Faced with losing the job I had
enjoyed for several years, I had to make a decision about my path forward. My goal, consulting with scientists, had not
changed. What were the possibilities in
1985 for a 45-year-old woman with a Ph.D. in Statistics? I was going to have to do some research. I interviewed for a job in Corvallis, Oregon. The company had a contract with the USDA at
Oregon State University to investigate the effect of ozone levels on plant
growth. I would be consulting with plant
scientists. They offered me a good
job. Closer to home, I targeted Monsanto
in St. Louis as I thought they hired the largest number of scientists in
Missouri. I talked with my ex-girlfriend,
Kaye, who was back in St. Louis with a position at Washington University. She told me that Monsanto was just starting a
new Human Health Division and gave me the name and phone number of an
administrative person there.
I knew that Monsanto had scientists working
in its agricultural and chemical components, but the Human Health Division was
one more area where scientists would be working. EPA and FDA have been a boon to statisticians
as there are so many regulations specifying the processes that have to be
followed in order for either a new drug or a toxic chemical, like a pesticide,
to be approved for sale. In addition,
many compounds have to pass the statistical requirements set by the United
States Pharmacopeia (USP). It ”... sets
quality, purity, strength, and identity standards for medicines, food ingredients,
and dietary supplements … used by manufacturers to test their products against
our standards to ensure they meet published specifications.” I had volunteered with this independent,
nongovernmental organization for many years, reviewing proposed revisions to
their standards and submitting my comments.
I called Kaye’s contact in the Human Health
Division, and he said they did not have a full-time statistician and invited me
to come for an interview. I spent a day
talking to several of their scientists and ended up in the office of the head
of the Division. He acknowledged that
they needed some statistical support, but he was not sure they needed a
full-time employee. I told him that a
part-time contract would suit me fine. He
put his hand on my arm, escorted me to the door, and said I would be hearing
from them.
About the same time, the Agricultural
component of Monsanto was starting up an Animal Division to support their work
in developing bST (Bovine somatotropin).
It is a protein that stimulates the hormone produced by the pituitary
gland and increases milk production in cows.
They ran an ad for a statistician which I answered and was invited to a second
interview with Monsanto. They needed to
design a new bioassay which could be used to test the various versions of bST
their chemists created. They had to
first determine the best version and then the proper dose of that version. Fortunately, I had taken a bioassay course
during my doctoral studies at K State.
I was interviewed and gave a talk using
overheads that showed the proper analysis for such a bioassay using results
from a SAS program. They were suitably
impressed, and I was offered the job. There
were two reasons I declined the offer.
One was the presence of a girly calendar on the office wall of one of
their male employees. I didn’t want to work with an employee like the ones I
had been in the class with in New Orleans.
Reason two was that by then I had a consulting agreement from Monsanto’s
Human Health Division. When I told the
Animal Division that I would not accept a fulltime job with them, they also
offered me a consulting contract. This
second agreement was soon followed by a third with the Environmental Sciences Division. My boss at AgRISTARS joked that I had a novel
way of getting consulting agreements, applying for a job.
I did not plan to move to St. Louis to work
with Monsanto, so I was going to need a business location in Columbia in order
to continue my work when I wasn’t in St. Louis.
Also, Gwen was getting close to graduating and meeting the requirements
to have her own counseling business. It
made sense to purchase a building in which we could both have our offices. I had the financial resources to buy one, and
I would be able to use the property for tax and investment purposes. I wanted a warm, homey appearance and found a
property on Fay St. that was close to the Business Loop. It was an old residence that had a chimney
with the letter “S” mounted on it. It
seemed like destiny had led me there.
However, there were two problems: it was
not zoned commercial, and it was an old house that needed renovation. The property already had commercial
businesses on one side and across the street, so I hired a lawyer to help change
the zoning. The owner was an older woman
who was very difficult for me to deal with.
