Sally Tatnall Interview, 19 July 2023

Abstract

Sally Tatnall (b. 1937) grew up in Buffalo, New York, and moved to East Cleveland in the 1960s. She discusses developing her political consciousness through her involvement in civil rights activism in Cleveland. She discusses moving to Cleveland Heights, becoming an active feminist, and coming out as a radical lesbian feminist in the 1970s. Tatnall discusses becoming active in Cleveland Heights' East Side lesbian feminist communities and her role as as a founding member of the lesbian collective Hag House/Berkshire House. She also describes her involvement in lesbian feminist spaces, activism, and cultural production in Cleveland, including Oven Productions, the the Land Project, the Three of Cups, and the Womyn's Variety Show.

Interviewee

Tatnall, Sally (interviewee)

Interviewer

Habyl, Riley (interviewer)

Project

LGBTQ+ Cleveland

Date

7-19-2023

Document Type

Oral History

Duration

102 minutes

Recommended Citation

"Sally Tatnall Interview, 19 July 2023" (2023). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 701003.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/1270

Transcript

Riley Habyl [00:00:03] All right, I've just started the recording. So today's date is Wednesday, July 19, 2023. This is Riley Habyl with the LGBTQ+ Cleveland Voices Oral History Collection. I'm interviewing Sally Tatnall remotely at her home in Lyndhurst, Ohio. So, hi, Sally. Thank you very much for speaking with me today. To begin, can you please state and spell your name for the record?

Sally Tatnall [00:00:28] Yes. My legal name is Shirley Tatnall—S-h-i-r-l-e-y T-a-t-n-a-l-l—but my mother always called me Sally, and so that's what I've gone by. A lot of people don't even know my name is Shirley—so Sally it is.

Riley Habyl [00:00:52] Where and when were you born, Sally?

Sally Tatnall [00:00:54] Batavia, New York [b.1937]. Grew up in Buffalo. Went to college at Alfred University, which is in Alfred, New York. I am a misplaced New Yorker. Statewide, not city.

Riley Habyl [00:01:14] When did you move to the Cleveland area?

Sally Tatnall [00:01:17] I moved in—. I believe it was 1970—with my husband at the time, and three kids.

Riley Habyl [00:01:33] To go back to your childhood a little bit—. Could you tell me a bit about your childhood and your family background?

Sally Tatnall [00:01:41] Okay. I—. My childhood—. I was the oldest of four girls. My mother was a schoolteacher, my father was a gambler. I mean, he was a good guy. I think he—. I think he was an original hippie, but he just—I don't know, he just somehow didn't work. And so raising four girls and two adults on a teacher's salary put us in a very low income bracket, and so I became aware of class issues early on. My mother was a teacher, and so she—she had access to something that I was able to take advantage of. In those days, State Teachers College—which is now SUNY of Buffalo [University at Buffalo SUNY]—the State Teachers College had a grammar school, you know, first to eighth grade on the campus where they did—where practice teachers practiced. And so I was able to join that group—very, very upper-class girls—and very soon I learned what they had access to, that I did not. And the issue of class has followed me through my life, and I've done a lot to try and raise the issue of class. It's something we don't want to talk about. That's something we—. People either get scared and nervous, or they just don't want to talk about it. So that's one of my ongoing soapboxes, struggles, etc., because class has a lot to do with how we communicate. Not in a good way. (laughs) enough?

Riley Habyl [00:03:50] Oh, absolutely, (unintelligible, crosstalk)—.

