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| From The Author | ||||
| RHODA'S MEMOIR, RHODA: HER FIRST NINETY YEARS IS NOW AVAILABLE AT: www.Amazon.com | ||||
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VOICES |
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PA
Conflicting voices echo, Go to California! Why not? Live on the edge! Go, Go! Take a chance. Borrow the money-- So you don't make it. Not such a disaster. |
MA
Be careful, you could fail. Keep the day job. Wait, wait till you're ready. People cheat and steal. They lie with smiles. Forget promises. Nothing is sure. |
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ME
I listen and choose. Bracing myself I try, and fail. I try again, leap into the unknown. |
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There
have always been conflicting voices in my head, and I always chose the voice that
encouraged me to make the important changes in my life, which seem to occur every
twelve years. Of course the calm, cautious voice created the guilt that tempered
the excitement of each new venture. But that didn't prevent me from being brave
enough to expand my horizons by learning the tools of each new trade.
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From the time I was twelve and took a rowboat out on a stormy lake in Illinois against
the instructions of an elder sister and my mother, I have been swimming against
the current. During high school years, I wanted to be a journalist, but was told
that women in the Thirties were not suited for the reporter's life; the language
in news rooms was not appropriate for female ears. So I became an elementary school
teacher instead, writing stories, poetry and plays, which I hid in a secret journal. When I finally became a writer for the Office of War Information in Washington, D.C., in 1943 and then a writer for the Overseas Branch in San Francisco in 1945, I thought I might have made it. But necessary adjustments to my life with a husband discharged from the Navy made it vital that I learn a new craft, making leather handbags, belts and sandals by hand, together with a husband damaged by the war. Jim and I divorced, and I became sole owner of our business, now called Rhoda Pack Leathers. |
Rhoda in her shop in 1952, Photo by Rondal Partridge. |
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I
married again in 1955 and had a son. By this time, I was designing and making leather
clothing for women and men, with outlets in elite stores throughout the United States.
I was trying to have it all, to be a wife, mother and career woman. However, Rhoda
Pack Leathers failed because it was under-capitalized and didn't have the infusion
of money necessary for expansion. After the business failed, I shifted again and
became a teacher.
Ambition seems to be part of my DNA, and I went back to graduate school to earn a master's degree in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) and became a leader in that field. That led to creating the Certificate Program in TESOL at UC Berkeley Extension, a Fulbright Commission in South Korea, a position as assistant professor at Lanzhou University in China, workshops in Japan, Russia and Hungary. It has always been important to me to follow different paths with dedication and determination; to learn the tools necessary to excel in the different occupations I chose, to be willing to fail, and to enjoy success when it comes. When an unexpected moment arrived when I was seventy-two, I leaped into it with abandonment. That was when I met the love of my life, Peter, who was eighty-five, and we had eight physically, emotionally and intellectually satisfying years, until he died in 1998. Now my self-managing garden in Berkeley supplies actual and visual nourishment, and my TESOL Workshop students at Cal State University East Bay, in Hayward, California, provide the intellectual stimuli I need. |
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www.Amazon.com, www.Booksmith.com, Black Oak Books, Berkeley, Book Passage, Marin, and Capitola Book Cafe, CA |
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CONTACT INFORMATION |