However, we finally came to an agreement with two contingencies, one
that the property could be re-zoned commercial and the other that I was able to
obtain a mortgage.
My lawyer submitted the paperwork to the
city, and the council approved the rezoning to commercial without comment. Next, I needed the mortgage. The bank asked me to come there to sign the
mortgage application, so Gwen and I made the appointment. All was well until they asked me where my
husband was. When they found out I was
not married, they refused to give me the mortgage. They required a husband’s signature. I was infuriated. I would never do business with that bank.
I wrote a document detailing how the income
for the mortgage would be generated by the rents paid by my and Gwen’s
businesses and submitted it to the loan officer at another bank. He was very impressed and ordered an
appraisal which, suspiciously (in my opinion), came in more than high enough to
cover the cost of the property and renovations.
The loan officer then agreed to write the mortgage, only requiring my
signature, not a husband’s. I followed
him with satisfaction when he moved from that bank to another.
I hired a firm to perform the renovations which
turned the house into a business. The
old coal-burning furnace in the basement was disassembled, removed piece by
piece and replaced. The wiring and
plumbing were updated. The old plaster
lathe on the first-floor walls and ceilings was replaced with sound-proof
wallboard, and the floors were carpeted and tiled. The commercial zoning required a parking lot,
and a ramp was built at the front entrance for handicap accessibility. I remembered how I had not hired a man at KU
Medical Center because of the lack of accessibility at that time, and I did not
begrudge this expense. We had an
attractive wooden sign posted in the front yard upon which the name of each
business could be listed. Our new office
environment was very warm and friendly.
The main entrance was through a backdoor
porch into the kitchen that opened into the former dining room, now a reception
area. Gwen had the office in the front
of the house, the previous living room.
There were two other rooms on the main floor which could be used as
offices. My office was upstairs. I removed the wallpaper, even on the ceiling,
using some of the skills I had learned when I had helped my mother clean out
the apartments my parents had owned in Wichita.
I loved the thought of being able to look out the upstairs windows on
two sides, thinking back to my childhood bedroom with all its windows.
In August, I attended my final ASA
conference in Philadelphia, as it was the last one that would be paid for by an
employer. After the conference, I took a
train for the short trip to Princeton to visit my sister. When I arrived, she told me her date would be
showing up shortly and taking us on a picnic.
That’s when I met Vince, who would eventually become her second husband
and my brother-in-law. He was very
outgoing with a social work and counseling background. I later found out that he had a gay son. He brought a picnic basket and bottle of wine
which we took to a park. We enjoyed the
relaxed atmosphere, the conversation and got to know each other.
Back in Columbia, my days with USDA and
AgRISTARS were almost over. It turned
out that the big federal bureaucracy had not filtered down to the workplace in
Columbia. My time with AgRISTARS was
most pleasant, not at all like my time at the university. Now, what was it going to be like being my
own boss?
Fifteen years ago, while working in the Biometry Department at the University of Kansas Medical Center, I first had my vision of becoming a statistician working full-time with biological researchers. It was now 1985 and I had started my own business, SIS. I had a physical office outside my home, Columbia clients that provided basic monetary support and corporate contracts that opened the door for more growth. To succeed, I needed good health and smart business sense. I already had the motivation to work hard and was confident that I could keep my existing Monsanto contracts while also obtaining additional ones elsewhere. What I didn’t fully realize at the time was the importance of having the support and understanding of my partner. More about that later.
My Work with Monsanto Scientists
My first interview with Monsanto had
started at their Creve Coeur location, and then after lunch we toured their
building under construction in Chesterfield which was built on a large tract of
land near the intersection of I64/Highway 40 and Olive Blvd/Clarkson Rd. My work with the three Monsanto contracts
required that I be away from Columbia two days a week at these two locations. If I got up very early Monday morning, I
could drive the two hours from Columbia to the Creve Coeur location in time for
their business hours. The Environmental
Sciences Division was also in Creve Coeur and they provided a desk. I met with their scientists Monday morning,
and, in the afternoon, I met with the Human Health Division scientists in Creve
Coeur. I spent the night in a motel, got
up early the next day and went to the office provided by the Human Health Division
in the now completed Chesterfield location.
