Interview
Ann Stone: One Pilgrim's Progress

Volume 23, No. 2

Ann Gardner Stone of Evanston, IL, has been an editor for Exponent II and the stalwart organizer of many Midwest Pilgrim Retreats during the past seventeen years. At the most recent Pilgrimage, Ann described her approach to much of life with this slogan: "Facilitate Chaos." Besides her current career in retail (she owns a gift shop called "Naturally!" in Evanston), Ann is a poet, teacher, and friend of particular sensitivity and humor. In every realm Ann's gifts amuse, bless, and inspire others. Exponent II asked Ann to share some thoughts on her life, career, and family.

EX2: When you were growing up, how did you envision your adult life in terms of family, children, and work?

AGS: I don't know that I had a specific picture in mind. I knew I wanted to be married. I knew I wanted to have children, but I also wanted to do exciting things.

EX2: What sounded exciting to you?

AGS: I was from a little farming community called Queen Creek, Arizona – about 500 people out in the middle of the desert. All I could think of was that there must be something more exciting out there than Queen Creek, Arizona. All through high school I thought I'd like to be in the foreign service, mostly because it offered travel. But when I got to college, the first political science course I took I got a C in, so that made me think that English might be a better thing to do.

EX2: Was it unusual for girls from Queen Creek to go to college?

AGS: Yes, it was. Only about three of us actually did that. The rest got married outside of high school.

EX2: Did you seem to be an oddball among your peers when you were growing up or were you just one of the gals?

AGS: I was just one of the gals. One nice thing about a small town is that there are lots of oddballs. Everyone knows them and no one seems to care.

EX2: Did you have mentors in your youth? Anyone who inspired you that there might be more than just what meets the eye in Queen Creek?

AGS: My sister-in-law was the biggest influence as far as looking beyond what I had. My brother and she were married when I was five. They moved to Queen Creek when I was in junior high. She had been to college. She loved to read. She belonged to a Book of the Month Club that brought fabulous books into her house, and she loved to share them with me. She loved art. She always had art books there. She was the one who showed me that there are all kinds of exciting things out there to do and see.

EX2: You did go off to college, you majored in English, and that was with the hopes of what? Writing the great American novel?

AGS: No, I never wanted to be a writer. But I wanted to work in publishing or writing or editing-something like that. However, my adviser would not sign off on my graduation until I got a teaching certificate. So I did that. It was a good thing because I couldn't find a job other than typist. At every job interview I went to, they wanted me to take a typing test. I had refused to take typing in high school, so of course I failed miserably. At that time the only jobs they were offering women were secretarial jobs. 

I graduated from college in 1965. I started doing substitute teaching at the high school level. Then I got a full-time job at an inner city junior high school in San Diego. On my first day of school, I was told that an arsonist had set fire to my classroom, so I spent the whole semester going from empty classroom to empty classroom to whatever was available. This situation was very difficult for a new teacher. I decided to go back to graduate school and get a master's so that I could teach on the adult level. I did both my college and my graduate work at Arizona State. My graduate degree was also in English.

EX2: How was the job market when you came out of graduate school?

AGS: It was pretty good. The community college system was just starting to be built up, so colleges were really looking for teachers. I got a job in a community college just outside of Washington, D. C. There were lots of us new teachers, all excited with bright ideas. We were going to change the world. It was a fun time – a great atmosphere to start teaching.

EX2: Did you have thoughts of marriage and children at this time?

AGS: I met my husband in graduate school when he was getting his Ph.D. in English. For various reasons, including the fact that he wasn't a member of the Church, we decided that marriage wasn't going to work for us. I finished up in a year and went off across the country – about as far as I could get, I thought. I was broken-hearted and he was, too. We thought we could start over without each other, but that didn't happen. I dated a lot in Washington, but it was always with an eye over my shoulder back at Dan.

Finally we decided we couldn't live without each other, and so we got married in 1970. I quit my job and moved to Chicago, where he had gotten a job teaching. By that time, the job market was starting to fall apart. There was a glut of Ph.D.s and Masters in English, and I couldn't find a full-time job, so I patched together little part-time jobs. We waited a while to start having children, but it was a hard time. It was difficult to try to find work. When I was in Washington, I had made friends with a woman who was in charge of all the training programs for government workers, and she would have me pilot her programs to make sure that they worked. She hooked me up with the training center for the federal building in Chicago. I did communications training, mostly for secretaries and government workers. I did that along with teaching part time.

EX2: So we have you to thank for the level of communication skills among government employees?

AGS: Absolutely! Just think what it would be like if I hadn't!

EX2: Dan was working?

AGS: Yes, he was a professor at Chicago State teaching English.

EX2: With both of you teaching, there probably was some flexibility with your schedules. How did that work out when the kids came?

AGS: It was great because Dan usually had a two-day-a-week schedule. He did a lot of his work at home, which gave me some flexibility. I also taught nights a lot. I did some traveling with the training that I did, and he was able to be at home with the kids. Geoff was born in 1974 and Philip was born in 1976.

EX2: You had some health problems along the way. What were they and how did they effect your career, your childrearing, and your marriage?

AGS: In 1978 – when Philip was just two – I was diagnosed with breast cancer, had a mastectomy, and had chemotherapy for a year. I continued to work but not as much. Having cancer makes you rethink what's important. I obviously wanted to spend more time with the kids, so I usually taught about one class a semester.

