Patricia Schroeder
August 1, 2006; July 15, 2008
Recommended Transcript of Interview with Patricia Schroeder (Aug. 1, 2006; July 15, Citation 2008), https://abawtp.law.stanford.edu/exhibits/show/patricia-schroeder.
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ABA Senior Lawyers Division
Women Trailblazers in the Law
ORAL HISTORY
of
PATRICIA SCHROEDER
Interviewers: Ann Allen Jennifer Lyman
Dates of Interviews:
August 1, 2006 July 15, 2008 WOMEN TRAILBLAZERS IN THE LAW
INTERVIEW WITH PATRICIA SCHROEDER BY J. LYMAN
AUGUST 1, 2006
Ms. Lyman I don't know how much has been explained to you about this oral history
project.
Ms. Schroeder Well, Linda Ferren just basically said the ABA was doing biographical
sketches, called Women Trailblazers in the Law.
Ms. Lyman I think under any categorization, you qualify. We're amateurs. I'm a
professor at George Washington University. One of the things the ABA
wants to do is to make sure that there is a meeting of mind in terms of
your willingness for us to use your interview for the oral history project.
Ms. Schroeder Oh sure. No problem. Absolutely.
Ms. Lyman The idea is to get people's stories and to start at the beginning and we'll
go as far as we can get. So one of the things we really want to do is to talk
about people's early lives. I know you've written about a lot of aspects of
your life and I'm not trying to rehash things that are already put out. I
read some of it and it's fun, it's interesting. But start back, I've know you
moved around a lot, and if you can talk about what was happening in your
family and how you got to where you were.
Ms. Schroeder Well I guess I was very fortunate in that I came from a family, my father's
sister was a total tomboy. She was a great archery champion and she
ended up being on the National Board of Girl Scouts and all, so he kind of
I EAST: 5030191lvl grew up with this kid sister that was tough as nails and, so luckily I grew
up with not a lot of gender stereotyping. I wasn't told you must wear
ruffles, girls must do this, which was a blessing.
Ms. Lyman At that time, yes.
Ms. Schroeder My father owned the airport in Portland when they had private airports.
And that's where I was born.
Ms. Lyman Was he an aviator?
Ms. Schroeder Yes, he was a pilot and had a flying service. When the Japanese bombed
Pearl Harbor, they nationalized his airport and called him up to the then
Army Air Corps to teach flying to pilots going overseas.
Ms. Lyman And you became a liberal?
Ms. Schroeder (laughter) Absolutely. And but for the war uprooting us, I'd probably
been born and raised and died in Oregon. But that blasted us out of there,
and we were moved around during World War II to wherever they were
teaching. We started in Kansas City and ended up in Dallas. When the
war was over, Dad went into aviation insurance. He decided running an
airport was too hard, so he was in Dallas a while and then he went to an
insurance company in Ohio, Hamilton, Ohio. When I was ready to start
high school, he decided to start his own company in Des Moines, Iowa, so
we moved again -- rather like migrant workers!
Ms. Lyman And your mother was teaching?
Ms. Schroeder My mother taught.
Ms. Lyman What did she teach?
2 EAST: 5030191 lvl Ms. Schroeder She was a primary school teacher. She taught first grade.
Ms. Lyman Brave.
Ms. Schroeder Maybe insane. So anyway she was teaching. My father had always
wanted to be a lawyer. He had been a page in the Nebraska Legislature.
And his grandfather, which I guess would be my great-grandfather, had
roomed with William Jennings Bryant in the Nebraska Legislature. So he
was always interested in politics and he and his brother, who was a doctor,
had saved their money for college. Then the bank went broke during the
depression all their plans changed. They decided that since my uncle
wanted to be a doctor, he had to go onto school. So he went on and Dad
just went to college and didn't ever get his law degree. So I'd always
heard about this. Well obviously ... that influenced me to go into law.
Ms. Lyman Did you have siblings?
Ms. Schroeder I do, I have a younger brother. And Dad let us learn to fly. We were
flying at 15. We were driving. He encouraged us to do all sorts of crazy
things. My brother and I used to buy cars at the end of the season in
Detroit, fly to Detroit and drive them back and sell them. We would buy
salvage from insurance companies that insured the mail.
Ms. Lyman Who bankrolled you?
Ms. Schroeder No one. My parents always felt that the most important thing we could
learn was how to bankroll ourselves. So we were always doing little
entrepreneurial things like that.
3 EAST: 50301911 vl Ms. Lyman I'd call that a more than a little entrepreneurial. It's more than a lemonade
stand. How much younger was this brother?
Ms. Schroeder Three years. We did all sorts of stuff like that. And when I was going to
college, I tried to find where I could go that I could make enough money
to pay the tuition. We were living in Des Moines, and it was near
Minneapolis-St. Paul so I figured there was more of employment
opportunity up there. The University of Minnesota had airplanes there for
ROTC. They were only supposed to be for the male students, but they
said they would rent them to me for $10 an hour. So I was able to get a
job at an insurance company in Minneapolis adjusting aviation losses and
I would fly out and adjust them by renting the planes from the school. So
I had a wonderful time. And I made so much money I was able to buy
myself a Buick convertible and also paid my tuition.
Ms. Lyman Thinking back a little bit though to the growing-up part, do you think it
made a difference that they had the girl first?
Ms. Schroeder It could be. You just never know. People say that position in family's
important. But I know my brother was treated the same, so I don't know.
Ms. Lyman But maybe he was treated the same as you because you had already staked
out the territory?
Ms. Schroeder My father was just obsessed. His grandfather had been the same way. His
grandfather had been very trusting of grand kids and overruled their
parents. I remember when I was in second grade, Dad sat me down and
4 EAST: 5030191 lvl said, here the most important thing to learn is how your handle money.
How American is that?
Ms. Lyman This was after the depression.
Ms. Schroeder This was '46. So he said I'm going to give you a monthly stipend which
is your allowance, your lunch money and money you can put away for
school and clothes. It's the whole thing.
Ms. Lyman How old were you at point?
Ms. Schroeder 7. And if you blow it all in the first two days of the month, you've got a
hell of lot of the month left. So. I was 7 years old and thought it was so
much money. Of course, I did blow it all a couple of times. He was very
tough and made me figure out how I was going to make it -- no loans! But
those were all just incredible learning experiences. And I can remember
parents of friends just thinking this was terrible. His theory was always I
trust you until you prove that there's some reason I shouldn't trust you.
So that was always there.
Ms. Lyman And what sort of things did his grandfather overrule his parents?
Ms. Schroeder His grandfather had given him a car when he was 12. All the uncles kept
clean white shirts because they knew there was going to be a funeral any
day. They thought this was insane on and on and on. The car was the big
thing. Growing up my parents would give me the rope, and I kept getting
more until I screwed up.
Ms. Lyman And did you have an indication of learning where that limit was?
5 EAST: 5030191 lvl Ms. Schroeder Yeah. You'd go out and you'd overspend and you're 7 years old. And so
suddenly you're having to make your own peanut butter sandwiches for
five days. And you finally get it. But it's just like anything, you have to
experiment. It's a hard knock. And it was the same with cars. He was
always made sure from the time we could drive, we had cars. But if you
ever thought of doing something dumb you remembered he always said I
trust you to drive more than I do your friends. So that was good. We
didn't get in a car accident because we believed him and we really liked
the ability to be able to move around, to do our own things.
Ms. Lyman What did your friends think about that? Were they envious?
Ms. Schroeder Yeah. I think that helped too.
Ms. Lyman What was high school like, you moved around so much?
Ms. Schroeder Because we moved around so, I would say we probably never had as
strong peer pressure as a lot of kids who were born and raised in the same
place. Because you had friends one place and five years later you moved
somewhere else. There was peer pressure, but again our parents were
always inviting our friends to our place. We had a big house in Des
Moines that they bought that was being remodeled, so my dad just said to
all my friends at the high school, you can all come over every night. I' 11
go get root bear, I've got jobs for everybody. So we were like a party
house where everybody had a job.
Ms. Lyman (laughter) Were these paying jobs?
6 EAST: 503019llvl Ms. Schroeder Sometimes he would pay them if they were really hard. So he just worked
very hard to keep the family centered. So I don't think we had the
pressure I see now of kids.
Ms. Lyman It's a little different.
Ms. Schroeder We tried to raise our kids the same way. It worked very well.
Ms. Lyman It is nerve wracking though at times.
Ms. Schroeder You really learn choices and its hard. You're stuck with the consequences
if it goes south.
Ms. Lyman It does seem as though people protect their kids from making those
choices when they're little, and their consequences are big to the kids but
not the outside world. And then they're stuck when they make their
mistakes and the consequences are so overwhelming.
Ms. Schroeder The consequences are so overwhelming. I honestly think there's
something really to be said about that. You may as well get some practice
while you're young. It's hard because parents want to "manage".
Ms. Lyman Of messing up.
Ms. Schroeder Yeah.
Ms. Lyman While it's still actually.
Ms. Schroeder While it's still manageable. When we raised our kids we did the same.
We had contracts with them. And it all works.
Ms. Lyman When you think of high school, junior high school and high school social
life is full of pitfalls. Do you remember pitfalls or do you think of it as
pretty smooth?
7 EAST: 503019llvl Ms. Schroeder Well I remember junior high because I grew very tall, very fast and all the
boys were much shorter and terribly immature.
Ms. Lyman Right at the bust line.
Ms. Schroeder So days were always painful, but I had lots of good girlfriends at that time
I hung out with. And high school I was really fortunate in that I remember
my mother and several other people said, you know, we didn't like high
school, but college was so much more fun, my expectations were low and
I really felt it would be much worse than it was. I had this group of
friends in high school that we all came by and were all around all the time.
I just didn't feel a lot of pressure.
Ms. Lyman You didn't see this as the key.
Ms. Schroeder No I didn't. I'm not cute enough. No I just thought finishing high school
was like card punching.
Ms. Lyman Uhuh.
Ms. Schroeder And it was fairly pleasant compared to what I read about other people's
high school. But then the other thing is that I could go flying, I could go to
Detroit and buy cars and bring them back and sell them. I mean I had a lot
going on. I had a lot of other things going on, so school was just
something I had to do and do well or I'd be in trouble, but other than that,
it wasn't my entire universe.
Ms. Lyman Did any friends come with you on these entrepreneurial ventures or was
that a solo?
8 EAST: 5030191 lvl Ms. Schroeder No, that would take away the profits, but they did help when the salvage
came in and often bought things.
Ms. Lyman So it was yard sale
Ms. Schroeder It was like a yard sale. Friends loved that. That was something everybody
likes.
Ms. Lyman What about boys?
Ms. Schroeder I had lots of boyfriends and dates and stuff, but weren't real serious.
Ms. Lyman Yeah.
Ms. Schroeder I had too much life going on to get too distracted by boys.
Ms. Lyman Did your family talk about that? Birds and the bees at home.
Ms. Schroeder Probably not directly, but indirectly it was always this assumption that if
you got into trouble, the game was over.
Ms. Lyman Home for unwed mothers. It was quite a thing in those days. My great
uncle was a gynecologist in Portland, and there was always a pregnant girl
who lived with his family. They were taking them in so it was a benefit to
them.
Ms. Schroeder It was sad. You could see how young women just got into it. It was very
important for many of them to be popular. My father used to say I could
be a sparkler, or a skyrocket. Obviously he thought a skyrocket was
better. Many young women wanted to be a sparkler. It may have been
bright for a few minutes but whew, it didn't go anywhere.
Ms. Lyman And how about your mother?
9 EAST: 50301911 vi Ms. Schroeder She was a great role model because she worked. Since she worked away
from home, I didn't have this conflict about work. I had too many friends
who went through that guilt trip. Luckily I never had that. Then she was
always supportive. She was never quite as sure as my dad that I should go
to law school. When I went to Harvard Law School she just lost it. She
was, "look at you, I want to be grandmother; who will marry a woman
lawyer from Harvard?" But most of the time she tried to suck it up.
(laughter).
Ms. Lyman And why do you think that was?
Ms. Schroeder I think she just thought the more things you could do, the more confident
you were and the more you might scare away marriageable men.
Ms. Lyman No I understand that. I meant why do you think she sucked it up as
opposed to sort of objecting.