Sally Tatnall [00:03:50] Another thing that's important—. Another thing that's important in my childhood was that I had asthma. And in those days, you didn't know about doctors—they didn't know about allergies, so I was sick quite a bit. I guess—. Well, I guess that's all for now. Anything else about childhood? You know, I was a good girl. I did what I was told. I was smart, and my smartness got me through school because certainly my attendance didn't. And, you know, when I was growing up, I didn't know the word lesbian. I'd never heard of it. You know, here I am, this little white girl, you go to college—. And college was another thing, because as a teacher my mother was bent on having us go to college. But there wasn't—you know, financially, that was really out of sight—but (coughs) her girls all were able to either work—. We all—except the youngest girl—we all went to college, and my mother would just float one loan against the house against another and pay it back as she could. And we all worked going to college, so—. Yeah, so in terms of access, I do have a college education, but—I don't know how to put it. It doesn't make me middle-class, you know what I mean? Just because—. When you grow up poor, even if you have an education, you learn what you can expect, and what you expect is—stays with you your life. And people who can expect a lot continue to expect a lot. And people who expect a little continue to expect a little. So it's all based on expectations and it's a mess, especially when we proceed without having any real discussion about what that means. Enough for now? (laughs)

Riley Habyl [00:06:34] Sure. My next question was actually going to be about education, so—. What college—. What college was it that you went to?

Sally Tatnall [00:06:40] Alfred University, in Alfred, New York. And I was—. That's where I met my husband. He was the—. Alfred University is known for its ceramic engineer and ceramic art departments. It's really pretty well known a lot of places for that. You know I—(crosstalk)

Riley Habyl [00:07:07] Is that—. Yeah.

Sally Tatnall [00:07:09] I graduated from college, and got married, and started teaching school. Fifth grade (laughs).

Riley Habyl [00:07:21] Around what year was it that you got married, and what year was it that you started teaching?

Sally Tatnall [00:07:26] I graduated in 1960, and got married in 1960. Started teaching in 1960. It's interesting because we got married in August—toward the end of August, and I had to start teaching in September, so there wasn't much time. And at the time my husband was working at a brick-making factory in Darlington, Pennsylvania—very rural area outside of Pittsburgh. And so I—. I started teaching fifth grade, and the very first day—. It was funny, I remember this. The very first day, one of the kids asked me something personal. I don't even remember what the what the question was, but another kid in the class said, "She just got married last weekend!", and it was like—that was it, you know—nothing was secret in Darlington, Pennsylvania. Everybody knew everything. So that was—. I loved that class, that fifth grade age. They really don't know about boys and girls yet, you know? And they—. They're just inventive, and curious, and excited. Yeah, I liked it. Here's another little story about the olden days. The olden days were—. You know, I don't know. There are some ways in which we really have come ahead. It was during recess, and I was out there with the kids—and two of my students came running, "Mrs. Tatnall, Mrs. Tatnall, you gotta come, you gotta come,"—and I don't remember the guy's name—"so-and-so has Kenny!" So I followed the kids, and here's this big guy with a paddle ready to paddle this little kid. And I was—. You know, I wasn't as brave then as I am now, and I was shaking, but I said, "Stop! You do not beat my kids!"—and so he stopped, and I got Kenny away from that. And I think it was the start of my standing up for what I thought was right. I mean, I've done it in other ways, but that was that was one where I really just stood out and said, "Wait a minute, this is not going to happen."

Riley Habyl [00:10:21] Related to that—. Can you tell me a little bit about how you started to develop your political consciousness? I know that you spoke about raising your awareness of how class impacted your life—. How did you start developing your identity as far as—what you identified as, and the political causes that motivated you?

Sally Tatnall [00:10:44] Yes, it's very simple. It bec—. Early on in my life, I became aware of whether or not something was fair, and that has pushed me—I'm 85 now—that has pushed me for 85 years—"Is this fair?" And so it began with—well, with the school thing. With just, you know, saying what I thought. It became very, very present. We moved to Cleveland. My first baby was born in Pennsylvania—you know, in the hospital close to Darlington—and then we moved to Cleveland. And I, I got very involved in the Civil Rights movement which was happening in the sixties—and very, very aware of how race interferes in our—you know, in our culture. How unfair it is. You know, it really just started out being, "What's unfair?", and then being pretty—pretty verbal about that. Or, you know, there was another thing in—. Okay, now we're in Cleveland. There was this hippie coffeehouse type thing, and it was getting a lot of flak from the police. And so a bunch of us went to—. What do you call it? A zoning meeting to protest how this hippie coffeehouse was being treated. And there was also racial overtones, so I– (laughs) you know, I didn't know what I was doing, but—. So we get all these black and white mothers, and so we go and we traded babies. So all the white mothers had black babies, and all the black mothers had white babies, and we went in there and we protested. We said, "This is not fair. This is not okay. You've got to stop this harassment." So anyway, at that time I lived in East Cleveland and it was a very integrated city. So it wasn't difficult to, you know, have—have everybody be together. I wish we were now.

