Q:  How do you feel about leaving Nicholls?
It was time. We’ve been here ten years. I think Steve has probably done everything that he can for the University to progress. It’s time for us to go home and be with our family.
This is a very family-oriented place and everybody knows that. Not that we don’t have some of the best family and friends we’ve ever had in our moves and the places we’ve gone to. It will be sad. I can’t even talk about it. It’s hard, but we need to go home.
Q:  How did you end up here?
I was born in Texas. My dad was a pilot, but he was also a Certified Public Accountant.
One of the most fun places we’ve been was to Goose Bay, Labrador. They put us on a cargo plane, my mom, my brother and me, with all these weird things like sardines.
We got to Labrador, went to French-Canadian schools, and rode a Sno-Cat vehicle across runways to get there. There were only seventeen American kids there, but there were over 10,000 American military personnel.
Sometimes we had snow up to the second story of the house and they would have to dig tunnels out so we could get to school. The Sno-Cats with the treads and all, those were basically our busses.
I got to have lunch with Prince Philip, Bob Hope. I just found my autograph book with Jerry Colonna’s autograph.
Then we came back and went to Nebraska. He decided he wanted to fly again, so he wanted to fly B36’s. He never could do that because he was a senior controller. You know the infamous red phone? Well, we lived with it in our house at all times. We had a plane and friends with a ranch in Wyoming, and dad would take us there to spend a few weeks. It was a very different life, but it was a very stable life.
From there we went to New York. I moved the middle of my junior year of high school, and everyone has to take New York Regents Exams. I royally flunked them because it wasn’t something you could catch up to. I hadn’t had the experiments they had.
Then I went to boarding school in Boston and repeated my junior year, which I probably needed because I was always really young. Then I went to a private women’s college in New York. Then graduate school, which is where Steve and I met in class.
Q:  What do you see yourself doing when you both move Arizona?
I don’t know. I think we’re just going to have to kind of explore and figure that out.
I’m sure he’s going to do some interim work. I give him about one year before he goes, “Hmm, I think I need to do more than this.” Maybe he will not be that way, but I can settle much easier than he can because I have a lot of outside interests.
I doubt he’s just going to work on his stamp collection. He’s going to get restless sitting at home, so I joke with him that he better have a part time job saying that he could go and work a Lowes or something. He says, “I don’t know anything about carpentry” and I laugh and tell him, “No, but you could be the greeter.” We’re being silly, but I don’t know what he’s going to do.
Q:  What will you miss the most about Louisiana?
My friends. I can’t even talk about it without crying. I think the pace is pretty laid back here. Yes, we do a lot, but that’s just in our nature. I hope the next president doesn’t feel like they need to “follow” us because they don’t. We just do things. Other people have their own style and mode.
Q:  What do you think are some of the biggest cultural experiences you have seen here?
Everything here is often based on the past, not what something can be in the future. I think that’s a mentality. Everyone has always been here and not many people have travelled, so the community sometimes becomes stagnant and close. We’re very fortunate that people have let us in. I don’t think that’s necessarily bad, I just think that’s reality.
Q:  Do you have any fears about leaving?
No. I’m not ready, but I don’t have any fears. I feel like we’re going home. Do I have to know a ton of people to do that? No, it’s still home.
Q:  What are you most excited to do after this?
Steve and I want to go back to some of the places we love. We’ve travelled all over the world, so this will give us that opportunity. I’m pretty sure Steve will do some interims at different places. I think he has so much to offer.
I love to go to new places and do new things. I’m a military brat so that’s something I’ve done all my life. After about four years in one place, I’m ready to go or I need something new to do.
Q:  Are there any travel destinations you have wanted to go to and just haven’t made it yet?
Australia. I don’t think that’s Steve’s favorite. Our son spent his junior year of high school in Australia so he has a lot of family friends there.
My uncle left the United States and immigrated to Australia. Our son Scott was the only one who ever went to Australia to visit him. Because of Scott’s visit and the wonderful care people gave him, I would love to go there.
So that’s on my bucket list, but just about every place else in the world is.
Q:  What are some of your hobbies?
I went to a Restore or Retreat, which is about saving the coast and I’ve been involved with the organization since about the first year after we arrived here. I’m really into that.
I also love to play bridge. I have two bridge clubs that I play with. It’s not cut-throat but it’s for a dollar. If you win you get five and second place gets three. Big stakes.
I love them. They are all ages. For example, Bobbi Olivier is in her 80’s, but boy is she a wiz at cards. She takes me on adventures because she paints. I have friends that I visit down the bayou to play bridge.
Q:  What ‘souvenirs’ are you taking from Louisiana?
A lot of things, but my favorite is in our new house. I wanted something that is cypress. We have friends that have some old cypress, like 1850’s. The cypress in our piece was probably cut in the late 1860’s, like literally cut. It’s been curing and everything else.
We had a carpenter or artist, he really is both, give me an idea of what I wanted and how big it needed to be and everything else. It’s a sort of entertainment center for the television, etc. It has to cure though. It’s coming in right after graduation. We’re going to put it in this house until we move, but then we can’t do anything else with it until we can acclimate it to the altitude, which is 5,300 feet in the mountains. So that cypress piece is my piece from Louisiana, like my chair from Pennsylvania.
This is my famous Amish rocker. We lived in Pennsylvania. There were Amish with their buggies and they would tie them up to go to the grocery store.
In Pennsylvania we had a big turn of the century English Tudor house. It was gorgeous and there was a planter. Steve has always been obsessed with plants. Well anyway, this beautiful ceramic pot fell and when it broke, it also broke this chair.
We needed someone to fix it, but the Amish do not have telephones, so we went to this cheese place where the Amish sell their cheeses and told them we had a problem. The group we knew also knew of the man who had made the chair and they said they knew someone who would probably like to work on one of his pieces.
We went into the middle of the woods with this chair and the man said “I see it now” meaning “May I see the piece now?” We took the chair out so he could look at it and he said, “When she does the wash, I think I can fix it.”
He fixed it and when we asked how much he said, “five dollars.” We take something special from each place that we live, so this chair to me is very special.