Ms. Schroeder Because I think in a way she would have liked to gone onto higher
education. She grew up on a farm in Nebraska, the youngest of six
children. She was very smart and when she was through college and
teaching school, she was 19. She was very short, about 5 foot tall. I think
she always thought that they had mixed up babies at the hospital when I
was born. My grandmother was 4' 8", mother was 5 feet tall. She had
blonde hair. She would look at me and wonder "where did you come
from?" But she never normally tried to interfere, and I think indirectly she
would have loved to have done of some of those things I was doing. Sadly
it was not the right time and place for her.
10 EAST: 5030191 lvl Ms. Lyman The avenues weren't available to her.
Ms. Schroeder Yes. So it was different. There's been actual studies on that showing that
inter-generation tension between women is caused by older ones
wondering "why couldn't I have been born 50 years later?"
Ms. Lyman How did you experience that with her?
Ms. Schroeder I probably never experienced it directly with her so much as I have with
friends over the years. But you do hear a woman say, "when I was in
school, I couldn't" and it's heartbreaking. I think the limits put on women
in the past were why many women had nervous breakdowns and
everything else.
Ms. Lyman When you look at the life in that era, it was weird. When had people been
expected to be so useless?
Ms. Schroeder What is this pedestal crap?
Ms. Lyman Role definition existed forever but that was because there were too many
jobs to do.
Ms. Schroeder That's right. It's an interesting. I just think that history of women in the
last hundred years of change is incredible. You think of the beginning of
the 20th Century the average women lived to be 46, we've doubled it and
she also had 5 or 6 kids.
Ms. Lyman 2 of them lived, 3 of them lived, maybe.
Ms. Schroeder And it had to be just a brutal existence. And you walk through the
cemeteries and see how those young 20 somethings died in childbirth.
11 EAST: 50301911 vl Ms. Lyman I remember thinking when I was pregnant with my first that hey, sex used
to be a life-threatening experience for women.
Ms. Schroeder This hundred years, women's lives have changed so much more than men.
Men's lives haven't changed that much. Its very hard. I have a good
friend who's a doctor. When she goes home and her mother says, "you're
not getting up in the morning and getting breakfast for your husband,
don't you understand." When does this end? When does her mother get
it?
Ms. Lyman Yeah.
Ms. Schroeder But that was so drilled into her mother as her duty, that she feels she failed
if her daughter doesn't do that.
Ms. Lyman But that wasn't drilled into you. Did you feel as though you were
different?
Ms. Schroeder No. In a way because Mother worked it wasn't as drilled into me as it was
some of my friends my age. She wasn't into, "oh no I have to cook every
meal." And she was more like "I work, we can go out." So we were
really more of a transitional family than I think of a lot of other people's
families my age. I never realized it at the time, but when I talk to other
people and hear their hang-ups I just look at them and say, "what are you
talking about?" Then you realize, I didn't deal with that. I didn't have a
mother saying to me, "be a doctor, no -- marry a doctor, etc."
Ms. Lyman Did you and your brother have domestic responsibilities?
Ms. Schroeder Yeah, we did.
12 EAST: 5030191 lvl Ms. Lyman What kinds of things did you do?
Ms. Schroeder Laundry, my father actually said "if you can fly an airplane you can figure
out the washer and dryer." You can do dishes. You can do all these
things.
Ms. Lyman How about cooking?
Ms. Schroeder I did a little of that.
Ms. Lyman Did you travel besides to move from one place to another?
Ms. Schroeder Oh yes. While we were living in Des Moines, we'd decide when our
vacation was. The first time my husband flew with me, he couldn't
believe it. You pack yourself, you go to an airport and then you find out
where the weather is good and that's where you go!
Ms. Lyman Flying those days.
Ms. Schroeder We flew to Cuba. When I was a kid, we flew and we flew all sorts of
places; Mexico, Alaska, all over the U.S.
Ms. Lyman How long would you stay?
Ms. Schroeder About a week.
Ms. Lyman How old were you when you went to Cuba?
Ms. Schroeder I was about 12, I suppose.
Ms. Lyman What do remember?
Ms. Schroeder It was so great. I met my first ugly Americans in the hotel we stayed in.
A loud group came into the lobby and started taking out the furniture and
throwing it in the swimming pool.
Ms. Lyman Whoa!
13 EAST: 50301911 vi Ms. Schroeder No wonder they hate us down here. And I remember when we were at a
restaurant, that it was like Paris. It was so cool because you went down a
slide to enter it. We used to go to Alaska all the time, we'd fly up the
Alcan Highway, stay as guest of the Queen for a dollar a night. We went
to Alaska an awful lot. Dad had a lot of business up there.
Ms. Lyman I guess they needed a lot aviation insurance.
Ms. Schroeder More people fly than drive up there.
Ms. Lyman Then especially.
Ms. Schroeder Yes.
Ms. Lyman What did you do when you went there?
Ms. Schroeder Everything. It's beautiful country. The glaciers, lakes, whatever. I
wasn't a big fisher person. I went out a couple of times just to do it, but,
mainly we got to know people up there. We always had these little family
traditions. If the weather got bad, Dad pulled out a can of wax and we
waxed the plane.
Ms. Lyman Do you still fly?
Ms. Schroeder No, I have a pilot's license, but it's been years. Once I got elected, it was
just too hard to do it.
Ms. Lyman Well aviation I guess, is a different world these days to ....
Ms. Schroeder It's a different world. It's a lot more expensive. You're not always
welcome. We couldn't even get Oprah Winfrey's plane into National
Airport in DC. Private aviation often has to land far out. Plus if you can't
afford a jet, which I couldn't, it takes much longer, going to Denver,
14 EAST: 50301911 vl Colorado, than to fly commercial. You would use up your entire break
flying back and forth.
Ms. Lyman I take it you don't get motion sick.
Ms. Schroeder Um um. Usually, you weren't flying in terrible weather.
Ms. Lyman For me, a four-person plane doesn't take any terrible weather.
Ms. Schroeder I got used to it and my dad smoked cigars in the plane. I don't know how
I didn't get sick.
Ms. Lyman But you had no inclination to pick that up?
Ms. Schroeder I don't think so! I don't ever remember it ever making me sick, which is
pretty amazing.
Ms. Lyman So when you went to college what surprised you?
Ms. Schroeder University of Minnesota didn't surprise me too much, it was very
progressive. There was a time when my father wanted to be a aeronautical
engineer and I asked about it and my counselor said "no way"!
Ms. Lyman And the counselor was male or female.
Ms. Schroeder Male. And I remember we organized all sorts of protests against any kind
of rules that there were. In the girls' dorm, they had some rules we didn't
like. So what we did was we all wore ice skates everywhere.
Ms. Lyman What were the rules about?
Ms. Schroeder I think it was a 12 o'clock curfew. But they didn't have rules about
wearing ice skates to dinner!
Ms. Lyman What role did you play in that sort of effort?
15 EAST: 5030191 lvl Ms. Schroeder I encouraged everybody to push a little further. Still compared to other
women's experiences those days, I was really lucky. I was in a school
which was much more open and much more progressive. I doubt that
there's another school in the country that would have allowed me to rent
airplanes. When I went to Harvard, I was totally horrified. They had a
fast breeder rule reactor! Who are these people?
Ms. Lyman Did you go straight. ..
Ms. Schroeder Yeah.
Ms. Lyman straight there? And how did you get from not getting to be aeronautical
engineer to filling out law school applications?
Ms. Schroeder Well, I went through Minnesota in three years. You were allowed to take
extra credits as long as you passed the Minnesota multiphasic test. I
wasn't sure what to do next and thought law allowed flexibility ..
Ms. Lyman Again, this was like high school. This was not the be all and end all.
Ms. Schroeder Yes -- another card punching exercise. In respective, I thought "okay
what am I going to do. Where am I going to go to graduate school. What
is this about?" And having heard Dad talk about wanting to be a lawyer, I
thought maybe that's what I should look at. And I finally decided that
being a lawyer was the most generic of anything I could think of. It didn't
lock me in.
Ms. Lyman I wonder how many people went to law school for that reason?
Ms. Schroeder Right. Many I think!
Ms. Lyman And that was the thing you were thinking of.
16 EAST: 5030191 lvl Ms. Schroeder Well I was a liberal arts major. So at that point, ifl wanted to switch to
science or something, then I'd have to re-do another 3 years. And it was a
generation where for some reason you just felt compelled to do everything
as fast as you could. You had to hurry and do this and you had to hurry up
and do that.
Ms. Lyman You think the war made that?
Ms. Schroeder I don't know what it was. I really don't know what it was. Maybe it was
because we had been raised by the generation of children who had lots of
pressure from the depression. I felt pressure to hurry through 3 years so I
can go on with this lawyering, and get married and have a family.
Ms. Lyman Who were your influences during the three years? It sounds like you were
pretty focused so maybe there weren't a whole lot. But teachers? Friends?
Ms. Schroeder I joined a sorority, Chi Omega, and was in the student senate
Ms. Lyman How did you figure out which one?
Ms. Schroeder I just liked the young women in a certain one and they all seemed very
dynamic.
Ms. Lyman Did you have to run for student senate?
Ms. Schroeder Um huh.
Ms. Lyman Do you remember your slogan or your issues?
Ms. Schroeder No. And let's see. I had several excellent history and political science
professors who were very good, but in Minnesota the courses were like
500 people. My parents came up for graduation and I had gotten an
invitation from Phi Beta Kappa inviting me to join and I just said "no, it's
17 EAST: 5030191 lvl not important." My father went nuts and said, "you have to join." I said I
didn't want to spend the money.
Ms. Lyman Was he willing to shell out for the membership?
Ms. Schroeder Oh yes! He shelled out for the membership. When you start to think
about law school, then you wonder which one? You think if I go to law
school, in one state, you're kind of locked into that state, so where can I go
for a national law school, since I've no idea which state I'll settle in.
That's how I ended up applying to Harvard.
Ms. Lyman Friends in college? Anybody you still keep in touch with? Any
adventures?
Ms. Schroeder The great tragedy is, the one that I was closest to, who lived here in
Washington and was on the news at Channel 5, died ten years ago. So the
ones that I've known the best, I've lost. It's a very eerie feeling, losing
friends at 45.
Ms. Lyman Those are very distressing.
Ms. Schroeder She had a brain tumor, and many others I've lost touch with. I see a lot of
friends from law school.
Ms. Lyman If there was anybody from college that you could conjure up right now, go
on a hike with?
Ms. Schroeder Yeah. Well it would have been Betty. And the other woman that I was
very close to lives in New Jersey and I do see her occasionally. You're
always going to get together more often than you do. I have classmates in
Denver and Vail I see occasionally, but we're spread all over.
18 EAST: 503019llvl Ms. Lyman Right. Good intentions.
Ms. Schroeder What is that, "the road to hell is paved with good intentions"? Mine is,
it's gold brick all the way. So it's too bad.
Ms. Lyman What about summers?
Ms. Schroeder Yes. You mean in school?
Ms. Lyman Yes. Or just focused on making money to carry you through the year.
Same kind of thing, continuing the business or something else?
Ms. Schroeder No. I continued working with insurance. It really was my meal ticket.
Ms. Lyman Um uh. You knew what you were looking for.
Ms. Schroeder It was easy, but I could talk the talk.
Ms. Lyman The jargon.
Ms. Schroeder Thank goodness I knew the jargon of insurance company adjusters.
Basically most jobs for college kids have low pay.
Lyman Right. But they're doing laundry.
Ms. Schroeder They did their laundry and other things and earned minimum wage,
basically spending everything they've got.
Ms. Lyman Trying to get out.
Ms. Schroeder So those jobs didn't work for my tuition.
Ms. Lyman Did you give up anything when you went to law school? To move?
Anybody, any place?
Ms. Schroeder I felt I gave up a lot of freedom. When I got to Harvard, their dorms for
women were the ugliest things I've ever seen. They had orange ceilings.
And I had never been in an environment where I felt totally on the
19 EAST: 5030191 lvl defensive. The dean made it very clear that he didn't want any of the
women there.
Ms. Lyman Why did they have women there?
Ms. Schroeder Because the law school overseers voted to let women in. It was
interesting.
Ms. Lyman It must have been a long ...
Ms. Schroeder Dean Griswold had all 15 women over to his house for dinner the first or
second week of school.