Riley Habyl [00:13:34] What year was it that you moved from Pennsylvania to East Cleveland?

Sally Tatnall [00:13:41] '70. 1970. Wait—. No, no, no, no—no. From Pennsylvania to East Cleveland—. Well, it must have been '60-something, because Amy [Tatnall, Shirley's daughter] was born in East Cleveland and she was born in '63, so—. What did you ask me before when I said '70?

Riley Habyl [00:14:18] When—when it was that you moved from Pennsylvania to East Cleveland.

Sally Tatnall [00:14:23] Okay, that was wrong. It was around 1962, because I just had had a baby, and he was like five months old when we moved to Cleveland. So I don't know. You'll have to go back and correct that, but—. (laughs)

Riley Habyl [00:14:39] That's fine. How did you make the move from being aware of racial injustice to getting involved with activism? Like, you mentioned your activism with the school board—. How did you move from an awareness to doing something about it?

Sally Tatnall [00:15:01] Well, I've always done something about it. I—. I became more vocal in the Civil Rights movement. I think that's where I sort of got rid of some of my fear of. And I was very quiet until the sixties. You know, I'd say what I thought, but I wasn't—. I didn't say a lot. But the civil rights movement really opened my mouth to start talking about inequities and these horrible things that were wrong. And being active in the Civil Rights movement, so—. Do want me to go into to feminism now? Because it's a lot.

Riley Habyl [00:15:53] Whatever you'd like to talk about.

Sally Tatnall [00:15:54] Oh, okay, And so—. Oh, I know what happened. We were in East Cleveland with the three kids. Then we had this move to New Jersey and we were there for a few years—and we came back to Cleveland in 1970. That's where the 19[70]—when we moved into the Berkshire house. Yeah, that's what it was. So anyway, okay. Oh, no—. What was I saying? Oh, my move to feminism. Okay, so here—. Here I'm still, "This is not fair. This is not fair," with class and race being my focuses. And there's a lot of overlap in terms of working class and poor relating to black people. So I was able to see what was real for them because sometimes it was real for me too, you know, in terms of—what access did you have—you know, what—what resources did you have. That sort of thing. But anyway, so here I am in—. Now I'm in Cleveland Heights, and a friend of mine and I—. They were having this Women's Liberation Conference at Case Western Reserve University. And this was 19—. This is when I first was there, so it had to be 1970. Okay, so anyway—. So we decided to go. And not—. I didn't know about feminism. I didn't know anything. I did not know a thing. I didn't think I was oppressed, except in terms of class. you know, it's like, "I didn't know about that." I knew a lot about what wasn't fair, but—. (Sally's phone rings) Oops, that's my phone in the background.

Riley Habyl [00:18:14] No worries.

Sally Tatnall [00:18:17] So anyway—. We went to this conference and there was this workshop called Consciousness Raising. Well, neither one of us had ever heard of that, so we decided to go. Well, consciousness raising is an amazing tool. It really is. It educated so many women so fast. And the idea of consciousness raising was: so we'd pick a topic—let's take health care—and everybody at—. All the women in the group would talk about their experience of health care, and as we went around the room, you know, people would say, "Oh, I felt I felt like a kid. I don't think they listened to me. I felt like I didn't matter. They talk to me in ways I wasn't quite sure of." You know, all that kind of stuff. And being along with the doctor—some women reported being afraid with male doctors. And as we all talked, things that we previously had thought only belonged to us individually—all of a sudden it was like, wait a minute, there's a pattern here. There's a big pattern here. This is how doctors are trained to treat women. This is how their staff is trained to treat women. So we began to really understand sexism. And for me, it was like, okay, now—. Now we're in my movement. You know, just everything became so clear of the immense structures in American culture that hone people to be who they're supposed to be. And I'll tell you—it's so well done that we don't escape. We might get a few things—. You know, we might understand a few things—but we are products of the patriarchy and of hierarchy, and that—. I'm writing a book right now. Title of it is Why Women Don't Get Along, and it has a lot to do with how we participate in hierarchy with each other. And it's a mess. I'll tell you, it's a mess. Hopefully, well I—. I don't have to talk about that right now. Okay, go ahead. (laughs) you know—. (crosstalk)