The Agricultural staff was also located in Chesterfield in an adjoining building
with greenhouses on the roof, and I visited with them as needed. I tried to leave for Columbia by 3 p.m. in
order to beat the St. Louis rush hour traffic, stopping by my office on Fay St.
before heading home. It was a hectic and
draining two days, but I enjoyed working with these scientists very much.
It amazed me how much confidence I had
gained in my consulting ability after the years at the University of Missouri
and then my part-time consulting while with the USDA. In general, the biologists did not have
confidence in their math or statistics knowledge and gave me their full
attention as I worked with them. In
turn, I respected their professional expertise and just tried to set the tone
as one of collaboration between two scientists working on the same
project.
Some of the pharmaceutical scientists
worked mainly with plate bioassays that were used to determine whether a new compound
looked at all promising for further testing.
If it did, a different group of scientists ran experiments using a range
of compound concentrations. The
scientists gave me a basic description of 1) their experiment, including the
number and type of treatment groups, the number of subjects per group and how
the subjects were randomly assigned to a group, the time points at which they
were measured and when the treatment began, 2) the source of the material being
studied, such as animal, blood, urine, cell culture, or assay plate, 3) the
variables, that is the measurements made on the material and 4) a description of
a positive response.
Below is a picture of a typical 96 well
plate used in a plate bioassay. The
wells would contain varying amounts of the compound. Note the similarity to an IBM punched card. The plates used in bioassays were usually
much larger.
At the beginning, there was no uniform
computer compatibility among the computers being used. Some Monsanto workers used Apple, while
others used IBM PCs. Monsanto’s IT
department only supported very rudimentary email. I needed to physically be in St. Louis, not
only to meet with the scientists, but to pick up their disks containing the data
to be analyzed. I could access their
statistical program (SAS) from Columbia using a modem and ProComm software for
communicating over telephone lines. SAS
for PCs didn’t exist yet, so that was the only way I could analyze the data
remotely. I sent the final results to a
printer room in St. Louis, and emailed the scientists with a summary of the
findings letting them know where they could pick up the printed results. It was all very primitive by today’s
standards.
Initially my desk was in the Human Health administrative
area, so I dressed nicely, had a great purse and was still wearing makeup. The small animal facility was on the other
side of the wall from my desk. Once I noticed
I was getting flea bites through my panty hose while sitting at my desk. I knew that’s what it was from my experience
with Kay’s dogs. After some initial
skepticism, they took care of it before I returned the next week.
My boss, Bud, valued statistics and
assigned me the task of teaching a series of statistics classes for the
biological scientists. By this time, I
had consulted with enough of them that I could use examples from their own research. This enabled the scientists to ask meaningful
questions in class, and it kept their interest.
I was glad of my experience teaching with IBM and at the community
college. I was not teaching a college
course and my written handouts needed to be different from the typical college
textbooks. Since attendance was
mandatory, I quickly met, and was asked to consult with, more and more
scientists.
Monsanto soon acquired Searle
Pharmaceutical, and I made visits to their facility in Skokie, Illinois, a
suburb of Chicago. The Skokie location
already had a statistical staff which became a great resource for me. I met their boss and before long one of their
supervisors was assigned to manage my contract instead of Bud. My office was moved closer to the scientists,
and I was able to stop dressing so formally. One day my new supervisor was visiting St.
Louis, and we were observing a scientist prepare an experiment with tissue that
still had blood on it. For many years, I
had fainted at the sight of blood. This
time, my boss took one look at the tissue and had to sit down before he fainted,
whereas it didn’t bother me. I was very
proud of myself.