Ms. Lyman 15 out of 500!.
Ms. Schroeder Yes. And on our plate, stewed chicken, lima beans, and sparkling apple
cider.
Ms. Lyman That he cooked himself?
Ms. Schroeder He had a wife, she was in a wheelchair. So there was something weird
there I don't know what it was. Anyway. When dinner was over he set up
folding chairs in a circle explained he was not happy we were there
because he didn't think we would use our degrees. He asked each one of
us why in the world did we come. We were all terrified until it was Ann
Dudley Cronkite of Pasadena's turn. She said "I'm here because I
couldn't get into Yale." The Dean went nuts explaining Yale had lower
standards. This was incredible. All of the sudden, it just cut all the
tension in the room. We were all snickering and it was a great lesson -
deal with discrimination with humor if possible. Oh yeah. That's how you
deal with it. And the game was over.
20 EAST: 503019Ilvl Ms. Lyman Good thing it happened early.
Ms. Schroeder I knew professors that had ladies days where they were permitted to ask
you any question. It just went on and on.
Ms. Lyman What happened if you didn't answer?
Ms. Schroeder Oh you just got this tirade about women. Just crazy. That's what it was.
Ms. Lyman Were there islands in this drunken sea?
Ms. Schroeder Harvard really went all out to make sure women knew they were taking a
space from some man who would use it. And this was a very cherished
treasured space. Of course after they found out how many women were in
the class, they let in that many more men!
Ms. Lyman And of course, there were no women faculty.
Ms. Schroeder No, not at all. Or counselors.
Ms. Lyman Um huh.
Ms. Schroeder Not in the law school. There were women in the cafeteria.
Ms. Lyman Were there upper class women?
Ms. Schroeder Just a handful. They started letting women in about 6, 7, 8 years before
we came but they never had more than a handful. Today women are like
half the class.
Ms. Lyman Do you have any recollection of those upper class women?
Ms. Schroeder Oh. Sure. Janet Reno was there. She was wonderful. She was classic.
Janet Reno, I remember the men talking about how crazy women are.
They would say to her, "what are you going to do with your degree?" No
one ever asks men that question but, she would say, "I think I'm going to
21 EAST: 5030191 lvl go back to Miami and work in criminal law." The guys thought that
incredible. They asked why she didn't go to school down there then.
They felt she was wasting this slot. It was just amazing. There was all
sorts of camaraderie between the women except we were so damn busy.
Ms. Lyman How about competition?
Ms. Schroeder I don't think among the women there was that much competition. With
such a small group we were trying to help each other survive.
Ms. Lyman And what was the atmosphere like generally. Did you have friends among
the men as well?
Ms. Schroeder Yes. A few, but most of my male friends were ones that had taken a
break, been in the military, or ROTC. They were the older ones.
Ms. Lyman And why do you think that was?
Ms. Schroeder I think that they had been in the world. Vietnam was horrible. So there
were a lot of guys that had been in Vietnam, most of them ended up being
my best friends. They had a different view of the world.
Ms. Lyman Was there social pressure from the men on the women to go out?
Ms. Schroeder It wasn't the pressure, it was with the paper chase, they were writing about
how they underlined and made outlines of the underlines!. This was an
obsessive place.
Ms. Lyman Even then.
Ms. Schroeder Hopefully it's less so now. But I remember Dean Griswold saying during
orientation we would have to think a long time about whether we even had
22 EAST: 5030191 lvl time to read the Sunday Times. The school loved creating that kind of
pressured atmosphere.
Ms. Lyman You mentioned the dorms. Besides orange ceilings wh_at else?
Ms. Schroeder You had your own rooms.
Ms. Lyman You had your own room or did you share?
Ms. Schroeder It was like two or three rooms opening into kind of a sitting room. It was
really about big enough for one seat.
Ms. Lyman And there were rules.
Ms. Schroeder There were rules in class. We had assigned seats, Saturday classes, and
much more regimentation than we had at Minnesota.
Ms. Lyman And what were you doing for money there? It doesn't sound if you would
have time to work.
Ms. Schroeder Well, I had saved a lot of money from the stuff that I had done and I
worked in the summer.
Ms. Lyman Where did you work?
Ms. Schroeder I actually worked in Denver. I worked for an insurance company.
Ms. Lyman Which wasn't home.
Ms. Schroeder It was becoming home because when Dad was starting another insurance
company, he bought a house out there, so I had a place to stay. And my
parents commuted between there and Des Moines. Des Moines in the
winter, Denver in the summer.
Ms. Lyman Certain job?
Ms. Schroeder Insurance work again.
23 EAST: 50301911vl Ms. Lyman Uh uh. So you'd weren't trying to do a law-related job other than. What
was happening with your brother?
Ms. Schroeder He was at the University of Iowa and then went on to Iowa law school.
He decided to stay in state.
Ms. Lyman And what was your relationship with him at that point?
Ms. Schroeder It was fine. We were exploring this field together. We had a 1924 Essex.
We had a lot of fun with it. When he went off to college, he had a car.
When his grades went down, my dad took the car away. So he drove the
Essex from Des Moines to Iowa City. I was so mad, it was such a
treasure. It ruined the car and he even ended up with a car in a box! It
was just a bunch of pieces. But he shaped up, got his grades up, went to
law school. Then he ended up moving out to Denver. The great tragedy
in his life was in his when he was 3 8 he had two terrible aneurysms so he
practically bought Mayo Clinic. It ended his legal career.
Ms. Lyman Restrictions on his activities or incapacitated?
Ms. Schroeder Not physically. He had several surgeries out there and there was a
cumulative effect.
Ms. Lyman His family?
Ms. Schroeder His family all powered through it. His daughter is now an airline pilot in
Alaska. With a new baby. Living in Fairbanks. And the other one is in
Denver with three little boys. So they all got through it okay but it's, it's
really sad because he really acts like a 17 year old.
Ms. Lyman There's no executive function.
24 EAST: 5030191 lvl Ms. Schroeder Life can change very fast. He was luckily hiking with his brother-in-law
when this happened, which is probably what saved him. His brother-in
law was an oncologist. When my brother got this tremendous headache,
they got a helicopter in and got him to medical services immediately.
Ms. Lyman: After law school?
Ms. Schroeder: After my first year in law school I got married. The next two years were
much easier. I was out of the dorm.
Ms. Lyman Now you just didn't get married.
Ms. Schroeder It was the way out of dorms.
Ms. Lyman (laughter).
Ms. Schroeder I told my husband, it's not you. It's about getting out of the fucking dorm.
Ms. Lyman Like people who get married to get out of their house.
Ms. Schroeder I had met Jim. Jim was one of the ones that who had served in the
military. He'd gone to Princeton. He was in the military for three years,
and totally willing to do neat trips on the weekend or go play or do
something else. He wasn't into this pressure cooker stuff.
Ms. Lyman Did he get drafted?
Ms. Schroeder No he was in ROTC. He went to Princeton on an ROTC scholarship.
Ms. Lyman Does he talk about Vietnam?
Ms. Schroeder He didn't go to Vietnam. He was lucky enough not to have to go. He
served but didn't go.
Ms. Lyman Where did he go?
25 EAST: 50301911 vl Ms. Schroeder He was in the Eisenhower Navy in the Med. So he was stationed in the
Med on a ship for three years. They made a landing in Beirut. There was
a great picture in Life magazine where they are stepping over these
bikinied ladies eating ice cream cones. Somebody tried to give medals to
those who landed but the Life magazine spread ended that!
Ms. Lyman Just put them side by side.
Ms. Schroeder So he was just more mature and relaxed, he was always very refreshing
and it made the next two years so much easier. Out of the cafeteria dorm.
And the library.
Ms. Lyman You met him ...
Ms. Schroeder I met him in the library.
Ms. Lyman You were both first years?
Ms. Schroeder Uh huh.
Ms. Lyman My parents met in the library too.·
Ms. Schroeder We were both first years. But he was four years older.
Ms. Lyman So from meeting in the library to wedding bells - a year?
Ms. Schroeder No I met in the fall. Nine months.
Ms. Lyman Was the wedding something that you look forward to?
Ms. Schroeder I was never into the girls stuff. It was a very nice wedding. We got
married in a beautiful church in Des Moines.
Ms. Lyman How was your mother?
Ms. Schroeder She was fine. She thought we should postpone the wedding because her
parents were both killed in an automobile accident in the spring. It was
26 EAST: 50301911 vl hard at that point. Everything was on track. So she was not in the best of
shape but got into it and it helped with the grief. The family and people
showed up from all the four comers. It was a small nice wedding. You
know the white dress, the whole bit. The funny part was we left and
decided we to go to Rocky Mountain National Park for a week before
we'd go back to school. And that time there was a gorgeous place inside
of Rocky Mountain Park that Jim's father knew about. So we decided to
splurge and stay there. What a surprise when we walked in and saw
Professor Leach, our property professor at Harvard, with his wife. "Oh
my god, we've now got 4 people for bridge," Professor Leach said. I
thought ... this is wonderful.
Ms. Lyman Harvard Law School on your honeymoon.
Ms. Schroeder Professor Leach was the guy who initiated ladies day at Harvard. So he
was a real character. He was the guy who had written a will, guaranteeing
no one could break it. Some of the heirs tried to break and nobody could.
So then the heirs hired him so he broke it. So there were discussions about
being disbarred. Seems he didn't understand ethics!
Ms. Lyman And tell about brunch.
Ms. Schroeder There he was. I was sure my marriage was star-crossed. But we got
through it.
Ms. Lyman Did you have brunch with him?
27 EAST: 5030191 lvl Ms. Schroeder Oh yeah. There was no place to hide. It was just five or six lovely little
facilities in this big lodge type building with the fire place where he just
camped because was a total bridge player.
Ms. Lyman He wasn't there to do the hiking.
Ms. Schroeder He was there to play bridge. It was the last place on the planet I ever
expected to see him, but there he was.
Ms. Schroeder My son just had twins. Yes. Well they're a year old. Yes. I never
thought either of my children were going to reproduce. They loved being
"DINKS" -- dual income no kids!.
Ms. Lyman I'm worried about that myself and I knew the minute I had my daughter
that the whole point was grandchildren.
Ms. Schroeder Exactly. Isn't that funny. And how hard it is not to pressure them! And
so suddenly in this last year in 17 months I ended up with four
grandchildren. Like winning the lottery.
Ms. Lyman Wow.
Ms. Schroeder It went from O to 4 in 17 months. It was crazy.
Ms. Lyman Efficient. You' re still in a rush.
Ms. Schroeder But it was a little bit overwhelming. I kept saying couldn't you have
started this a little earlier. Broken me in more gradually?
Ms. Lyman Where are they?
Ms. Schroeder My daughter and her husband are in Montana. They're in Bozeman.
They both have their PhDs. She's at the Museum of the Rockies and he's
an astrophysicist from Australia. So every time I complain about
28 EAST: 503019llvl Bozeman I think, hey, they could be in Australia. And Scott is in New
Jersey. He's in Maplewood outside of Manhattan. He's at Citibank.
Executive Vice President of Citibank. He's married to an absolutely
gorgeous woman. There she is over there. Size O of Indian heritage and a
woman who wants to be CEO of Fortune 50 company. They just had
twins.
Ms. Lyman So you've got the full range.
Ms. Schroeder We've got the Asian Pacific.
Ms. Lyman Nobody on welfare, it sounds like.
Ms. Schroeder No, no, no, they're busy little bees. So its great fun. Well, we really have
jumped ahead.
Ms. Schroeder Well, we have jumped ahead. We're back in law school. Pre
grandchildren. Well, we got you married. So we finished law school.
Ms. Lyman Was there any change during the time you were in law school in the way
women either were treated or stood up for themselves?
Ms. Schroeder Not really, you were considered persona non grata. And it was kind of
know your place.
Ms. Lyman What about activities. Could you get on law review? Could you do .
whatever was fun?
Ms. Schroeder Yeah, you could do those kind of things. You weren't especially
welcome, but you could do them. I really found that after the first year I
was so turned off by the place that I was just'perfectly happy to have my
lovely little apartment and my husband who was willing to go to movies
29 EAST: 503019llvl and out to eat. The clubs wouldn't let women in so socially women were
ostracized.
Ms. Lyman You had a life.
