A Fighting Chance

Like a million other teenagers, I hated high school. Classes were okay, and I liked my teachers. I tried hard to fit in, joining the Cygnets Pep Club and the Courtesy Club, but I wasn’t good at high school—friends, parties, football games. We still had the old Studebaker, now pocked with rust, and my daddy used to drop me off a block away from the school. We both said it was to avoid the traffic, but the traffic was an endless stream of shiny new cars. At the time, I was sure I was the only kid in the entire school whose parents struggled with money. By now I’m just as sure that wasn’t true, but the teenage me didn’t have much perspective.

My senior year, I checked out a book about colleges from the high school counselor’s office. When my mother saw the book, she gave me a hard look. “You aren’t thinking about going away to college, are you?” Maybe that had once been her plan for me, before Daddy’s heart attack changed everything, but now it was out of the question. She pointed out that we couldn’t afford it, that she and Daddy just didn’t make enough money. Besides, she argued, I needed to set my sights realistically. It was harder for a woman with a college education to find a husband. “Find a husband” was clearly the goal for any young girl, and I was a pretty iffy candidate.

But later she came back to the topic. If I really wanted to go to college, I could live at home, get a job, and go to school part-time somewhere close. She knew I wanted to be a teacher, and she figured that kind of ambition would probably get pushed aside once I got married and real life set in, but maybe I could go to college until I snagged a husband.

I had a different plan.





Girl with a Plan

It was the fall of 1965, and I was only sixteen, but because I’d skipped a grade, I was now a senior in high school. The way I looked at it, I wasn’t pretty and I didn’t have the highest grades in my school. I didn’t play a sport, couldn’t sing, and didn’t play a musical instrument. But I did have one talent. I could fight—not with my fists, but with my words. I was the anchor on the debate team.

Debate let me stretch as far as I could go. We researched hard topics—free trade, collective bargaining, nuclear disarmament, Medicare—and I started to understand that I could tackle things I didn’t know and teach myself a lot. But most of all, debate was about self-discipline and never giving up. I might get battered, but not beaten.

I figured that debating was my shot at college. So I sat in my room with the door closed, and I read every description in the college book, looking for schools that bragged about their debate teams. I hoped I could find one that would offer me a scholarship. I found only one school—Northwestern—that featured debate in its description. Then I got another lead from a boy who was a year ahead of me on the debate team. After graduation, he had gone to George Washington University. He told me GW had a great debate team—and a debate scholarship.

Two possibilities. The way I figured it, two was a lot more than none. This plan could work.

I sent away to both colleges for applications, then raced home from debate practice every afternoon a few minutes ahead of my mother to intercept any mail. When the forms arrived, I filled them out, bought money orders at the 7-Eleven, mailed them off, and then settled in to wait.

I had the idea that I would get a great scholarship and then present it to my parents as an accomplished fact. If I could go to college for free, how could they say no?

But the plan hit a snag. As I filled out the college applications, I realized that to be eligible for a scholarship, I also needed a financial disclosure form from my parents. I’d applied to college, but there was no way to get the help I needed without telling them what I was up to.

I waited until dinner one night. As the three of us sat quietly at the kitchen table, I suddenly said very cheerfully, “There are lots of scholarships for people who want to go to college.” I probably had the same forced merriment of the woman selling floor wax on a television commercial. When no one said anything, I said in a quieter voice, “I want to try for one.” I didn’t mention that I’d already sent off applications to two faraway colleges.

My mother repeated that we couldn’t afford college, but I was ready. I argued. I pleaded. There are scholarships that make college free. Why couldn’t I try to get into one of those?

My mother kept saying no, but then Daddy surprised both of us, saying: “Let her try, Polly.”

And that was how I ended up with my parents’ tax returns. As I filled in the financial aid forms, I was surprised by the numbers. I divided their income by 52 and saw how little money they earned each week. I knew money was tight, but were we poor? My mother had always claimed that we weren’t poor, but I felt very unsteady.

I gave Daddy the forms to sign and handed back the tax returns. No one talked about the forms again.

One afternoon in the spring, two letters arrived on the same day: both schools had accepted me, but the money wasn’t the same. Northwestern offered some help, but George Washington went all the way—a full scholarship and a federal student loan. If I was careful with the money they were offering, I could afford to go. I was thrilled. Good-bye, Oklahoma City—GW, here I come!

My mother responded to my news with equal parts pride and worry. She would say to friends: “Well, she figured out how to go to college for free, so what could I say? But I don’t know if she’ll ever get married.”