Most of the Skokie statisticians worked in
the area of drug development, whereas my full-time job was to support drug
discovery. A brief explanation of how companies
find new compounds that can be made into a drug and brought to market would
make clear the difference between these two areas. First, each pharmaceutical company decides
which diseases to target. It takes a lot
of money to discover and bring a new drug to the market, so the company needs
to be able to patent a drug that has a large enough number of potential buyers
that it will be profitable. The disease not
only needs to be a common one, but also one for which the company has a reasonable
chance of finding a treatment.
When I started at Monsanto, they were targeting
cardio-vascular, central nervous system, and cancer diseases. Basic scientists working in academic or
government laboratories develop and document the way compounds produce positive
results, called the mechanism of action. During drug discovery, industry chemists
create compounds. The biological scientists
then test them using these documented procedures to see if they produce
adequate positive results for further consideration. Tens or hundreds of thousands of compounds may
have to be tested before a few are found worthy.
Drug discovery scientists identify candidate
compounds. In drug development, these
compounds are tested by another group of scientists. They
run tests to make sure the drugs are not toxic and to confirm that they had the
desired effect. These are known as the
safety and efficacy tests. The
statisticians at Searle analyze their data to ensure the FDA-specified criteria
are met before the compounds can proceed to testing in humans during clinical
trials. I was never directly involved in
either drug development or clinical trials.
I was very happy working with the discovery scientists who worked at the
beginning of the process.
A major discovery around this period of
time was that COX-2 inhibitors can be used to relieve pain. One of the scientists who discovered this was
Dr. Philip Needleman, a pharmacologist at Washington University School of
Medicine. He was hired by Searle, and I
loved to walk by his office where there was a sign saying “You must have your
data with you for an appointment.” His
knowledge was helpful in the development of Celebrex and Bextra, COX-2
inhibitors that block an enzyme responsible for inflammation and pain. I consulted with the discovery scientists on
these two drugs, as well as the blood pressure medicine Eplerenone. It gave me great satisfaction to have
benefitted these efforts.
I also enjoyed my work with the
Environmental Sciences Division. They
studied data about chemicals Monsanto made, from dioxin to PCB, which were
suspected or known to cause disease in humans.
I wanted to support their efforts to discover and remediate these pollutants. I worked with one of their scientists on a
published paper I co-authored discussing a statistical method for analyzing what
happens to the chemicals that are present in the environment. I was the first author on another paper about
how an aquatic organism responds to low doses of a toxic chemical. Unfortunately, this Division was dissolved
after a few years. I always wondered if
it was because there were many lawsuits against Monsanto, and the legal
discovery process was acquiring the findings it made. Was Monsanto providing their accusers the very
data they needed to win their lawsuits?
My Work with University Faculty and Graduate Students
Meanwhile, the other days of the week, I was
getting more and more Columbia customers including both UMC students and
faculty. Now, I had an office they could
visit instead of me needing to go on campus.
The majority of these students wanted to complete their Ed.D. degrees in
the Department of Education. They were
often school principals in town to meet with their university adviser who had
assigned them a research question.
The students would then come to my office with
that question, and we would work on what they needed to do next. I helped them develop their research design
and the process by which they would collect the relevant data, often selecting
or designing a survey instrument. We
discussed the variables that would be analyzed using the proper statistical method. After conducting their research, they brought
their data to me. I went to the campus
computing facility and processed it. When
they came to my office to review the results, I asked them to tape record our
meetings as an aide in writing a draft of their procedures and results. I then reviewed and edited their drafts. After their dissertation was accepted and before
their oral exam, I reviewed all of the above with them and asked them questions
I thought they might encounter at their orals.
They all passed and received their doctorates and, for the most part,
were very grateful for the help. Their
advisers had usually been waiting many years for them to complete their degrees
and were happy as the tally of the degrees their students completed increased. Of course, I felt that the consulting they
received from me really should have been provided by their department. But I was happy that my ability to
communicate and educate these students was of service.