Ms. Schroeder We had a life. And we went to law school.
Ms. Lyman Did you have any friends who weren't in the law school?
Ms. Schroeder But we actually did. We had a couple of friends who were in medical
school. One on them was dating the young woman who did the weather
with the mink stoles on TV news!
Ms. Lyman Best clothes.
Ms. Schroeder So we saw them a lot. And we had a very close group of friends in law
school that we stayed in touch with that were kind of the same as we were.
We would have seders. None ofus were Jewish but we would celebrate
anything,andjust kind oflet the law school go. We really didn't get into
the mix.
Ms. Lyman How would you even find out about a seder coming from Des Moines?
Ms. Schroeder Well other people were having them so we would have them. It was fun.
So we did those kind of things which you're supposed to do in law school.
At the end of second year I was really sure I hated law school. In the
spring in the middle of our second year finals, we got a call that Jim's
father had died in Chicago. It was like a heart attack. We were in shock
and obviously his son was expected to come back to his funeral.
Ms. Lyman How many other kids?
30 EAST: 5030191 lvl Ms. Schroeder He had a sister who was pregnant, living in Indiana. So I called the Dean.
I explained this is really a crisis. What do we do? He said, well if you
miss any finals, you fail. I asked can we take it early? He said, no, you
can't take it now. Can we take it when we come back? No. Can we pay
to have a proctor go out with it and give it to us in Chicago? Again, the
answer was no. We were devastated.
Ms. Lyman While we' re at the funeral.
Ms. Schroeder No. You can't do that either. Then he said. Young lady, this is law
school. You put those things aside. What if you had a case, a trial the
next day. What would you do. We just can't move things around. Well
that was the end of my love for Harvard. So what we did, we flew out to
Chicago, we flew back, and did it again not to miss finals. It cost a bloody
fortune, one we didn't have but we made the finals and got credit for the
year.
Ms. Lyman What a story.
Ms. Schroeder It was the attitude that made me crazy -- grow up, be an adult, it's just
your husband's father's death.
Ms. Lyman Was there anybody who supported a more humane approach?
Ms. Schroeder Not that I found. Or at least they didn't do it openly. And you don't have
any time to go negotiate this. You're really talking about an immediate
crisis, totally unexpected. There it is. And I remember saying to the dean,
"do you think I'm lying?"
Ms. Lyman Do you want the death certificate?
31 EAST: 5030191lvl Ms. Schroeder Jim's father was a dentist in Chicago. His death was in the paper. You
can go look. I can bring you clips. He said that's not the issue. The issue
is your maturity. Okay I guess I'm immature.
Ms. Lyman So this was still Griswold?
Ms. Schroeder No this was not. It was Derek Bok. He became the next dean. He was
Jim's main professor.
Ms. Schroeder So obviously we had to figure out a way to get to the funeral and the
exams so we could finished law school.
Ms. Lyman Did you stay in Boston that summer?
Ms. Schroeder No, we went back to Denver. And Jim went to work in a law firm, and
clerked in a law firm. And I stayed with the insurance thing. I couldn't
find any law firms who were very interested in hiring women.
Ms. Lyman That's such an unusual story.
Ms. Schroeder I know. And it continued. So we spent the summer in Denver. Then we
came back to law school and started our final year. Now we had to decide
where to settle. Jim was from Chicago and I didn't particularly want to go
to Chicago and we didn't want to go to Des Moines. Denver became kind
of the natural place to go because we now, we'd been there, knew it. I
would have been perfectly happy to go to some place that had no seasons.
I like the warmth Jim liked seasons and Denver had modified seasons so,
it was Denver.
Ms. Lyman What is it with the guys and their seasons?
32 EAST: 5030191 lvl Ms. Schroeder I don't know, now have a house in Florida and he's perfectly l, ., , . ,
down there all the time. He talks about how wonderful it is tc ,,,, ,'': ·,·
there. How come it took me 3 7 years to figure this out.
Ms. Lyman I haven't manage to persuade mine of this yet. I met in law sch,,,·,'. tt,
northern California. You'd think I had a leg up.
1 Ms. Schroeder Well buy a house someone place warm and you will find he ju:, ~", \
camps there for the whole winter. I said, "I thought you liked .;1.··· , ·
Its been a real shock to me and to everyone who ever knew ~ii,:,·
"what, he likes Florida." I guess you can change!
Ms. Lyman Was it interviewing the third year then you remember for the
you go through that? What was your thinking about what you '>v·,:.
to do afterwards?
Ms. Schroeder The interviewing process made it clear they weren't too intcn.'. ···
women. I kept being asked "can you type?" So, clearly [ \VJ.· '.,
get a great offer.
Ms. Lyman That you couldn't turn it down.
Ms. Schroeder Many felt I wouldn't stay and were very clear about that. Dc;rv.:,
fairly small town. So Jim had some contacts. The interestinr d,·,
everybody was eager to hire him and those that would consider n ;,," · 11
"we'll either take both of you or neither of you" because they v.:ei · ·
worried about conflict of interest. All the firms Jim talked to \v cH1; ,·ti , ,,
know "where she's going to go?" "What will she do." "Hovv w1 ! '· 1 :
work?" And the other decision we made was we were not going 1u
33 EAST: 50301911 vl in the same office, we were not the Bobbsey Twins. So it became a big
deal. So he didn't quite know what to do and I didn't know what to do.
So I thought I'd try the federal government. I talked to some banks, and
that work seemed so boring, I just couldn't do that. So back to the federal
government.
Ms. Lyman The record should reflect that your fanning yourself.
Ms. Schroeder I just didn't think I could do that. Then the federal government was a big
center out there.
Ms. Lyman Right. Summer White House.
Ms. Schroeder My experience had been in tax law. So I went to the IRS. And they said
the closest I could work in Denver if my husband was in Denver was at
the IRS in Albuquerque. And I thought, "well that won't work!" They
were afraid of conflicts.
Ms. Lyman Even with a pilot's license that might be straining.
Ms. Schroeder Finally the National Labor Relations Board pops up on my radar screen.
Of course I've not taken any labor law courses! I thought the NLRB
would be interesting. It was actually very fortuitous and great exposure
for my later political career ... which I never anticipated.
Ms. Lyman What is their explanation for why they were still worried about conflict?
Ms. Schroeder I guess they were worried about if I was working for the IRS and Jim was
working for a law firm in terms of a long-term tax practice.
Ms. Lyman That there would be some ....
Ms. Schroeder Yeah.
34 EAST: 503019llvl Ms. Lyman Boy, that sure wouldn't fly today would it.
Ms. Schroeder No. But that was their game and there wasn't much you could do to
argue. I joined the NLRB and then Jim could join a law firm. They knew
where I was and they weren't worried about a labor practice. We
managed.
Ms. Lyman You said it came on your radar screen. You remember how that
happened.
Ms. Schroeder Basically, I just was going through the phone book. We were doing this
ourselves. This was not the placement office. And you know this from
law school. If you want to go someplace other than a big city, you had to
do a lot of work on your own.
Ms. Lyman You're on your own if you want to do something off the program.
Ms. Schroeder Yes. Off the program. So we were doing this all on our own. The NLRB
was a lot more interesting than I imagined, Colorado and Utah, were right
to-work states. Federal law on right to work states was a very interesting
thing.
Ms. Lyman And after that you could teach federal jurisdiction.
Ms. Schroeder You could do all sorts of things. So it was good. But labor law was last
thing I ever thought I would ever do. Of course, I ended up running for
Congress which is another last thing, I thought I would ever do.
Ms. Lyman Well I read the story about that in your book about the family. And I read.
I was interested, because I thought you didn't comment in the book about
35 EAST: 503019llvl the process. And I wonder if you'd comment, what you think about it
now.
Ms. Schroeder The process?
Ms. Lyman I mean the process of you becoming "a throw away candidate" if you will.
Ms. Schroeder I'm not sure there was much of a process, more like a glandular reaction!
Ms. Lyman It's clear in the book that you had no chance of winning. And you weren't
thinking about what ...
Ms. Schroeder People used to say if you think you're going to run you better bomb the
court house.
Ms. Lyman You think you're going to win.
Ms. Schroeder They said we should go to the court house because there we had been
plaintiffs on Denver's bussing suit, which we won. Obviously bussing
was not a popular issue. We were very involved in civil rights. We were
very involved in the anti-war group. We were very involved in all these
progressive things and at that time Colorado had the second most
conservative voting congressional delegation in America, second only to
Arizona. So, my friends thought I was a true kamikaze pilot and so did I!
Ms. Lyman More so than Utah?
Ms. Schroeder At that time, yes. There was more concern about my being a woman.
There was only one woman senator in Colorado but she talked about how
she canned the peaches and pears and was totally non-threatening. But
Denver was really changing.
Ms. Lyman It was racially mixed. Truly racially mixed.
36 EAST: 5030191lvl Ms. Schroeder Oh yeah. Lots of Hispanics, a lot of African-Americans and Native
Americans. In Denver the difference in level of educational achievement
between Anglo and African American families was very small. There was
no one saying I could win. Even in the primary I looked like the loser.
My opponent was the minority leader in the Senate. He had all the money.
He had all the endorsements. He had the party endorsement. So my run
was a Don Quixotesque adventure.
Ms. Lyman And what did you think about that?
Ms. Schroeder The convention was on my daughter's second birthday. Here I was sitting
giving a speech about Chavez and the grape boycott! I thought about what
a great story this would be for her later, but the story got even better
because I won that day!
Ms. Lyman At that time you weren't working at the NLRB anymore.
Ms. Schroeder No, I quit after my first child. And then I got some teaching assignments
at the University of Colorado Denver Center, Regis College, and I was a
hearing officer for state personnel.
Ms. Lyman In the law school?
Ms. Schroeder Undergrad. And I was doing a nighttime thing for graduate students on
constitutional law and labor law. I was teaching different courses all the
time. The way Jim talked me into running was he said, "you go around
telling all your students they have to become involved, practice what you
teach. Someone needs to give voice for the changing scene."
Ms. Lyman Is he a litigator?
37 EAST: 50301911 vi Ms. Schroeder Yes. He's tried a lot of cases.
Ms. Lyman So his persuasive powers developed.
Ms. Schroeder Yes he convinced me I had a voice. Many say "I can't win so I won't
run." That's baloney. I was also an officer for the state. These were great
part time jobs and they are hard to find.
Ms. Lyman What were you hearing?
Ms. Schroeder Labor cases. It was part time. I go wherever I was needed, set up the little
recording machine and everybody came in. You listened to the facts. And
then you wrote your decisions. But it was a great part time job.
Ms. Lyman When did it first dawn on you to the point of playing it out in your mind,
"what if I were in Washington?"
Ms. Schroeder It never dawned on me until the night we won. It just seemed too
farfetched. I guess I was so "non-professional" I drove politicos nuts.
· The Democratic Congressional Campaign refused to meet with me after I
won the primary. They said I had no idea what I was doing. It was just
awful. Politicos were sure the other guy would win the primary, so they
just wrote the race off. Labor gave me 50 bucks. The AFL-CIO, I
couldn't believe it. I knew more about labor than anyone running and they
gave Democratic candidates in Salt Lake and in Iowa City $50,000 each,
which _was a lot of money, in those days. They both ended up being
elected.
Ms. Lyman Too bad you don't have it framed.
38 EAST: 5030191 lvl Ms. Schroeder Yeah I know. But everybody who supposedly knew anything about
politics said the race was totally hopeless. The best part was when I got
elected I owed nothing to anyone. It ended up being the best of both
possible worlds. Imagine, our average campaign contribution was $7 .50 -
when I left office it had risen to $34.
Ms. Lyman That's terrific. What do you think did change it? Just the demographics
that people hadn't focused on?
Ms. Schroeder I think it was the huge turnout. Colorado has many environments. We
had worked with them. They were anti-Olympics because Colorado had
wanted the Olympics. And those of us who cared knew Colorado didn't
have the infrastructure or the funds to do the Olympics. They would have
to throw all the students out of their dorms to have the required number of
rooms. All the streets would have to be one way to handle traffic going up
into the mountains and back. We just didn't have what had been
promised.
Ms. Lyman Beijing.