About a year and a half later, I had a recurrence of the cancer. I had to do eighteen more months of the chemo-therapy/radiation. That was a really scary, hard time. The first time through, you think you've kind of beaten it. If you have a recurrence, your survival chances go way down. It was so hard to go through it again. We both worried whether it was going to "take" this time. It put a strain on both of us. The spouse of someone who's sick feels so helpless. I think Dan really did feel like there wasn't anything he could do. He felt he was just standing by, wringing his hands, but in fact he was a great support and help to me. I couldn't have gotten through it without him.

EX2: But you came through that chemotherapy. And then Dan . . .?

AGS: Dan had a stroke at age forty-one. He went into a coma and died over a weekend. The boys were almost ten and seven. You prepare for one person's death, and the other one is the one that goes. It was a very ironic and horrible thing.

In terms of employment, I was lucky to have had things in place. I couldn't make enough money teaching part time, so I started working full time, trying to get the training business going. I branched out from govern- ment training and worked in some associations that allowed me to be home a lot. The boys didn't need childcare. They would go to friends' houses. If I had to travel, I would hire young couples from the ward to come and stay with them. It's nice to have that network in place.

EX2: Looking back at it, it seems as if you made thoughtful, balanced choices about managing the job, kids, marriage as you went along. Would you have done anything differently knowing what you now know?

AGS: I don't think so. I knew that once I had children, I didn't want to work full time. I was lucky to be able to do this. It was fortunate that I had something in place when I really needed it. I know how hard it is for women who don't have that, and who are torn by having to make those choices. Women love their work and love to be with adults and love their children and want to be with them.

EX2: You were a Relief Society president. Did these issues come up with the sisters?

AGS: Constantly. Women seem so torn by home vs. work and never feel validated by whichever decision they make, whatever they're trying to do. Whatever it is, it's not the right thing. If they're working, they feel guilty. If they're staying home, they feel guilty that they're not using their potential and that they're being looked down on by the women who work. The women who work also feel as if they're being looked down on by "the Church" – whatever they think that is. It is a difficult situation to resolve.

I once gave a Relief Society lesson on making decisions. I made up a bunch of roles such as working mother, two children, likes her work; stay-at-home mom, five kids, husband who works; single mom, three children, has to work – all kinds of scenarios, as many as I could think of. I wrote them on slips of paper and had each of the women draw one out of a hat. After they had looked at what they had drawn, they could trade if they could convince someone to trade with them. Then I asked them which scenarios they kept and which were traded. It was always the single mom with kids having to work that got traded. Nobody wanted that. I pointed out that that was my life they were trading around and trying to get rid of.

This exercise made for an interesting discussion about what we value, what we think the perfect life is, and how few of us have the perfect life. So then what? How do you make your life work with the hand you were dealt? It seems an ongoing issue. I have no answers. I just wish we could be supportive of whatever decision women make. I think women are doing the best they can. We need to support their decisions.

EX2: Do you think about wider options for men as well?

AGS: Absolutely. Academics was a great career for my husband because he loved being a father, and the flexible schedule allowed him more time with the boys. If you can believe it, we used to fight over who got to change the diapers. I think now about how much time he actually spent with them. Probably in his short life time, he spent as much time with those kids as a lot of men do who live much longer than he just because he had that flexibility. That was real gift that he gave to the kids. I think men should have options about how to spend their time.

EX2: Now that your boys are grown, how do you see their present situation and envision their futures?

AGS: My one son is married, and both he and his wife work. He shares equally in the household chores. I assume he will do so when they have children. They seem to have an egalitarian relationship. I think both of my boys are very aware of pulling their weight. Both of them are pretty en- lightened feminists, I guess. They'll be fine as fathers and husbands. I have so many good women friends, a really close sister, and nieces. My sons are used to being around women. They're very comfortable with women. I think I did them a big favor in that regard.

EX2: You're no longer teaching writing and communication. Tell us about your current employment.

AGS: When my boys were in high school, I could see they needed me to be around less and less. I was at home so much working that I began missing colleagues and seeing adults every day. I decided to find something to do outside the house for a while until I decided what I really wanted to do.

A friend of mine was opening a gift shop and looking for a manager. Although I had absolutely no experience in retail or anything like it, I said "Well, maybe I'd be interested." So I managed this little gift shop, doing the buying and everything to keep it going for a couple of years. My friend owned another little store, and it reached a point where she couldn't do both and was going to close the gift shop. I had a financial adviser friend look at the numbers and asked him, "Could I make this work?" He said, "Maybe. You're stupid to try, but yes, go ahead."

So I bought it from her. That was five years ago. I have this little store. I sell a little bit of everything: books, cards, jewelry, stationery, and beanie babies! Strange but true, beanie babies have kept the store afloat, so I can't turn up my nose at them .

It's been an interesting experience to make decisions that take thousands of dollars out of my pocket and put them on the floor of the store, hoping that somebody will buy them. Mostly I really have liked it. I love the neighborhood feel of the store and having personal relationships with my customers. I have wonderful people working for me-creative and wonderful women. It's been fun.

EX2: Do you miss the teaching?

AGS: I do not miss the teaching. I realized when I stopped how stressful it is to always be on stage and be prepared and never knowing-especially when I had a different group each time-what they were going to be like and what to be prepared for. I do love to teach, but Relief Society is about enough for me right now.

EX2: Any last words of wisdom you'd like to share?

AGS: I suppose that life is very different for women now. So many don't have many options. It's a hard world out there-so we should help each other as much as we can. We should stop criticizing. 

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