Riley Habyl [00:21:08] You could talk about it— (crosstalk, unintelligible)

Sally Tatnall [00:21:09] (laughs) No, that's not where—. That's the timeline I'm in. I'm in just starting being aware of radical feminism. And for a year, I wrote—. I read every single thing I could get ahold of, all those old authors, you know. T. Grace Atkinson. Well, Robin Morgan is still doing some—. There were—. There were so many. I'm having a problem with a cough, so just ignore it. I'm blocking on a lot of names, but what was coming out was pure gold. It really was. Have you done any, you know, reading the old feminist stuff? Do you do you write any feminist stuff?

Riley Habyl [00:22:01] I do. Not a ton—. Not a ton of old stuff, but there's a decent amount that I've read. Still a lot to read, absolutely (laughs).

Sally Tatnall [00:22:11] (laughs) Well, it was just—. It was like all of a sudden, I was a person. You know? And I could—. I could be who I wanted to be. Now, it was going to be hard, but at least I could stand up for myself, and I had the backing of women around me. You know, when women organize we are mighty. So much prevents us from organizing together, and that's really a shame. But anyway, so I just—. You know, I read everything. My husband read everything, he—. In fact, it's interesting because he was the first person to say, "You know what? I think you're"—. What were they calling it back then? Something-lesbian, meaning you—women were important to you. There's a phrase—.

Riley Habyl [00:23:16] Um—.

Sally Tatnall [00:23:16] Go ahead. Do you know?

Riley Habyl [00:23:20] Oh, I'm sorry—. Would it be "political lesbian"?

Sally Tatnall [00:23:23] Yeah—.

Riley Habyl [00:23:23] Is that the term?

Sally Tatnall [00:23:23] Thank you, thank you (laughs). He said to me, "I think you're a political lesbian." And I—. You know, it just rolled off my back. Sure, I am, you know? So I began to be very active. I joined—. I—. Oh, before that, I had been part—. A very good friend of mine had started the Cleveland Free Clinic, and so I—. I would go—. I was one of the intake people, you know, and abortion counseling was being done there. And here's an example of, like, my activism. So I was—. I was being an intake worker, and I'd look around. Now, the Cleveland Free Clinic—in its beginning days—was very hippie, very male. Very male. And I started looking around and thinking, "I don't want women who want abortion counseling to come here. This is horrible." And so what we did was we (unintelligible)—. We got—. We used my telephone number, my house telephone number for women to call and make appointments for abortion counseling. And we had—. There were a group of, I think eight of us—eight feminist women at that time, not lesbians—who decided that we were going to set up this counseling service—Cleveland's Women's Counseling—and so we did. And part of Cleveland Women's Counseling was we were referring women to New York City and Buffalo, New York for abortions. And so we decided—. Four of us made a trip to New York and we had this interview—like this packet, five pages of, you know, 11-by-8" questions that we would ask at each of these clinics. So we went. We did all that research, and then we came home and we published—you know, we put it all together. And at that time, there was—. The Free Clinic was doing it, the Cleveland Women's Counseling was doing it, Planned Parenthood was doing it, and Clergy Consultation was doing it, and so we got all—. We got all the information, all the outlets, you know, or the organizations that were doing abortion counseling and referral. Part of that we also put together a conference that we were going to have, and it was going to include all of the agencies in Cleveland. You know, the health agencies, the—. Not only physical health, but mental health agencies, the public health, the—. Oh, um-um-um, the Salvation Army, the—I don't know, a whole bunch—and all in the, you know, United Way or whatever that is. We were going to have this conference. Well—. It got stopped by the Catholic Church. For what—however it happened, the Catholic Church stepped in and said they weren't going to—. However it happened, it was kaput. So, as part of that though, there had—. There was this man who came from Boston, where there was an abortion clinic, and he got together with one of the women in Cleveland Women's Counseling and started talking with her about having an abortion clinic in Cleveland. Now, this is pre-Roe v. Wade, but right on the cusp, you know? It was like it was going to happen, and what did we want to do about it? So my—. My first actual involvement in really getting something like getting an institution going was around abortion. And so we started—. I was one of the founders of Preterm, which is still going on. We—. I don't know, we just—. It was very important, and we did a lot in terms of, not only abortion counseling but birth control and—. I don't know, we just did a lot. Another thing that I got involved in with my dear friend, Nikki Stern was—. I don't know if you've heard of the Dinner Party. I—.