Ms. Schroeder: Beijing can order it done! It's a little harder. What one of my campaign
posters had on it was a little old lady walking down the street with a cane
that said "cheer up-the Olympics are coming."· The Olympics were a very
noble idea but saying you could host them when you didn't have money to
fund them and secure them and support them was not a noble idea. Well
everybody was mad at me for being so out-front on that issue except the
39 EAST: 5030191 lvl voters. The Olympics initiative was on the ballot with me and got
defeated.
Ms. Lyman I don't want to hold you too much longer because I know you've got
somewhere else to be. So we probably should save the second chapter for
another time, but can we go back a little bit to having kids and there's a
gap.
Ms. Schroeder There's a gap.
Ms. Lyman I know it was a difficult time.
Ms. Schroeder Well during the first pregnancy, I was at the Labor Board and so it was
wonderful. I was pregnant and I guess the Labor Board didn't have any
rules because I worked right until the night Scott was born.
Ms. Lyman And nobody said, oh dear you have to go home. Why didn't they say
anything.
Ms. Schroeder I don't know. They never said anything. It was fine with me because time
went faster working. I didn't want to sit at home and look at four walls so
it was great. There were two or three cases that I tried that were funny.
The hearing officer would keep asking, "do you want to sit down, do you
need to recess? Are you sure you're fine?" If I had been my opposition I
would be annoyed with the hearing officer but what could you do?
Anyway, those were wonderful moments. When Scott was born I called
the next morning and said I wouldn't be in. I went back, finished up the
cases I was working on and quit.
Ms. Lyman You were still in, the guys wait outside?
40 EAST: 50301911 vl Ms. Schroeder Yes.
Ms. Lyman Were you conscious?
Ms. Schroeder Oh yes. We had done the dishes, gone to bed. He was literally born 15
minutes after we got to the hospital. After he was born I decided to try
and find some part-time work. So I finished what I had to do at the NLRB
and that's when I started teaching.
Ms. Lyman Did you just write off the idea of part-time with the NLRB or how did that
happen?
Ms. Schroeder They didn't have it. It just wasn't there. It was either you did your 40-
hour week or you didn't. After I was elected I served on the Civil Service
Committee and we changed all sorts of things so there was full time, part
time, and flexible time. But it was not available in 1966.
Ms. Lyman And going up to it did you know you were going to quit. Or what was
your attitude about that?
Ms. Schroeder I wasn't sure. But my husband and I lived in the suburbs. He was a very
difficult child. He only slept 4 hours in a 24 hour day and was very hyper
so I felt I needed to be around more.
Ms. Lyman Did you nurse him or ....
Ms. Schroeder Yes. And I was just totally exhausted.
Ms. Lyman Just totally.
Ms. Schroeder There's a point where sleep deprivation makes you crazy. And you finally
find daycare that you like and finally it fits together but it takes a while.
And then I was pregnant with these twins which was just a nightmare
41 EAST: 50301911 vl pregnancy. It was just a real contrast to the first time which was so easy.
The twins finally were stillborn; very sad. And then the third pregnancy
was the birth ofmy daughter. And that was fine.
Ms. Lyman When you thought about. Were you reluctant to get pregnant again after
the twins?
Ms. Schroeder No. Just because I had a good experience. And that pregnancy with her
was fine -- absolutely no problem. Once again. Literally Jim got me to
the hospital, I said "I can walk in from the car." He said, "I'll park the car
and come in." When he came in, they said "congratulations, you have a
little girl." He said "it can't be me, I just dropped her off." But it was me.
I didn't waste time!
Ms. Lyman Was it the same doctor?
Ms. Schroeder No. We switched doctors. Because we were now living in the city. And
that was all fine. Jim was running for the Colorado state house when our
daughter was born. I came home and after a couple of weeks, started
hemorrhaging madly. It got really bad. Apparently these really, really
easy deliveries had terrifying side effects!
Ms. Lyman Did you get the feeling that they had any idea why these things were
happening?
Ms. Schroeder Absolutely not. Because there was so much bleeding, they couldn't
operate, they thought I was too high risk. So all they did was stuff me
with a hundred yards of gauze thinking maybe the pressure would make it
42 EAST: 5030191 lvl stop. Luckily it did. When they pulled the gauze, I can't tell you what a
strange feeling it was.
Ms. Lyman Like a dispenser.
Ms. Schroeder Yes. Luckily that was the end of my problems though.
Ms. Lyman And they didn't give you coagulants or ....
Ms. Schroeder They couldn't. The solution probably would have been to remove my
uterus. But they didn't because they said I was too weak to sustain that.
Obviously I became very interested in safe motherhood issues and learned
there had been no research on it because politicians were so afraid if they
learn anything it might increase abortions.
Ms. Lyman And they're so afraid to touch people anyway. I just read this New Yorker
article on pre-preeclampsia . It's fascinating.
Ms. Schroeder Oh preeclampsia is huge and they don't have a clue what causes it.
Ms. Lyman Well this was about a guy finding a clue but against all odds because
nobody's putting anything into that.
Ms. Schroeder No, I tried to get money for research on preeclampsia in Congress. Ann
Curry on the Today show, had preeclampsia very badly. There's all sorts
of women affected every year.
Ms. Lyman Right.
Ms. Schroeder · Very serious. And there's just all sorts of things about pregnancy we
don't know. Every state keeps their own statistics and uses different
criteria. Someday we may finally get the research we need.
43 EAST: 50301911 vi Ms. Lyman Right. And now you have four grandkids. When you won, describe the
complex of images in your head.
Ms. Schroeder My husband was still working with the law firm. I still had all my part
time jobs which meant exams to grade, opinions to write and we had to get
through the semester. Then all the family issues like the kids'
pediatricians, housing, hiring staff, the list was endless.
Ms. Lyman All on no money.
Ms. Schroeder All on no money. And it was in the middle of the Vietnam War. The
Cambodian Bombing was happening. So all of Washington smelled like
tear gas. Protests were everywhere. National Guardsmen were sleeping in
the congressional tunnels. We bought our 2 new cars on the phone, we
bought rugs for our house on the phone (they ended up being red shag).
But it was, the whole idea was get it down, check off the list and move on
to the next project! I had one day to move us into a new house I'd never
seen. Jim bought it on a one day trip to Washington.
Ms. Lyman The feeling I get from this is just this steam trap prioritizing. What's the
top of the list, what's the second on the list, and what's the bottom of the
list?
Ms. Schroeder The only thought I gave to new drapes, carpet, cars, etc., was would they
be there the one day I had to move in! In the interim my sister-in-law who
was diabetic had a baby on Christmas Eve in Denver. The baby was in
intensive care for two weeks. I was supposed to be in Washington to be
44 EAST: 50301911 vl sworn m. My parents were so conflicted. Where should thc•r t:1
days I was thinking "why did I do this?" "What have I done Ii) , ·· ·
Ms. Lyman Did you and Jim ever discuss the fact about the funnies?
Ms. Schroeder That's when women's magazines were carrying these charts ah(:U'
much change you could take. Popularized stress tests! Jim d\.·,. ii
"take" one.
Ms. Lyman Maximum stress.
Ms. Schroeder Yes, he said "oh my god, according to this magazine we can·· i , • ·
this. We're at the top of the stress chart."
Ms. Lyman . We're off the chart.
Ms. Schroeder We were, but we powered through.
Ms. Lyman I mean, were there any repercussions about the fact that he'{I
into this. Did you ever say "what .... "
Ms. Schroeder No.
Ms. Lyman "What was I thinking? What were you thinking?" .
Ms. Schroeder Now that I'm older and learn all law firms aren't lovely and : t
some tension in the air and why talk about them as we do, bu; ·
law firm and you defend it. When the election was over and 1; .
here to think what to do with the rest of his life, I remember :w :·
you've been awful relaxed about all this change. This is reall;, Ji:
me. He said you know it's wonderful because very rarely do mer:
sit down and think about career changes. You get on the track. y•.1 ,, i·
45 EAST: 50301911 vl on the track. He said, I see this as a great opportunity to re-think
everything.
Ms. Lyman What I actually want to do, as opposed to what am I falling into.
Ms. Schroeder And you think positive.
Ms. Lyman Today that's more common. But at that point, it really wasn't.
Ms. Schroeder It's kind of a startling thing at that time. You just assume you would do
what you were doing forever.
Ms. Lyman So your election was kind of a gift to him in disguise.
Ms. Schroeder Further, I think Jim was a more important role model than I was. His
flexibility really surprised me because his mother was very traditional.
She had her masters degree but she stayed home and made perfect pie
crusts.
Ms. Lyman Did she ever go back in the workforce?
Ms. Schroeder No never. I do remember saying in law school before we got married that
marriage scared me because it seemed so boring. Well, it's not been
boring, but I think that may have been even more for Jim to deal with
when you saw his family life.
Ms. Lyman What about having your family in a way doing an oral history with you,
you've already been asked to talk about all these things so many times, I
would imagine. What's that been like?
Ms. Schroeder I do remember my daughter one day saying "please don't have reporters
keep calling me, I feel like a science project." (laughter).
Ms. Lyman Almost too literally
46 EAST: 50301911 vi Ms. Schroeder So it's interesting. You're wondering why people are interested.
Ms. Lyman And when does it become something that you said, rather than something
you've remembered.
Ms. Schroeder Yes. And you have to be careful because you sometimes forget and stop
listening to yourself. When you are young you assume everyone's family
is like yours. Then you find it fascinating that people find your family
different. I'm only beginning to realize how different people's lives really
were. I always felt the most important thing your family can give you is
their wings. If they give you things, you can lose them give them wings
and they can fly. But we're much more interested in people's things than
wmgs.
Ms. Lyman What were the hardest wings for you to give your kids?
Ms. Schroeder I suppose in the days before cell phones, driving was the hardest. I figured
they're going to drive or someone else is going to drive, so who do I trust
the most. But I can remember night after night of never being able to
sleep until I heard that car pulled in the driveway and the door shut.
Ms. Lyman Who taught your kids to drive?
Ms. Schroeder We did, though they did take driver's ed in school.
Ms. Lyman Do you remember getting into the car with them the first time.
Ms. Schroeder I do. Especially with my daughter because our dog, who loved to ride,
jumped out. Smart dog. Maybe I should have followed the dog. I
probably should have. She was a wild and crazy driver, but she got
through it.
47 EAST: 503019llvl Ms. Lyman Where did you do that first?
Ms. Schroeder Right in the driveway. With cell phones today it would be much better.
Ms. Lyman It's not, it's not. And traffic is more dense and more tense and the crazies
are more crazy and the aggressors are more aggressive and the margin for
error is smaller. And it's no more, I just have this memory of sitting here
and I'm a teacher and thinking I didn't know what it was like not to know.
I couldn't remember how much you didn't pay attention.
Ms. Schroeder I have a memory of coming home one night in Denver and both cars in the
driveway had been wrecked. Glad I wasn't doing drivers training at the
Schroeder house that day!
Ms. Lyman And you just looked at them.
Ms. Schroeder And I thought, I am so glad I wasn't here this weekend. That's when
Scott was learning to drive and he was taking the car out but something
slipped in the clutch. He had obviously backed one into the other. So that
was quite interesting. I'm glad I missed it.
Ms. Lyman Now with cell phones, they would have called you and told you about it
right away so you would have been almost like being there.
Ms. Schroeder So you know you have to have to get used to those kind of things. I think
the hardest thing to learn is there's so many things that are beyond your
control. I let the kids travel the world, I let them do everything else. I
worried constantly but they were fine.
Ms. Lyman How old were they when you let them travel the world?
48 EAST: 50301911 vi Ms. Schroeder Their contract said if they got great grades, they didn't have to go to
private school, and the money for private school went into their travel. So
they went to camps when they were younger in Switzerland, Italy, and
other places. Jamie also went to Australia. They became quite the world
travelers. From the time they could travel alone they were gone. And
they were proud of it. They loved being so trusted and their friends were
envious.
Ms. Lyman Did they speak any other languages?
Ms. Schroeder Yea. Jamie's a major in Chinese and French and she lived in China
actually.
Ms. Lyman When was that?
Ms. Schroeder That was in '92 to '93. And Scott went to the Georgetown University
Foreign Service School. He took Spanish. He could say anything about
skiing in German also!
Ms. Lyman I think they call that germane.
Ms. Schroeder It was very specific vocabulary.
