Ellen* is 72 years old but insists that "inside I'm still 16." She's witty and intelligent (a member of American Mensa Ltd.) and very busy. Only five feet tall, with hair a lovely blonde she says owes more to L'Oreal than nature, Ellen is as focused and driven in her work as anyone half her age.
While most people her age seem to be slowing down, she's speeding up. She confided that recently she'd pulled two all-nighters in one week to meet a client's rush deadline. By the end of the interview, I was feeling tired just being in the presence of such energy.On the personal side, Ellen has been married twice, both ending in divorce.
Ellen has 5 grown children (3 girls, 2 boys) and 13 grandchildren. She has a B.A. in History and Anthropology, an M.A. in Linguistics, and a J.
D. in law. She worked for over 30 years as a communications manager and consultant before opening her own business communications shop in 2004. She takes freelance business writing assignments from clients all over the U.S.
Ellen's personal hero is Isaac Asimov who marked his 65th birthday with a non-retirement party. She quoted to me from Asimov's comments on working: "If the doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood about it. I'd just type a little faster."There's a lot of Asimov's attitude in Ellen.
Her typical workday is often over 8 hours, and her work can stretch well into the weekend, especially if she's taken off a few afternoons to play golf. Ellen admits to having seen enormous changes in her lifetime, particularly in the role of women in the workforce.The open-ended questions I asked her gave her an opportunity to reflect on those changes, but in the end she shrugged and offered, "That's all history. Today is for living."Interview QuestionsLet's talk a bit about your history. You've seen a lot of changes in your lifetime.
What changes stand out to you as significant and having the most impact on society?In the field of technology, our venture into space is a dream come true. When I was 13, I stood out under the night stars, gazing up and crying because I thought I'd been born too soon to ever see mankind reach the moon. I was a big science fiction fan, but in the early 1950s, it seemed we were making no progress toward getting off this planet.Then John Kennedy made his famous declaration about going to the moon and the race was on. It's a race we won as a nation because we were focused and dedicated to that goal.Then the space program almost foundered and has never gained much momentum even with the space station.
Now we're going to have to hitch a ride to it via the Russians when our shuttles are taken out of service.We've made huge advances in medicine and micro-technology too. On a daily level, our advances in computer science probably affect everyone on the planet the most. I can't remember the last time I wrote a letter to anyone—but I answered over 50 emails this morning.I wouldn't be able to be in business for myself easily now without computers. My contracts with clients are all signed electronically, thanks to the Electronic Signature Act of 2000, so there's no paper being mailed back and forth.
I deliver my business assignments to clients via email or an upload program—and I get paid electronically too, whether it's by credit card, PayPal, or direct deposit into my business account."Open Meeting" and other programs allow me to meet with my clients in real time without ever leaving my home office. I owe a tremendous debt to Tim Berners-Lee, the 'father of the Internet,' and all the others who worked to reduce computers to desktop and laptop proportions. When I was young, the concept of a personal computer didn't exist.Television was still black and white until the '60s, and a lot of programming was boring—not much better than infomercials are in the dead of night today. As a result, we read more, we got out of doors and did more things, and when we called a friend, it was from a stationary telephone in a house.
Life today has become portable, and we live in an era of instant breakfast and instant cash. The pace was slower, and in some ways, that was more beneficial. We had more time to think.Another huge change for the better in the 20th century was the Civil Rights movement. I grew up in a segregated South and even as a young child puzzled over why my mother always told me to treat people equally when she also expressed that "colored people" really preferred to remain separate.
By the time I was 5, I didn't buy that statement at all and made it a point to drink from public fountains marked "colored" much to my mother's horror, pointing out that there were only colored people in the world. Some people were pink and others brown, but no one was white. Maybe my argumentative logic was what steered me to law school many years later.The bid for equality among women was another profound change.
I got caught up in the Women's Movement in the 1960s, resuming my maiden name while still married, opening separate charge accounts and acquiring credit cards solely in my name. I wouldn't have had the career opportunities I had if it weren't for the push the Women's Movement gave me to be assertive in business.But that success was a double-edged sword. My second husband was not nearly so successful and my achievements and earning power contributed to the end of our marriage. Am I sorry for that? Not at all.
I don't think I could be induced to marry again for any reason. In retrospect, it seems to me that there's room in marriage for one-and-a-half people, and I'm damned if I'll be the 'half.'