It became clear that the students also needed help preparing their dissertations. I decided to expand my Columbia business to include word processing services. I purchased a photocopy machine, two more PCs, and hired two women to do the word processing using WordPerfect software. I got a copy of the exacting procedures the graduate office specified for their acceptance of a printed dissertation. The students told my workers which style manual to use. SIS was soon filling an unmet need and had become a one-stop shop for students wanting to complete their degrees. We were very busy, expanding to graduate students from other departments, like Counseling Psychology.
Growing My Business in Columbia
A small business like mine had a difficult
time hiring clerical staff in Columbia. Not
only the university but other large institutions in Columbia, like insurance
companies, hospitals, and the public schools, offered good salary and benefit
packages, making it difficult for me to compete for qualified staff. I paid a low, but decent starting wage, offered
medical coverage, paid personal and vacation leave, but still had a difficult
time hiring workers with the skills I needed.
I was finally able to hire two women, one young and one older. Then I ran into the problem caused by my
absence from the SIS office two days a week.
I fired the young employee when,
despite my clear policy to the contrary, she left work without notifying me one
afternoon when I was in St. Louis. The
older employee had already called in sick, and no one was left to meet the
customers. I decided to scale back and
just kept the older employee.
I also obtained two local customers, a bank
and a science-based company. I joined
the Columbia Chamber of Commerce and the Women’s Network where I met many
business women, including Libby Gill.
She was in charge of the Marketing Department at what was then Boone
County National Bank, but became the Central Bank of Boone County. They did routine surveys of customer
satisfaction and future needs. She took
me to meet the President of the bank. In
our interview, he brought up a topic I had read about in the Wall Street
Journal and about which I could comment.
That’s all it took to be approved by him, and Libby offered me a
contract. I worked with the bank for
several years including the marketing and trust departments. I also helped develop and analyze a survey about
whether there was a need for online banking, since it didn’t exist at the time.
The science-based company was locally owned
and, at that time, called ABC Laboratories. One of the founders, David Stallings, had worked
at the Fisheries Pesticide Laboratory where I consulted while at the
University. ABC has since undergone
changes in ownership, and is now known as Eurofins Columbia, part of an international
testing company with headquarters in Europe.
It was the first contract laboratory company with whom I worked. Monsanto Environmental Sciences had a
contract with ABC Labs, and when one of the Monsanto Environmental Sciences employees
visited ABC in Columbia, he also stopped by my office. He told ABC that they were to use me for his
statistical analysis. Referrals such as
these really helped my business grow.
EPA specified the calculations that ABC scientists had to perform on their raw data. I advised them on how SAS could be used to meet these requirements and then wrote the programs to meet them. Their buildings were located on a plot of land that had a good ground source of water that was pure enough for the testing required on aquatic animals, like fish. Other types of animals used in their toxicity testing included midges, snails, and honey bees. They also had greenhouses for conducting tests on plants.
Back on the Home Front
I was consulting with my clients in St.
Louis two days and in Columbia the rest of the week. Gwen was very supportive, even giving my cat,
Tabu, the insulin shot she required on the morning I was in St. Louis. Finally, Tabu became so sick that I had to
put her down. I buried her among the
trees in our backyard. Arnie also became
sick and died. Gwen and I were both very
sad over the loss of our family members.
April 1987 was Gwen’s 45th
birthday. I wanted to surprise her with what
I hoped would be a thoughtful present.
She had seemed to be depressed after Arnie’s death, so I found a breeder
who had Afghan pups for sale. I let Gwen
know she didn’t have to take one if she wasn’t ready, but I would buy her one
for her birthday if she found a puppy she liked. She said she wanted to go look and was taken
with a little female that she named Fanny, after Fanny Brice in “Funny Girl.”
Below is a picture of Gwen with Fanny.
