Intro -- Four Fearsome Females

There were four of us girls growing up who were together all the time from grade school on – Mary, Clarice, Pat and I. We called ourselves the “Four Fearsome Females.” We did everything together and went to the same places, ate and slept in each other’s houses a lot. Maybe the fact that all of us had brothers and no sisters had something to do with things. (Actually, Pat has a sister but she is fourteen years older than Pat and was not around.) We always said we would be together forever and to a large degree we have. Clarice is no longer living, having fallen victim to breast cancer when we were in our mid-30s, but the three others of us were all on hand with her husband and son when she went. I see Pat often since our professional meanderings have put us about ten miles apart. I don’t see Mary as much since she now lives in Arizona and I am in the Midwest, but she isn’t likely to leave my life as she married Lowell more than thirty years ago. And of course in this day of email and low-cost long distance we still communicate almost daily.

We were all raised in upper middle class families in the post-war era in the western suburbs of Chicago. Pat and I attended the same women’s college in the East for a couple of years until I transferred to Ohio State. I just couldn’t take the rich bitches I was going to school with or the female-only environment. Pat managed to stick it out longer, but she came back to the Midwest as soon as she finished there.