Riley Habyl [00:28:48] (Riley nods)

Sally Tatnall [00:28:49] Okay, you do know that. Okay—. We heard about it early on, and some of the—. At this point—. Oh, at this point I was a lesbian now. You know, I met this woman—. I didn't know, and—. I don't want to deal a lot—put a lot of attention on having a female partner because that is such a small part for me. You know, it's still, "What is fair?" I call myself a radical feminist lesbian, and I—. Well, anyway, so—. So anyway, we and—. And another woman and myself had opened a women's bar [the Three of Cups] on Buckeye Road [12418 Buckeye Rd.], and so there was there were a lot of things going on at the time. And a very good friend of mine sort of fronted the—. A friend of a friend bought the building so that we could have the bar and nobody would throw us out. So we had this bar—women's bar. And here's one of the things—. And we had a hospitality committee at the women's bar [the Three of Cups] so that when new women came in, they get introduced. You know, I mean, we were doing it the way women do stuff, you know, which is very different. I'm sorry, it's just different. So when we heard about the Dinner Party, several women from Cle—lesbians from Cleveland—went to California to work on it. And so when it got done, there was a film that was made about the making of the [Judy Chicago's] Dinner Party. And so Nikki [Stern] and I traveled around. We had this little traveling show, and we'd show this film and we'd just talk, you know. And so when it came time for the Dinner Party to start traveling, we said, "Well, of course it has to come to Cleveland." And by this time, Nikki [Stern] had really sort of gotten to know Judy Chicago, and so that was that was the first really big thing that I got involved in that was—that required a lot more than just, you know, working in Cleveland. And a group in Akron partnered with us, so we brought the Dinner Party to Cleveland. It was wonderful. It was amazing. It was here for three months. Thousands of people saw it. I just—. It was mind-blowing to me. The first time I saw the Dinner party, though—. I have to backtrack a minute. I was—. I was taking a vacation. I used to do a lot of camping—driving and camping—and so I was taking a road trip vacation going cross-country, and I heard that the Dinner Party had opened in Houston. In Houston, Texas. And so my goal was to get to Houston, to start off my plan. And I got there and it was closed. The museum, or whatever the building was—was closed. I was heartbroken. I didn't know what I was going to do. Well, there was this old guy—it turned out he was a caretaker—and he let me in. And so, in the silence and sort of darkened area—I got to see the dinner party. I—. I can't. To this day, I don't think I've had the feeling that I had seeing that. I mean, it—. It just culminated everything that women are, that women can do, you know? I don't know, I—. It was amazing, and I was so grateful to him that I got to see it. So anyway—. So we got the Dinner Party going. We raised a lot of money. I remember saying, "Well, no more bake sales for me. Now we got we got bigger—. We got bigger issues." And so out of the funds that we raised, we started the Women's Foundation—the Cleveland Women's Foundation—and that went on for several years. Several years, actually. Meanwhile—. And this—. These were not really specifically lesbian oriented things, but tons of lesbians were involved. Meanwhile, on the lesbian front, I—. I was involved with a woman, and my husband said, "You need to leave, I can't—. I am not going to deal with this anymore." And he was right. I mean, when I think back, I don't know if I'd have put up with it for even a minute. But anyway, I—. But I—. And I left the kids with him. You know, I did—. I wasn't really a teacher. I'd only taught couple of years in Pennsylvania, and so I didn't—. I wasn't certified, or whatever you have to be. So my first job was teaching driving (laughs). What—. What a hoot (laughs). In all of my "Ha-ha-ha," I walk in and I'd say, "I'm only going to teach women." Well, they were thrilled, because there's a whole population of women whose husbands have died—who've never learned to drive—that want to learn to drive. So I was teaching these women, so I had a captive audience. I've since—. I've since met women that I taught to drive, you know, and a couple of them have said, how—. How you know, hearing about me and Talking (unintelligible) really changed their lives. But anyway—. Well, anyway, it was just a hoot, that's all. I remember one woman who—. Am I—. Is this kind of stuff you want?