I was becoming more and more stressed by my Columbia student clients. They were showing up without calling to make appointments. Some were calling me at home on the weekends insisting they had to meet a deadline. I was working with a dozen or more at a time. However, I was starting to make enough income from the business clients that the income from the Columbia students was becoming expendable. I started thinking that I would like to have no students, just business clients.
My First Beautiful House
A salesman from the Lake of the Ozarks called
to invite us for a free weekend at the Lodge of the Four Seasons if we would
listen to a sales pitch. I
thought back to the spring day Gwen and I made a fishing trip to the Lake and
hired a fishing guide. He knew all of
the good spots for crappie (which I had learned to love from the ones Kay and I
caught at Tuttle Puddle years earlier).
We caught many crappies which our guide cleaned, and we took them home. We had several meals of fried crappie along
with morel mushrooms that Gwen’s dad had given us. With these memories in mind, I agreed to the
proposed stay and sales talk. If we
liked the looks of their property, couldn’t a consultant like myself live
anywhere? The lake was still within
driving distance of St. Louis, just adding 40 minutes to the trip, and there
would be no students around to bother me.
After touring lots for sale, back at the
sales office, we were pressured to sign papers to buy one. Even though I had no way to signal Gwen that
I didn’t intend to follow through on the purchase, I did surprise her by signing
the paper to buy one of the lots. I then
received papers that not only had detailed legal information on the lot I
purchased, but on all Four Seasons properties.
I quickly rescinded that purchase.
However, my interest had been sparked about
buying property and living there. As when
I was shown houses before moving to Columbia, I had been looking for signs
saying they were for sale by the owner.
I drove back to see one that looked promising and wrote down the
information on the sign. I was able to
negotiate with the owner of that lot and purchased it in June 1987. The adjacent lot was vacant and I wanted to
have both, so I found out who owned it and discovered he lived in Wichita. I called him the next time I was in Wichita
and purchased it in January 1988. I now
own two lake-front properties.
I liked the looks of the house next door to my lots and asked the owner about their architect. It was Victor Stimac whose office was in St. Louis. He had trained at the Frank Lloyd Wright schools in both Wisconsin and Arizona. Gwen and I provided Victor with a description of what we wanted in the house, and I signed a contract with him to proceed with some plans. After Gwen and I approved them, we hired a local builder, Lawrence Lee, and gave him the blueprints. The cost he calculated was quite high, however, the plans looked so gorgeous that we decided to proceed. I opened an account at the local affiliate of my Columbia bank and approached them for a mortgage. After providing them with copious documents, they approved a jumbo loan. These are larger than average loans that also have a higher-than-normal interest rate.
Changes in Family Responsibility
In December 1987, my father died at age 85. For several years, he had been having
problems taking care of his colostomy, and he also had mild dementia. My mother finally decided she couldn’t give
him adequate care at home and transferred him to a nursing facility. It wasn’t far from where my mother lived, so
she could visit often and supervise his care.
However, during a winter snow storm, my mother was unable to visit for
several days. He died during that time. My sister and I both went to Wichita for the
memorial service. I was amused at the
song my mother chose to have sung at the service, “I Did it My Way.” Did it say something about their marriage?
Previously my father and I discussed the method
by which he specified the bequests in his will.
Since the values of his holdings changed over time, I suggested that it
might make more sense to specify percentage of assets rather than dollar
amounts. I did not know what he had decided
to do. Since my mother had her own
healthy portfolio, he followed my advice and specified 50% to go to my mother
and 25% each to me and my sister. At
that time, the amount excluded from taxes was only $600,000 and the tax rate
was 37% on amounts over that exclusion. This
resulted in a large estate tax, both federal and state.
Obviously, the estate tax generates
revenue, but it was also intended to lessen the ability of very wealthy
families to perpetuate the family wealth through successive generations and level
the playing field between the very wealthy and the rest of the citizenry. After much politicizing and rhetoric about
“death taxes,” the tax law was changed in 2010.
Currently the exclusion amount is over ten million, with the rate after
that rising from 18% to 40% after the eleventh million. Of course, lawyers can be hired to find ways
of lessening the amount of taxes owed even further.
