you get recommendations, blah, blah. Well, this recommendation, you had to send your resume and show that you were working in a school as counselor, you had to also write down the first five things you remembered in your life which I thought was very interesting. And then we got picked. And the only thing they ever told us was that we were sparkplug people. And I'm not sure what we said that made them pick us but but there were 25 people at this site. And we were half black, half white, half male, half female. Some one guy had been in the Klan. One guy had led the March on Jackson. He was very much a black militant. Two nuns, it was an incredible group of people. And we had to live together for six weeks. We did everything together, we had our weekends were together, we danced together, we ate together, everything we did, we had to do together, but took us out in boats on these large pontoon kind of boats together and had food for us together. And it was incredible and that you didn't have to pay for anything. But you had to be together. And at that point in time, it was, you know, when the whole esalen movement was getting started, and the whole group movement was really big into the a lot of marathon sessions where we could start in on a topic and you didn't go to bed all night. And so what happens when you reach a certain level of sleep deprivation, your defenses come down, and you reach truth, probably in ways that people wouldn't ever give it until you get to that place. So it probably changed me in a way that nothing else could have. And there were a lot of really significant things said in the in that because they were having us to examine black white issues. And one of the reasons General Electric was putting so much money in this is that in order for them to hire blacks in their industries, counselors had to encourage blacks to go into colleges and to get engineering degrees and to and to be scientists and to do things that they hadn't traditionally done so so it was a logical place to start with school counselors. Which in so that's what they did. And then when I'm trying to think of my first political moves back while I was still working as a counselor at [ACOT?] and I was single I started dating Tom Taft. I don't think you know him, but he's an attorney here in town he's been a senator. And he got me involved with somewhat and would take me to things like when he was sworn into the ports authority and trying to different things and I go to a lot of political meetings.