Ms. Lyman Well its getting close to time. I hope we can do another session and if you
can think about things that you'd particularly like to cover. Anything that
maybe you haven't looked at in some other place.
Ms. Schroeder I'll think about it. You think about it too.
Ms. Lyman Okay
Ms. Schroeder And try to be creative.
Ms. Lyman And I will get a transcript made of this if you want to look at that.
49 EAST: 5030191 lvl WOMEN TRAILBLAZERS IN THE LAW
SECOND INTERVIEW WITH PATRICIA SCHROEDER BY ANN ALLEN
JULY 15, 2008
Ms. Allen: Good morning.
Ms. Schroeder: Good morning
Ms. Allen: I'm going to take us back to 1972 and ask you a few questions about ...
Ms. Schroeder: Sure
Ms. Allen: Your early time in Congress and the reception you got and, obviously, your
whole career as a Representative. You were such an active advocate for
women's rights as well as other issues. But, if you could just talk about the
first couple of months in Congress, the reactions of people. The reception you
got was because you were a woman, a very young woman. I think it would be
very interesting. So you had office assignments, you had committee
assignments.
Ms. Schroeder: Right. Everything was a mess. I had never thought I would get elected
because everyone told me I wouldn't. I'd never thought about being in
Congress because there were no women role models and this was one of those
things that just kind of happened. And I hadn't given up my jobs, I was so sure
I wouldn't win.
Ms. Allen: Oh, you hadn't?
Ms. Schroeder: No. So, first, I had to quit my jobs when I got elected. I was a hearing officer
for the State of Colorado and I was teaching at Regis College, so I had papers
EAST: 50695609vl to grade, decisions to write. Things at home had slid, so it was nightmare city,
you know, moving the children, my husband giving up his job, just everything.
Many people when they run have already thought about who would be in their
office -- that never occurred to me, so it was massive decision time. I came to
D.C. for a short briefing that the Democratic Study Group ran. I didn't have
time to do any of the other events and of course the Vietnam war was raging,
Cambodia bombing was going on. There were protests all over Washington.
Everybody was surprised I won and treated me like I was just the fluke. "Well,
she surely won't be here two years from now." During the Campaign, the
DCCC wouldn't even talk to me because they knew I couldn't win. A sample
comment: "Well, I can't believe she won the primary but this is hopeless -
bye." And the unions did the same thing. I got used to being brushed off by
everyone. At my swearing in it was funny because the speaker kept trying to
get Jim to raise his hand, and he kept saying "no it's her." And at all of these
events where we would go to welcome the new Congress, they would always
tell me I was in line wrong, that the member was supposed to be first and I
would explain to them I knew protocol, but I was the member. The media
found me a great novelty. Here's this woman with this baby, what is she
doing? My daughter wasn't even toilet trained, she was two, and I had a six
year old. And so there all this hub-bub what is this. One of my memories was
Bella Abzug telling me, "I don't think you can do this." I kept wondering "Oh
my God. What am I doing?" So it was mildly crazy.
I remember the nanny that we had coming from Denver to stay with the kids
2 EAST: 50695609vl from Denver lost her contacts in Iowa in a snow storm. She was a week
delayed. My sister-in-law in Denver had a baby and lost it - it was at
Christmas time. It was terrible. My parents were tom between where to go.
My husband hadn't thought he would have to give up his legal job because he
didn't think I would win either. It was chaos. And most of that early time I
can hardly reconstruct. Other new members came armed with plans and
organization. I didn't know much about the process or anything else. I did go
see Chairman Wilbur Mills who was in charge of my region and tell him what
committees I wanted to be on. I wanted Armed Services and Post Office and
Civil Service. He got me on both and I thought I got on because I was
qualified, confident, had a pilot's license and Congress thought it would be
nice to have a woman. Six months later we learned about Fannie Fox. Then I
put it all together. Congressman Mills had been messing around with Fannie
Fox during the whole campaign while his wife had been out campaigning for
him. His wife had gotten very interested in my campaign, unbeknownst to me,
because she had been reading about this young Denver woman running and
apparently she had said to Congressman Mills, "well you do whatever you can
for that young woman."
Ms. Allen: Did you ever meet her, did she ever come say nice things?
Ms. Schroeder: Yes. She was an amazing feminist in her own right, married to this guy. She
was very close to Elliot Janeway's wife. Janeway was a big economist in New
York. For some reason they really were interested in my race and his guilt is
really how I got on those choice committees, I think. And of course you know
3 EAST: 50695609vl the story about the Armed Services Committee chairman being very upset. No
way he wanted a woman. An African American was also put on the
committee. He made us share a chair, saying we were each worth only half his
other members. I lived through the first two years. They were tough. Then
there was the whole Watergate class that was voted in. There were so many of
them. I went around telling everybody about my experience with Mr. Hebert,
the chairman. The Watergate class decided Congress should start electing the
chairman rather let them be there for life.
Ms. Allen: And do you think that was in reaction to what happened to you?
Ms. Schroeder: Oh yes, it was a huge part of it. He just never thought that the Democratic
caucus would ever change the rules like that, people were so invested in how it
worked. And normally they probably wouldn't have but the Watergate class
had so many new members coming in that the numbers all changed on him. So
he was more than surprised when he was voted out as Chairman. There were
two other chairmen who were just not quite up to snuff and got voted down.
What the Watergate class did was interview these chairmen. You know these
guys were freshmen and "Hey, I'm a chairman, are they out of their minds?"
Some of the chairmen got it and went in and went through interview and were
fine. But the ones who didn't were goners. It was a wonderful reform. So that
was a great outcome to a miserable first two years And then, you know, life
goes on for 24 years. It was utter craziness.
Ms.Allen: In the early years in Congress, was there any camaraderie, helping each other
out, among the women? There were few of you, and you were a diverse group.
4 EAST: 50695609v I Ms. Schroeder: Yes. Patsy Mink from Hawaii was very helpful, and Bella Abzug was very
helpful obviously. Barbara Jordan, Yvonne Burke and Elizabeth Holtzman
were in my class. Some of the women who had been there were not helpful
like the dean of the women, being "dean" meant the woman who had been
elected the longest. The Dean was Leonore Sullivan from Missouri, and she
was a Democrat. I remember going and sitting down by her and saying "Hi
I'm Pat Schroeder and what should I call you? And she said "my name is Mrs.
John Sullivan." "I know that, but what I am I supposed to call you?" And she
said "my name is Mrs. John Sullivan, I am not just a woman." She had taken a
seat held by her husband. He had died and she had run to replace him. About
half of the women there that had inherited the seat. Not all of them, but some
of them, really thought that they were just above the women, that they were
carrying on their husband's agenda or the family agenda or something and they
were really a little insufferable. There was another woman, Edith Green from
Oregon, who had been a real progressive and I don't know what happened,
busing issues just made her crazy. She was even going to come out and
campaign against me because I wrong on the busing issue and some of the
guys had to go and literally sit on her.
Ms. Allen: I remember the name and just associate it with her being liberal.
Ms. Schroeder: She was very progressive, from Oregon, and I was born in Oregon so I thought
"this will be great." But wasn't too great at all. My husband and I had been
the plaintiffs on the busing suit in Denver -- so, oh my God, she had me as a
marked woman.
5 EAST: 5069S609vl Ms. Allen: I can't imagine there was much busing in Oregon.
Ms. Schroeder: I don't know what it was, or whether it was just that she was on Education and
Labor. No, this wasn't this great welcoming group that I anticipated. There
was no Women's Caucus, just a few women and I was very alone.
Ms. Allen: When was the Women's Caucus started?
Ms. Schroeder: Well it started a little later. It was later in the '70s. Peggy Heckler and
Elizabeth Holtzman decided this just had to be done. Peggy had everybody out
to her house to discuss a caucus. Everybody sat around and said "well we
can't do it unless we agree we'll never take a position unless there is
unanimous consent," which meant we never took a position. They also didn't
want any dues. So it was kind of a tea party at first. Then when I took it over
as chair, I said I've got more things to do with my time then sit around, so if
we can't be adults, take a vote and figure out what we're gonna do, I don't
need this. So we changed the rules and grew up. It was no longer a tea party -
it really took positions and if people didn't agree, too bad, they could go say
they didn't agree. It was not like we kept the women from speaking out.
Ms. Allen: Were you also on the Post Office Committee?
Ms. Schroeder: Yes, Post Office and Civil Service. Actually Post Office and Civil Service was
great. That's one of the stories that has never really been told. Four years
later, we ended up with Mary Rose, Okar, Geraldine Ferraro and me chairing
subcommittees. It was the only committee on which there were three women
and we decided to make the Civil Service a model employer. So we passed
flextime, part-time, job sharing, pay equity, daycare and we passed all of this.
6 EAST: 5069S609vl Then came Reagan years and all our efforts went away. But we did a
tremendous amount and were so sad to watch it be undone. I'm pleased to see
that once again Congress has started again trying to make civil service a
model. They recently passed paid family leave for federal employees and are
back on track making Federal Service a model employer.
Ms. Allen: Right, it should.
Ms. Schroeder: So, those were fun years. We used to have some hysterical hearings. We
would put all three of our subcommittees together for hearings and steamroller
things through. No one ever paid much attention to us, so we could get a lot
done.
Ms.Allen: That's a great story. So, kind of moving along. You got more women in
Congress, and more women's issues that you can have success on, but you had
a fairly short window, in the Carter era.
Ms. Schroeder: Both Carters were very supportive. The ERA was front and center. It was kind
of this golden moment where people thought all these things were possible, but
obviously the states didn't quite finish ratifying the ERA so we were very
disappointed. But we did get a lot of other stuff done, which was very good.
And on Armed Services I got a lot of bills passed because once again no one
paid any attention. I got all sorts of family bills through, providing equity for
military families. When I first came, the attitude about military families was
"if we wanted these guys to have a family we would have requisitioned one. If
they've got one, that's their problem. We don't want to hear about it." I took
them on. We got pay equity for day care workers, and now our best day care
7 EAST: 50695609vl workers in America are on military bases. We changed the name "child care
centers" to "child development centers." They really are models now for the
rest of America. I worked on laws to help trailing spouses in the Defense
Department and the foreign service, because you would have spouses overseas,
and how many hours can you volunteer to be a docent! You can't shop every
day and what do you do?
Ms. Allen: So this would give spouses --
Ms. Schroeder: It gave them a preference for a job with our government.
Ms. Allen: On the base?
Ms. Schroeder: Yes, or in the embassy. The bill said it was okay to hire them, let's get over
this nepotism thing! Let's say you can have a two-career family. And they
fought that tooth and nail. Really, it takes two incomes for people to live
almost, and people with kids -- well, how are they going to get them through
school on one income? You know, you're never going to do it. So we did a lot
of those things.
Before the Bill passed, they only allowed spouses to be hired that were based
in communist countries. We pointed out to them that more people were re
upping to stay in Russia than anywhere else. Clearly it was not because of the
climate and the ambiance, it was because both of them could work. They
finally get a clue.
Ms. Allen: But that really did happen?
Ms. Schroeder: Yes. You could see a real change. If you have a job, it makes living abroad
much better for families. If you don't both have a job, what do you do? So all
8 EAST: 5069S609vl those were the kind of things that I just burrowed in and did. We had a survey
done by the Government Accounting Office to find all the laws that would be
changed if the Equal Rights Amendment passed. They came back with just a
huge list. It was really quite shocking. For example the Boy Scouts were
permitted to be given free transportation by the military, if they have space
available, but not the Girl Scouts. We started working on changing those laws
right away.
Ms. Allen: What about issues that were important to your District?
Ms. Schroeder: Well my district was wonderful in that I probably had more environmentalists
and more oil companies than any other, so no matter what I did it was wrong.
The people in Colorado were early environmentalists, so, they were very
interested in what could be done to clean the air, water, recycle and so on. And
under Carter, we got the National Energy Renewable Lab established in
Colorado which they all wanted. But then along came Reagan and undercut all
the legislation we passed. The sad thing is that if the country stayed with what
President Carter had passed, we would not be where we are today. It's the
story that no one tells. He was into recycling big time. He was into solar. He
had tax credits for solar use. We would be energy independent -- imagine!
Ms. Allen: Yes, for solar.
