Sheila C. Bair November 5, 2013; December 19, 2013; January 9, 2014; January 15, 2014; April 2, 2014 Recommended Transcript of Interview with Sheila C. Bair (Nov. 5, 2013; Dec. 19, 2013; Citation Jan. 9, 2014; Jan. 15, 2014; Apr. 2, 2014), https://abawtp.law.stanford.edu/exhibits/show/sheila-c-bair. Attribution The American Bar Association is the copyright owner or licensee for this collection. Citations, quotations, and use of materials in this collection made under fair use must acknowledge their source as the American Bar Association. Terms of Use This oral history is part of the American Bar Association Women Trailblazers in the Law Project, a project initiated by the ABA Commission on Women in the Profession and sponsored by the ABA Senior Lawyers Division. This is a collaborative research project between the American Bar Association and the American Bar Foundation. Reprinted with permission from the American Bar Association. All rights reserved. Contact Please contact the Robert Crown Law Library at Information [email protected] with questions about the ABA Women Trailblazers Project. Questions regarding copyright use and permissions should be directed to the American Bar Association Office of General Counsel, 321 N Clark St., Chicago, IL 60654-7598; 312-988-5214. ABA Senior Lawyers Division Women Trailblazers in the Law ORAL HISTORY of SHEILA BAIR Interviewer: Marcia D. Greenberger Dates of Interviews: November 5, 2013 December 19, 2013 January 9, 2014 January 15, 2014 April 2, 2014 ORAL HISTORY OF SHEILA BAIR ON BEHALF OF WOMEN TRAILBLAZERS IN THE LAW A PROJECT OF THE AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION SENIOR LAWYERS DIVISION BY MARCIA D. GREENBERGER NOVEMBER 5, 2013 Ms. Greenberger: This interview is being conducted on November 5, 2013, by Marcia Greenberger and the interviewee is Sheila Bair. This is the first of several audio tapes that we are beginning to record for the Trailblazer's Project of the ABA and the Commission on Women. I'm here today in Sheila's office which is absolutely beautiful, sleek, white, lots of light, lots of glass, very, very clean lines and very beautiful and filled with light. And it's got a lot of wonderful equipment all around and hopefully this recorder which is not part of Hughes equipment will do the trick. And with me is Sheila Bair who is looking absolutely wonderful in a red and black very snazzy top and black pants and against this white, sleek, shiny office, she looks just wonderful. I'm just going to stop this for a moment for make sure that it's recording properly. Okay, Sheila, I think we're ready to go now with your 1 assistance. Your technical expertise among all the other areas. Yes, a renaissance woman. So I think what we would like to try to focus on today is a little bit about your background and where you were born, and your family life, and your parents. So tell us first of all when you were born and a little bit about the circumstances. Ms. Bair: So I was born on April 3, 1954. My mother was scheduled for a C-section. She had difficulty with a natural delivery because of the positioning of her spine so they wapted to schedule the procedure on April 1 and she was quite against it, because she didn't want an April Fool's baby. She thought other kids would tease me when I got older. So she scheduled it for April 3. Technically I was born in Wichita, Kansas because that's where the surgery 'was. We were living in Independence, Kansas and that's where I grew up. Independence is a very small town, about 12,000 people when I lived there. It used to be a quite wealthy town. There was a lot of oil exploration and Sinclair Pipeline used to be based there. So there was a lot of money, a lot of millionaires-- once. And according to local lore, we had the 2 most millionaires per capita of any town in Kansas for a . while. But by the time I was born the oil wells had run dry and there were some remnants of Sinclair Pipeline, they were shrinking and it really was kind of an economically­ challenged area, very isolated, bad roads. The closest city was Kansas City about 180 miles away. It was the kind of place where people had to struggle a bit. We did not. My father was a doctor. My mother was trained as a nurse but she was a homemaker and someone whom my sister and I loved very much. And they were good parents. They were depression-era children. My mother in particular had lived in impoverished circumstances, also in southeast Kansas and had horrific stories to tell about the dust bowl. My father, they were certainly not wealthy people by any means. His father actually died in the Swine flu epidemic. His mother eventually remarried -- a truck driver for Sinclair in Newton, Kansas. Unlike my Mom's family, they always had food on the table, but they were definitely blue collar. My dad's mother took in laundry. I remember going to her house and visiting her as she would be doing the ironing for her 3 neighbors, people she would do laundry for. We'd also go to the Lutheran church with her once a week because she also had a job cleaning the church. So that was the kind of people they were. Both my parents growing up had lived in meager circumstances, but we were quite comfortable with my dad as a doctor. He was a general surgeon, the only surgeon in the community. My parents had a good understanding of want and prudence and thrift and really instilled those things in me as well. Independence was kind of an interesting town. It had beautiful old mansions -- ts echoes of past grandeur. There were also some really interesting people who had come from Independence, Kansas. William Inge, for instance, the famous playwright, wrote Picnic, Dark at the Top of the Stairs, Splendor in the Grass. He was quite the rage in the 50s when his plays were being produced on Broadway and made into movies. And I believe Picnic is being rerun on Broadway now. And if you see any of those plays, it's very much Independence, Kansas. He was actually ostracized from the community for a long time, because the characters 4 in these plays were so true-to-life people in Independence. Everybody knew who they were so folks were quite angry at him and he was also gay, and people back then were not as accepting of that as they are now. But they are tolerant now. Actually the town now celebrates William Inge. They have a big theater festival every year in his honor and they are quite proud of him as one of their own. He wrote honestly about small town life in rural Kansas with all of its warts --the nice things and the not-so nice things as well. Mickey Mantle also, according to local lore, played his first Little League Baseball game in Independence, Kansas. ~vivian Vance from I Love Lucy was from Independence, Kansas. Walter Cronkite's aunt lived in Independence.:) So we had a lot of people of note and prominence who had connections one way or the other and we were all very proud of that. We also had a big celebration every year for Halloween called N eewollah (Halloween spelled backwards) and in Picnic, William Inge's probably most famous play, Picnic, was centered around that celebration. That was quite a big 5 deal, every year we would produce a play, the locals would produce a play. I was in several of them. One year I was in Oliver, always just bit parts. I was not a very good actress or a singer but being in these big productions was a fun thing to do as I was growing up. Independence also had a big carnival and parade. We put on our costumes and marched in the parade. Halloween was really celebrated. Independence was probably ahead of its time in its celebration of Halloween. It was really a big deal. So I had a sister three years older. And we were pretty close and are still close. We took very different paths, she's a physical therapist. She lives in the Midwest in Illinois, with my mom. My father has since passed away. But it was a good, solid, traditional family, big emphasis on traditional values, work ethic. My dad was of German descent and had that kind of classic Prussian, keep your nose to the grindstone kind of attitude towards things which I liked and I value that. My mother had Mediterranean roots so she was a little more of a passionate type and caring, affectionate type. They were a good combination. They had their own ups and downs in their marriage which they worked through over the 6 years. But anyway it was a good upbringing. I went to public schools. Everybody did. Back then that's what you did. I can't say they were great public schools. They were good in a sense they were economically diverse and everybody went to the same place, and equalizing in that way. And so the teachers could have been stronger but you make of it what you can. And so that was pretty much it. Ms. Greenberger: Was it a diverse population at that point. Ms. Bair: That's a good question, so it was not, I would say we probably had about a 10 percent African-American population, no other significant size minorities.