Whenever one of my older siblings ever said, “Maybe I’ll just stay here—in our rural Texas town—and go to college close by,” my Mom’s reaction was a frown and a quick, “No, you won’t.” This was not said teasingly or with a laugh but rather in a hard-edged tone that left no opening for discussion.

My mother moved to our northcentral Texas town of Bonham, population 7,000, after finishing her bachelor’s degree in sociology when she was twenty-two. The year was 1940, and she had arrived for a new job as a social worker. My father, sixteen years her senior, was thirty-eight and had grown up in a small farming community a few miles south of Bonham. As several older women told me later, he was the most handsome man in three counties at that time, and he immediately took to this new young “professional” woman in town. Even though my mother told my dad she was already engaged, he was determined to woo her. On weekends, when my mother went out on a date with her fiance, once they returned to her house and said goodnight, my dad tossed pebbles at her window and begged her to come down to see him. When Mom did, my dad was always dressed in a suit and tie, holding a bouquet of flowers. Mom told me Dad swept her off her feet, and they married within a year.

My parents had seven children (I am the fifth), and my mother went from a hard-working social worker to a full-time wife and mother. She also went from living in her hometown community to my dad’s, which was poorer and more rural than where she’d grown up. By the time I came along, she made no bones about not feeling particularly happy in our rural community. She did her best to find some intellectual stimulation. She even formed a “Great Books” discussion group among several women friends. However, much to her chagrin, most of the women she invited to join never read the week’s assignments. They were more interested in getting together to chat.

My mother’s saving grace was the priest of our little Episcopal church. He loved to read, and they met routinely to discuss a mutually agreed-upon book. Once he was transferred to another church, Mom (with Dad’s encouragement) decided to go to graduate school. From the time I was in third grade until I graduated from high school, my mother worked on and completed her Master’s degree in Sociology and then her Ph.D. in Psychology.

My mother wanted her kids to open their minds through higher learning and then go out and experience the world. She saw a university education as our golden ticket out of town, and after my dad died when I was nineteen, it was her ticket out as well. She moved to a larger town not too far away and worked there for twenty-eight years as a college professor and psychologist until she died at 82.