Riley Habyl [00:36:05] Yeah—. Mhm.

Sally Tatnall [00:36:06] Oh (laughs). These little stories. Women who—. You know, I go to these like, little areas, you know, and just stay in the neighborhood, you know, drive, drive, drive around. I always started in a supermarket parking lot, or one of the big parking lots and—. This one woman was driving and she goes up on the lawn and, as a matter of fact, puts her foot on the accelerator. Well, I'm sitting here with my—. The drive—. The driving instructor has a break, that's all we have. So I have my foot on the brake as hard as I can hold it, and saying to her, "Take your foot off the accelerator! Off the accelerator!", so she was—. She was in another space, she was so scared. But anyway, there were there were tons of stories like that. We—. In—. I don't remember the exact day, it was in the seventies—. We started the Womyn's Variety Show. Went on for 45 years. I mean, it was fabulous, fabulous, fabulous. We—. It was a Variety Show, you know, not a talent thing. So we did all kinds of takeoffs and TV programs, spoofs, skits—. I mean, it was fabulous. And at its—. At its high point, there were over a thousand women who came to the [Womyn's] Variety Show. So, you know, women, women—. It's different today. I don't know what the women do today. I'd love to interview you, actually, because there doesn't seem to be an organizing push for what women need. And I don't know, it's—. It's so scattered around and—. Anyway, okay. Well, anyway. So we started the [Womyn's] Variety Show. I was very big on collectives, and so I really wanted to live collectively. I think it's the only way for women. You know, it's economically sound, you don't have to—. You know, I've heard people say, "Well, then you all think alike." No, we don't. But we all share the dishes, so you don't have to do them every day. I mean, it just makes so much sense. And there are so many old women—old lesbians today—living all alone. It just—. Women would never have devised the nuclear family ever—ever, ever, ever, ever. Would never have done it. There's lots of other things I think about what women would or would not have done. But what else? We had so much going on. Well, do you have another question that'll maybe start me thinking about it?

Riley Habyl [00:39:28] Sure. If you don't mind—. If we could circle back to how you found out about—. And I know that you mentioned that lesbianism wasn't something that you were aware of when you were growing up.

Sally Tatnall [00:39:40] Yeah.

Riley Habyl [00:39:41] Was that something that you found out about after you became involved with feminism living in Cleveland?