Ms. Schroeder: Yes, and electric cars and storm windows and all the things we're talking about
again today. And then it all just got dropped and it's back to your Hummer and
SUV and go for it. But my district also had a lot of young people, working
women. So they were always very happy about anything I could do to do for
9 EAST: 5069S609vl work and family issues because a lot of young people are obviously working -
college educated. Denver has a very high level of college education. Denver
is very sophisticated about civil rights. Between the average African American
family and the average Anglo family there's only two months' difference in
their education. It really is a very interesting place. During the civil war,
many African Americans who could escape went West. People forget that
about a third of the cowboys were African Americans. I remember taking
Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm to Denver to the cowboy museum, and she
was like, "oh my -- I had no idea." I said, "absolutely -- look at this." And she
said, "if the kids in Harlem knew this, they'd have a whole different feeling
about American history." It's just, one of these little -- many little secrets out
there that somehow never quite bubble up to national consciousness. But my
district also had Martin Marietta who absolutely hated my guts, because
obviously I voted against most defense goodies they wanted. And my
administrative assistant sued them under the Civil Rights Act because all of
their Class A millwrights were white and all of their Class B millwrights were
African-American and Hispanics, and clearly he won the suit but Martin
Marietta was livid. But, I knew I could never get all the votes.
The other big issue I had going I noticed because I'm a pilot. When you took
off from the Denver Airport at that time, you went over this nerve gas arsenal
and you could see these barrels of things laying out there in the open. I
thought, okay, now I have the power to find out what they are -- they were
nerve gas left over from the Korean War, sitting above ground. And the
10 EAST: 50695609vl Defense Department did its usual wonderful thing they do -- they released a
study that was this big and it said things like, "your eyes won't water if you're
exposed to this, you won't get itchy skin" -- and so on and so on but the
bottom line was, there are no bad side effects other than death from exposure
to nerve gas. I found Dr. Kiscankowski at Harvard -- who was then teaching at
Harvard, but he had been Eisenhower's science advisor during the Korean War,
and I told him, these old nerve gas canisters are sitting above the ground at the
end of the Denver Airport runways. They're giving me nightmares. Give me
some comfort. And he said, "I can't give you any comfort at all, that's
absolutely outrageous," and God love him, because of the things he said we
finally got the military to spend a lot of money to detoxify them. You couldn't
move them anywhere. No one wanted them and how could you transport them
safely even if you found a place?
Ms. Schroeder: So after getting that done, the area is now a beautiful wilderness area. It's just
incredible. We took one of the most polluted parts of America and made it into
a wilderness area. Those kinds of things were things that I cared about and my
district cared about. So I was very fortunate to be able to produce results.
Ms. Allen: And that worked for you. Would Martin Marietta support another candidate?
Ms. Schroeder: Well they certainly give money, and invite them out to the plant, and treated
them royally. Life's like that.
Ms. Allen: How much of a difference do you think your being a lawyer made?
Ms. Schroeder: I think being a lawyer, you really learn that you have to be prepared. You
really learn how to peel the onion, for example the nerve gas issue. I could sit
11 EAST: 5069S609vl there and yell forever. Most would treat me as a lefty antiwar person. As a
lawyer, you know, you better find some bigger gun that's going to carry a little
more weight in the witness box. In this case it was the science advisor to
President Eisenhower. He made them have to deal with the issue.
Ms. Allen: I guess I was wondering also rereading your book, whether your experience at
Harvard Law School that kind of fortified you? It was pretty isolated being a
woman.
Ms. Schroeder: Yes, it did. It was a wonderful experience for getting ready for Congress. It's
like I've been there, and this is deja vu. Neither Congress or Harvard was out
with welcoming signs for women. When a young man was elected, the older
members want to mentor him, many wanted to know what they could do to
help them. The gym was for men only and more bonding, or older members
would take them hunting or fishing. For the women, you come in, you can't
go to the gym, there were no mentors and you're not really welcome anywhere.
Women felt very isolated! It's certainly better now, but I still can't believe that
we're in 2008 and we still have only fifty some odd women in Congress and
that's all.
Ms. Allen: You would have expected more.
Ms. Schroeder: Yes. And that's very incremental progress. And when you look at other
countries, -- especially European countries -- they've made much more
progress than we have moving women forward. So, you know, it's still a tough
go here.
Ms.Allen: Do you think there are more young women entering politics and it's just taking
12 EAST: S0695609vl a while for them to get to national office?
Ms. Schroeder: I don't know. There's certainly more money for women starting out now.
Emily's List and those things have been wonderful additions. Part of what's
happened is there aren't many Congressional open seats. Incumbents always
get re-elected. What's happened with reapportionment is they've made
districts more and more Republican or Democratic. It's very difficult to run as
a challenger against an incumbent. This keeps women from breaking in.
You've got to wait for an open seat. So there really aren't many opportunities
for women to run for the House and the Se.nate. Another part of the problem is
it is disruptive to the family moving back and forth and money raising is
horrific. I thought Hillary Clinton was absolutely phenomenal, off the charts
and how she got through that campaign with such style and grace was
incredible. Yet she didn't win. I don't know if it's going to be a positive for
women, or if it's going to be, "oh my God, I wouldn't do that with my life on a
bet." It's going to be very interesting to see how young women process that. I
hope it's positive, but there is no question there was still so much sexism
leveled at her. And it's also very clear that none of the party elders ever stood
up for her. They'll stand up to racism in a nanosecond. But, when it comes to
sexism, nobody says much. And if women say anything about it, it's "oh, they
have no sense of humor" or "there they go." So I just don't know how young
women are going to process this. I hope that they put on their battle gear and
say, let's keep going. We 're not going to stop now.
Ms.Allen: I'm not sure that men see it, see the sexism.
13 EAST: 50695609vl Ms. Schroeder: I know it's so engrained in the culture. Well I always tell my Tip O'Neill story
about when he was Speaker. I used to go to him and say "Tip, I can't believe
the way you always introduce me. There's sexism in it." He didn't get it. The
first time he came to Denver, I introduced him the way he introduced me. I
went like "this is Millie O'Neill's husband. We all know Millie, she's so
wonderful. We've always wondered how Tip could manage his career and his
marriage, but he seems to have done it. The most important thing in his life is
four children and they are, you know .... " blah, blah, blah. So he was like,
"oh my God, I'm the Speaker of the House. What is she doing?" And, "I'm
like, that's what you do to me."
Ms. Allen: It was how he introduced you?
Ms. Schroeder: Yes, you know, it was always sweet and wonderful and warm, and that's right.
But what does the audience hear. They don't hear that I'm a professional at all.
Well, it was "isn't this kind of cute, and she's doing this for now." And he to
his credit said, "I get it" -- Politicians don't think they get any points standing
up to sexism. I remember one night when I was so angry. We had tickets to
some sports dinner downtown which I could have cared less about. It was a
black tie dinner. But my husband really wanted to go. It was honoring the
Redskins and football, so we got a sitter, we get dressed up, we went down .
there. Of course the place is filled with all my male colleagues. I walk in and
realized there were no women there. It never occurred to me. It's in a hotel.
They're public tickets that you buy. And the way I read the Civil Rights Act,
you can't discriminate in a public facility. I walk in, and all of a sudden this
14 EAST: S069S609vl one group comes and surrounds me and says, "are you gonna leave or do we
have to carry you out?" And I said, "what do you mean?" And they said,
"what are you trying to be funny? This is a stag affair. We don't have women
here." And all my colleagues are standing around and they're all saying,"
what, are you trying to be funny, Pat? "What are you doing? "I'm like "no,
damn it." Of course, I didn't want to come anyway, but now I'm furious,
right? Now if they had thrown me out because I was black, these guys would
have walked out with me and had a press conference. If I was thrown out
because I was Jewish or something, they would have walked out and had a
press conference. But they just laughed and acted like it was a prank of mine.
Ms. Allen: So what did you do?
Ms. Schroeder: Well I left, obviously. There was nothing else to do. But it was ingrained in
my mind that they didn't think there was any point in standing up for my
rights. They thought people would think they have lace on their shorts if they
stood up for women. I don't know what it is, but they don't get it. It's a phrase
used way too much. "They don't get it" -- but they don't!
Ms. Allen: So were you surprised that Hillary's campaign was as successful as it was?
How do you react to it?
Ms. Schroeder: I thought she was fantastic. I think if the campaign had been run the way it
was run in the last seven weeks, she would have won, clearly. I think there
were some guys in the campaign maybe Mark Penn and others that, you know,
really sold her out early on, for example getting out of caucus states.
Ms.Allen: That was odd, I thought.
15 EAST: S069S609vl Ms. Schroeder: I went out to represent Hillary for the women lawyers in Colorado. They put
on a big fundraiser and were all excited about her and were doing everything.
Everything was fine. Later on I get a call from one of them saying, "what's
going on?" I said "I don't know, what are you talking about?" And they said
"Hillary's campaign's pulling out of Colorado. They're not going to compete
in caucus states anymore." I said, "what?" And sure enough they were. Well,
there you go. So all of a sudden the "guys" in her campaign really sabotaged
her.
You've got to compete everywhere. I don't know what was going on in their
heads, but I think there were other campaign decisions made that really were
harmful to her. Then, in the end, here she was with the media every day saying
"why doesn't she get out?" "How come "she's still there?" "What is she
thinking?" She keeps winning, you know. And I feared some people might
start to say, "I'm just going to vote for Obama to end this because I'm tired of
it. It's been going on forever. Let's just do it. She may not want to quit, but, I
would think that would be a rational decision." Still, the majority of people
weren't doing that. So when she took control of her campaign, she overcame
the negative media. She was really quite incredible. So I hope it encouraged
women, but time will tell.
Ms. Allen: But you are not confident of that --
Ms. Schroeder: I think a lot of young women started out thinking people like myself were old
fogies that didn't understand -- that everything was fine now. Sexism was a
relic, history, gone, so they didn't have to back Hillary, they could back
16 EAST: S069S609vl Obama. Sexism was over and done within their minds. And I think toward the
end they suddenly began to get it, and discover that there was some sexism
left! And I don't know where they'll go next. I keep saying to them, even we
thought we had won these things and they were permanently written down,
more and more we are finding out that all we had done was establish little
beachheads, and if you don't continue to fight, the beachhead gets washed
away. I have seen that happen in so many different areas, in my career and a
lot of young women haven't. They think equality is a done deal.
Ms. Allen: When I think of what area we need to focus on, I think of reproductive rights.
Ms. Schroeder: Oh yes. Even Obama's statements last week seemed shaky. What was he
thinking? He questioned partial birth abortion. That's an issue the Catholic
church managed so well. They hired a PR firm and they really spun it, sadly.
Ms. Allen: I used to be general counsel of ACOG, and we fought against that.
Ms. Schroeder: Oh, thank you, thank you.
Ms. Allen: Partial birth abortion - there is no sue~ thing.
Ms. Schroeder: It's such a joke. There is no such thing.
Ms. Allen: I mean ... the words on paper and medical procedures do not match.
Ms. Schroeder: I remember when they brought those charts into the Judiciary Committee for
the first hearing. I was on the committee and the charts literally had printed on
them "paid for by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops." In my
questioning I pointed it out and it was like I wore a bathing suit to church. I
asked what about separation of church and state, what is this? I thought the
committee should only have testimony on medical procedures from doctors.
17 EAST: 5069S609vl What do the Bishops know about this. Unfortunately others took them
seriously.
Ms. Allen: Are there other areas that you think are in danger?
Ms. Schroeder: Sure. Well I think McCain is so retro. Heaven only knows. Conservatives
have learned to put a few high profile women out there that do what they tell
them, and then people believe they're probably okay because they've got
women. It's fascinating.
Ms. Allen: I read someone quoting you about the "queen bee effect."
Ms. Schroeder: Ummm. You know the queen bee effect. You take a Condoleezza Rice. You
look at her record at Stanford. She was all for shutting down affirmative action
and everything else. And yet, she has a very high profile, and so people think,
"well this is terrific. Women have made it." Colin Powell didn't stand up
either, but she's never stood up ever questioning anything that they ever asked
her to do. And, I am not sure that she's ever stood up for anything that had to
do with women's rights anywhere. I haven't seen that. I can't think of an
instance, there may be, but I haven't seen it, so that perturbs me.