After my father’s accountant determined the
value of his estate and paid the federal and state taxes, my inheritance
arrived in the form of stocks and bonds.
My portfolio was growing. In the
spring, a man who owned an old car museum in California visited Wichita while I
was there, and we sold him my father’s 1902 Knox since none of the grandchildren
was in a position to house it.
In light of my father’s death, my mother
needed to revise her legal documents.
During one of my visits, I accompanied her on a visit to see her
lawyer. He suggested that she use a
trust rather than a simple will. Considering
her age, he also recommended she name a co-trustee. Because of my financial knowledge,
particularly of their investments, and my intention to visit her often, she named
me her co-trustee. That meant whenever
she wanted more help handling her affairs, I could easily step in to do
so. My mother felt like her grandparents
had not split their estate equally among their daughters, and she was not the
favored one. She resented this and
directed her lawyer to divide her estate equally between my sister and me. She regarded my sister’s children as part of
my sister’s share, and they were not named separately. I was specified to be my mother’s executor.
My mother was only in her mid-70s, still drove, kept house and prepared her meals. When I visited her for a long weekend, I would load my computer tower, keyboard and printer in my van and make the almost 5-hour drive on I-70, cutting through Kansas City on the I-470/I-435 bypass, and then I-35 South to Emporia and the Kansas Turnpike into Wichita. The drive through the flint hills was beautiful. At my mother’s house, I set up my computer in her TV room where she spent most of her evenings sitting in her recliner knitting or crocheting while watching TV. I could run a long cable from her telephone plug in the kitchen to my PC. This enabled me to communicate with the Monsanto computer. Gwen stayed at home to take care of Fanny and her counseling business.
Preparing for the Change in Residences
The next couple of years in Columbia went
by fast. I was very busy serving the
needs of my business clients and winding down my work with the students. Our builder thought he could finish the lake
house by January 1, 1990. I would need
to sell the house and the office building in Columbia. I could operate my business out of the lake
house, but Gwen would need to establish a counseling business at the lake.
In anticipation of celebrating our move, I
signed Gwen and I up for the first 7-day cruise offered by Olivia, which was in
the process of converting its record company to a company that scheduled
cruises for lesbians. They realized that
the recording business was changing and reasoned that they could book these
artists to perform on their cruises for concerts on the sea. Olivia did not own the ships, but rather
contracted with the cruise lines. We
routinely went into St. Louis and Kansas City for concerts, so being able to hear
these artists every night on a cruise sounded great.
In the spring of 1989, Gwen leased an office
in Osage Beach. It didn’t seem to me to be
a great choice, as it was big for a one-person business and required a year’s lease
rather than month-to-month rental. It seemed
like a big commitment, but she signed the papers without talking to me. She started spending two days a week at the lake
to get things going. She was able to
check on the house construction while she was there. Meanwhile I started work on finding a buyer
for the Fay St. location.
Gwen and I, and sometimes Ellen, made the drive to see how the construction was coming along on the lake house. We visited the Biggs, our next-door neighbor, on what he called Bumble Bee Point. A typical joke by Mr. Biggs was “Have you ever seen a rubber nut?” Then he would give us a walnut which opened easily to reveal a condom. Through a common friend in Columbia, we met a younger lesbian couple, Sheri and Sue. They had lived and worked at the lake a long time. They were very generous, and sometimes would let us stay over at their house. We attended a Home Show where we met Craig Radabaugh who became a very good friend. He owned Versatec Security. We ordered both a security and telephone system for our new home from him.
It Wasn’t Supposed to Happen
By the late summer, I should have seen the BIG
BREAKUP coming. Gwen prepared a
sweetheart meal for me: grilled steak, baked potato and steamed asparagus. We had been tasting and buying some German
wines from a wine salesman, Ray Day, and she opened a nice bottle to go with
the steak. She stuffed me full of food
including a dessert and a quantity of wine.