Sally Tatnall [00:39:46] Yes. By that time, I s—. There was sort of—. Back in my brain, there was a word, lesbian, but I still didn't really know. In fact, today I'm very much in awe of the women who are my age who knew, and who acted on it, and what they had to go through, you know. So, yeah. We didn't—. You know, sex was forbidden when I was growing up. Sex meant you could get pregnant, and so you were terrified. So it wasn't about what it is today. And partly, I think that was better, but partly no. I'd rather have us know what's happening today. I continue to be a very strong advocate on reproductive justice. Very strong. And I use that word—which was really coined by black feminists—because it does require more than just an abortion or a birth control or having a baby. It requires a lot more, and I think that they have expanded the definition of reproduction. You know, rightfully so. I have a whole list of organizations that I could send you that we started—. Or when I say we, I'm talking about sort of a close-knit group in Cleveland—but there were lots of other women who were involved, you know what I mean? Of course, the Rape Crisis Center, the battered women's shelters, abortion, divorce equity. Those are like mainstream organizations. Then we had a women's bookstore, we had a women's gym, we had a women's building. Oh, there were five of us who put on a conference in the early eighties on radical thought for women. Over 300 women came to that, and I mean, it was amazing. Some of the real radical thinkers—. It was fabulous, it was just fabulous. Oh, okay. What else? I've always—. I've always tried to be—. Always tried to take my belief system into whatever I did. So it was easy to work in an abortion clinic. And after I left the abortion clinic, a very, very—another very good friend of mine—. You know, that was another thing. Friends got you places friends. You know, we—. We paid attention, and we helped each other out. You know, and somebody I wouldn't know would come up and say, "Hey, here, I want you to know this"—and it would be important. You know, it just—. It was different, and I—. I miss those days, and I'm a little sad for today because things seem so separate, and—. Whatever. Anyway. Now, what was I going to say? We did a lot of stuff. I can send you a list of the different organizations. Oh, I know what—. I was talking about work life. So a friend of mine was a doctor—. Oh, here's another little story. She wanted to apply—. She already had a college education, and I think her master's degree in something, and—public health, maybe—and she wanted to be a doctor, so she applied to Case Western Reserve. And she was refused because she was too old. She was 27. And in those days, apparently 27 was too old. So we mobilized. We sent a letter to Case Western Reserve with 40 women signing it, and they turned it around and accepted her and said "If 40 women can agree, we better listen." I mean, that's what we heard back. So anyway, she had—. She had finished her—. She was a doctor—. She became a doctor—a medical doctor, family practice—and started to work at a center on the near West Side. And so she'd been at—. And I wanted to go as a patient, but she said no, they—. It was territory bound, you know, it was just for a certain territory on the West side, which was an underserved population. So, okay, so I can't go. So—. I don't know, years—. Some years—not a lot, but maybe five years—I leave after her. You know, being—. I was at Preterm for ten years. So after that, I left and I was looking, but I wasn't looking. I knew I had to get a job, but I didn't know what. So because here I am still, you know, I'm a college graduate. That's it. I don't have any skills in terms of how people look at wanting people to work. Except for all I did at Preterm—which was a lot. But anyway, so Barbara [Toeppen]—. Her name is Barbara [Toeppen]. Barbara said, "Well, why don't you come and work for me? We need somebody to do billing." And so I said, "Ah, right up my alley." So I go to—. Neighborhood Family practice is the name of the of the thing, and so I go there and they needed something—someone for billing was right. Every time I'd open up a new drawer there'd be tons of bills to be sent, and so I got that all cleared up then. And, actually—. So here's what I want to say about my politics directing my work life. I found out about something that the federal government has called the federally qualified health centers. And so I made an application, because what happens with the federally qualified health centers—. You make out a report that's based on the cost of service to the uninsured, or to Medicaid, and so they pay you that rate, which is well above what Medicaid pays, you know, if you're just billing straight Medicaid. So I made an application, and at the time they weren't making new federally qualified health centers, but they said we could be a lookalike. Which always tickled me because I was like, "Oh, there you go, Sally, making waves. They can't take ya so they'll make you a lookalike." Because it was an underserved area. It was a lot of poverty and, you know—and it wasn't fair. That's all I knew. It wasn't fair, and we need to figure this out. And Medicaid wasn't being fair, you know, they were paying pennies on the dollar. So anyway, we became a lookalike—and then within a couple of years we became a full-fledged federally qualified health center. Now there—. I believe there are five Neighborhood Family Practice locations on the West Side. It's always been a wonderful organization. Barbara Toeppen was the first medical director, and then Ann Reichsman took over when she left—and we've always had excellent doctors. I mean, it—it's just it's been a great place to get medical care. So then I retired

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