Ms. Allen: So, is there anything you did in Congress that you'd like to be covered in the
oral history that we haven't talked about?
Ms. Schroeder: Well, the family leave bill was wonderful. That has made a huge difference for
many families.
Ms. Allen: And that was a long battle.
Ms. Schroeder: Oh, my word, it was nine years. Wonderful T. Berry Brazelton, the
pediatrician from Harvard was all for it. He came to see me and we have been
18 EAST: 5069S609vl friends ever since, I adore him. And he said "I will help you." So when I
looked into running for president in 1987, one of the things I did was talk a lot
about work and family issues. I found people very interested and I was being
invited everywhere. And then when I decided that running for president just
wasn't going to work. Dr. Brazelton came and said "how are we going to do
these issues?" So we decided to do a great American Family tour in primary
states to pressure the remaining candidates. Gary David Goldberg, who was
then producing Family Ties, Dr. T. Berry Brazelton, and Diana Mehan, Gary's
wife, and I did this grand American Family Tour in 1988 through key primary
states. We went to New Hampshire, South Carolina, Florida, Georgia,
Arkansas and so forth. We decided to do southern states because we figured
there are the hardest sell._ We focused on family leave, child care and all sorts
of family issues. In Arkansas Bill and Hillary Clinton sponsored us. We drew
more people to our events than any of the candidates. All the candidates
wanted to be part of it. We told folks what we want you to do if you write a
check to the candidates -- do things like endorse the check and say, "do not
catch this check until family leave passes." We knew we really had to pressure
them to do it. It was really wonderful. In South Carolina, we had the Chamber
of Commerce sponsor us. Can you believe that? No. I couldn't either. It was
amazing. I was a phenomenal success because we got enough people to pass
family leave. And, of course, during this campaign cycle George Herbert
Walker Bush, the first George, had said suddenly that he also was for family
leave. So we go it passed. He vetoed it. And he said he was for it in principle,
19 EAST: 50695609vl but not as a law. So we passed it again and he vetoed it again. We got it
passed when Clinton came to power and he signed it at his first signing
ceremony. The chairman of the committee that had jurisdiction told the
Clinton people that "we can't have her on this stage at the signing because it's
now my bill." Okay, thank you guys. The "boys" hadn't sponsored it till the
last year, but no difference;·it was not theirs! But who cares, it got passed. It
was the first bill Clinton signed. Again they all went around and did back flips
about how wonderful that was. For two years we had this panel that Senator
Dodd chaired. It went around to see if any businesses got shut down because
of this bill and, of course, couldn't find any anywhere, so all that junk thrown
against the bill was baloney. But Congress hasn't done anything since. They
haven't expanded it. They did extend it for military families this year -- House
and Senate -- first time. So, from 1993 we waited until 2008 before the first
extension of family leave coverage. If you go back and look at the speeches,
almost every single elected official talked about family leave and how
wonderful it is. But it is just a mere token. The bill was just a mere shadow of
the bill I introduced. This was such a lesson in how hard this stuff is. I was
always amazed by the city that talks about families all the time, does nothing
for them!
Ms. Allen: Uh huh.
Ms. Schroeder: So I suppose, you know, I did lots of other things - whistleblower protection
which, of course, this administration got rid of. I always did alternative
defense budgets, which no one does any more. The women's health initiative,
20 EAST: S069S609v I which was so important, is a bill I'm proud of and luckily it's still holding but
they keep trying to chip away at that too. Title IX, they've tried to chip away
at, you know. It's pretty incredible, Women's legislation is so vulnerable.
Bernadette Healy became head of NIH because we passed this women's health
initiative thing and Bush vetoed it. He brought in a woman and puts her in
charge of the NIH and thought that would cover his backside with women
made about the veto in the next election. Of course, she did what they told her.
Ms. Allen I am going to change the subject and ask you about post-Congress life. Can
you talk a little bit about your decision to leave Congress?
Ms. Schroeder Well, I was 55 years old. I had been there 23 years. Newt Gingrich had gotten
elected Speaker in 1994 and there was this whole turnover. I had been
fortunate enough for my first 22 years to be in the majority and I could do
things. I could pass bills. I could get things done. All of a sudden the place
felt like I was in my junior high lunch room during a food fight every day. You
know, you kind of go home, clean up, go to bed, get up and go do the same
thing again. This is not good. There was a group of us, Dick Durbin, George
Miller, myself, Rosa DeLora, we would all meet every morning for breakfast,
try and get a message, go to the floor, and try and push back on the
Republicans. Again, I think that comes from my legal training, I know that
you've got to state your case. And we found that after a year it was still the
same little band. No one had joined us, most of the party was thinking oh well
this is a fluke, we'll be back, in power in the next election, no problem. They
thought we looked a little crazy. My take was, the Republicans are going to be
21 EAST: S0695609vl in power for a very long time because the Democrats plain don't get it. They
just didn't understand what happened to them and if they didn't make their
case, they're not going to win. So, unfortunately I was right. I was so right
and I just thought, is this how I want to spend my life? Also, ageism is also
very strong in this country and I felt that one of the problems with Congress
was that people stay too long. I had always thought that if I go out, I want to
go out at the top of my game, not horizontally at the bottom. So, I thought,
okay, you are 55 and may even be too old, but obviously every year that goes
by you get older and it gets harder to find another thing to do. I never thought
that I was going to be here anyway and didn't' want to be a lifer. I was very
proud to be the Chair of the Women's Caucus. We were the largest bipartisan
caucus on the Hill. Men could join too if they had good voting records on our
issues. Gingrich destroyed the Caucus. He destroyed anything that was
around that I really cared about. And I just thought, "I don't want to just be
hanging out, waiting for my time to come back."
Ms. Schroeder: So did you have any idea what you were going to do next?
Ms. Allen: No, because as you know, you're not supposed to go around getting job offers
while you're there.
Ms. Schroeder: Right, but I mean, did you think, "oh I would like to teach," or "oh I would like
to write" or ...
Ms.Allen: Well, I basically thought about teaching because that's what I had done and
Princeton asked if I would come teach, so I went to Princeton immediately and
I wrote the book there too, which was a nice place to write the book. I'm glad
22 EAST: 5069S609vl I did it then because the longer you wait the harder it is to do it. And then this
headhunter came with this job and I thought, well, it sounds interesting so ten
years later here I am, still here! At first I said "I'm never going to run an
association in Washington. What, are you crazy!" And she kept saying, "calm
down, let me tell you what the issues, are." She explained Publishers worked
on, education, free speech, freedom of expression, intellectual property, all
those are all things that I cared about in Congress. So, here I am. I must say,
the thing that I didn't like about teaching was, I would come at 8 o'clock in the
morning thinking I was late getting to work and find out I was the first person
in the building, which I didn't like. And at 4 in the afternoon I would still be
the only person in the building. I don't know where everybody was. I was
used to all this action and stuff going on but in teaching everybody's in their
own little pod somewhere, I d~m't know what they're doing. And I found they
were also timid. AU· people wanted was more research grants to go do research
somewhere. Which is how I guess the place is structured, but it was a little too
laid back, at that point for me, maybe later.
Ms. Allen: Did you teach at the graduate level?
Ms. Schroeder: Yes. The Woodrow Wilson School of Public Policy and it was fine. The
students were great. And Princeton was wonderful, but the commute from here
to Princeton is a nightmare and my husbaµd was still working in Washington at
that time so the Publisher job made life easier.
Ms. Allen: So you've been in present position for ....
Ms. Schroder: About ten years. Time flies.
23 EAST: S069S609vl Ms. Allen: And the issues are interesting and challenging? How are the librarians?
Ms. Schroeder: I love librarians. They want everything free. I want everything free too. But,
they understand authors have to be paid. It is amazing there is this little myth
out there that people write all of this stuff and will just be so happy that folks
are reading it that they won't care about getting paid. What they missed is that
writing is a whole lot harder than they think it is. You don't pump gas all day
and then go home and sit and write all night. Some people do, maybe, but very
few. Most people want to be paid for what they're doing. If they want to give
it away, they can give it away. I think the librarians basically know that. It's
fascinating to me they are willing to pay for their on-line services, they get
paid but some don't want to pay writers and I don't understand this culture.
Libraries pay for on-line services, for every kind of computer and they wear
out and they have to get a new one and they don't think anything of it, but pay
for content, no way. It's fascinating to me. I don't know how we got to this
place. I think we're really a nation of technology junkies.
Ms. Allen: Do see the role as trying to persuade people to think differently?
Ms. Schroeder: Well, in this digital era, whenever we get a new technology, people oversell it.
Publishers don't own paper companies and they don't own ink. They don't
care how they deliver the content they produce. They'll do it zeroes and ones,
they'll do it on paper, they'll do it however you want it. Their job is editing
and producing content. Most people think that publishers are printers, and
don't really understand the difference. The new technology people come along
and it's always "buy my machine then you can go get all this content stuff free
24 EAST: 50695609vl from everybody else." But you always have to buy my machine first, and then
buy the on-line services and then buy all this and buy all that and the reason
you are told to buy all of this is so you can go copy all the movies, the books,
all of the recordings, the software, anything you want, you can get all of that
free. I remember having farmers sit in my office for days from Colorado,
furious, because they bought those satellite dishes, installed them and then
found out that they still had to subscribe, that the signal was scrambled. Of
course, the guy who sold them the $2,000.00 dish told them you get all the
signals for free. It's interesting you're willing to pay $2,000.00, but don't want
to pay, like $15.00 a month or something, for content. And they didn't. We
don't seem to respect intellectual property in this country and so I have a tough
job! I feel very strongly about it, because if you look at our country, I sound
like a nativist here, someone like Lou Dobbs, God forbid, but if you look at our
country, the stuff that we produce in this country is content. We don't produce
those damn machines. Those are all made somewhere else. Manufacturing is
gone. Our largest export is intellectual property. Stealing students' future jobs
before they get them. What are they thinking? And they don't know because
no one teaches them about intellectual property, nobody understands it. It's in
the Constitution, Article I, Section 8, it's not an amendment, it's in the First
Article. Why? Because our forefathers were creators; they understood the
importance of this. But it's a very tough sell today. I say to people, "if you can
find something that can substitute and do for this economy what intellectual
property does, fine." The Government keeps its statistics like the Nineteenth
25 EAST: S069S609vl Century, The Washington Post is considered a manufacturing entity by the
government. What a joke. The Washington Post is intellectual property. If
you figure out what intellectual property accounts for in this economy, it's
bigger than automobiles, aircraft, agriculture. It is, it's huge. When you take
the software industry and the book industry and the recording industry and the
movie industry and the TV and the media and that's what the whole world
wants from us. They want Ralph Lauren designs, of course they don't want to
pay him for it, and so it goes -- sigh.
Ms. Allen: Do you miss being in Congress?
Ms. Schroeder: No.
Ms. Allen: No?
Ms. Schroeder: No, it's been a miserable place to be, I think. You know, you just couldn't do
anything. I talk to my friends over there and they're frustrated beyond belief.
My husband used to laugh and say "I ought to get a couch and charge for your
time" because they call and tell me how frustrated they are.
Ms. Allen: So, would you have advice for a 30-32 year old who's thinking about politics?
Ms. Schroeder: Yes. Go do it. Don't go to your grave saying "I could have, should have,
would have." Do it. What's the worst thing that can happen? You lose. But
you still make lots of friends and learn lots. You learn so much about so many
things, even about the place you live. You meet groups you never knew lived
there. You see parts of the city you don't know existed. All of that has to
count for something at the end of the day.
Ms. Allen: Do you get back to Denver much?
26 EAST: 5069S609vl Ms. Schroeder: Not as much as I would like. My daughter lives in Bozeman, MT and my son
lives in New Jersey. My husband is retired and I can never blast him out of our
place down in Florida for very long, so I kind of live on a plane going around
to see everybody like a bumble bee, but I get there a couple times a year and I
miss it very much and I really want to get back there. Maybe when I quit here
I'll go retire there. Who knows? But, here's the wonderful thing, Diane
DeGette took my seat. I go to bed at night very happy. She votes the way I
would have voted. If some nut case had taken it, I might feel very different,
but, you know. Perfect!
Ms. Allen: Well, thank you for your time.
Ms. Schroder: Thank you.
27 EAST: 50695609vl