When it was time for bed it seemed like she expected me to show my
appreciation by making love to her, but by then I was uncomfortably full, a
little drunk, and I just fell asleep.
Clearly, I flunked the test.
Neither Gwen nor I were great at
interpreting the blueprints of the lake house and the layout on the land, but
it turned out there was no yard for Fanny.
She would have to be walked on the street and need to be taken to the
State Park for a run. Gwen was also
having trouble building a clientele at the lake. Did either of these contribute to the shocking
news that she would not be moving to the lake with me?
Maybe those disappointments contributed,
but they were not the real reason. Gwen then
told me she was in love with another woman.
She didn’t think I showed her enough attention meaning I must be interested
in someone else. She thought I might be
having an affair with my ex, Kaye, her partner or someone else on the night I
was in St. Louis. To me, that was
laughable. I had not so much as kissed
anyone else since I had been with Gwen, nor had I wanted to. She also claimed she really hadn’t wanted
Fanny for her birthday, but she didn’t think she had a choice. Not so!
I couldn’t understand what she was thinking but still loved her deeply. Starting and running a business was very
demanding, and I knew that I had not been giving her the attention she
required.
I began snooping around and in her desk at
home found letters from a woman living in Florida. Her love interest wasn’t even living in
Columbia! When I asked Gwen about her, she
told me she was a previous client who was 14 years younger than Gwen. Gwen said there had been sufficient time
since their professional relationship, so it was ethical to be with her. I was stunned. All Gwen’s current attraction seemed to be
based on a previous counselor/client relationship and correspondence between
them.
Since Gwen was a psychologist, I hoped she would
be open to the idea of couples counseling.
She agreed, and we made the appointment.
Gwen admitted to the counselor that she had started another relationship. The only request I thought might be possible
was asking Gwen to suspend her communications with this woman for a short
period while she and I tried to work on our relationship. When she refused even that, I knew there was
no hope. I agreed to sell the Columbia house
to Gwen giving her credit toward it for half the mortgage payments, even though
as a student, she had not really paid half.
She asked me to move out by the end of June, 1990, even though delays in
the lake house construction meant that it would not be completely finished by
then.
Picking Up the Pieces
I felt betrayed and overwhelmed by the
events, but life had to go on. Over the
winter and spring, I was able to move some items to the lake with the help of
Ellen and her friends. In what would be
my office overlooking the lake, we cleaned up the bookcases, put in the
shelving and filled them with books. I
brought down a bed from Columbia, and they helped assemble it. We cleaned and lined kitchen drawers and
cabinets, and I supplied it with sufficient dishes for my needs.
Meanwhile, there were tasks that needed to
be completed in Columbia. I spread the
word that I was selling the Fay St. office building, and it would be available in
mid-1990. Two nurse practitioners who
worked at the local Planned Parenthood and were also certified midwives wanted
to start a business. With the help of a
local female MD, Cherchez la Femme Birth Services was born. I thought the homey atmosphere of the Fay St.
house would be perfect for them. I
prepared a lease with the contract giving the option to buy. I recommended the doctor use the same
appraiser that the bank had used for my mortgage. I thought his appraisal would be at least as
high as it was before, and it was. The
doctor signed the lease in June, 1990. The
lease payment would cover the current mortgage, and I had a good sales price if
that option were exercised.
My personal relationship dreams definitely
did not come true. This was starting to
feel like familiar ground, but different.
I was leaving a house I had lived in for almost 13 years, but knew where
I was moving. I was leaving an office I
had worked in for five years, but knew where my new one would be. I was leaving a relationship I had been in
for 16 years, but did not know when, or if, I would have a new one. How would I fare? In the past, I had not spent much time by
myself, but rather had immediately started looking for a new partner. How had that worked out? Again and again, not well. I hoped now I would be able to use my time wisely
and, perhaps, the results would improve.