The Woman who Broke the Pattern

“I just fell in love with being overseas.”

            I met with Vera on a cool spring day in April at her beautiful house overlooking Cobbett’s Pond. She had contacted me a few weeks before saying that she was interested in being interviewed. “For 36 years I worked for the U.S. Dept. of State, Foreign Service overseas, working or travelling in 70 countries,” she said in her email. Actually, I had met Vera about three years before since she is the Great Aunt of one of my friends. As a young girl, I had no idea that the woman before me was anything more than a friend’s Great Aunt; I didn’t know that Vera had led such as incredible life. A message to you, reader: if you cross paths with older people, ask them questions about what they did in their lifetime. You never know what you will discover. If only I knew at the time what stories Vera had in store for me….

            I began the interview by asking her where she grew up, what it was like, how school was… She managed to speed through 26 years of her life and skip ahead to the real, amazing parts of her story. For the sake of the story, I am obliged to touch upon those earlier years. She grew up in a town outside of Pittsburgh where everyone knew each other. All the fathers worked either in the railroad or the steel industry. All the kids in town would leave the house at 9 am, come in for lunch and for dinner, and spend the rest of the day outside with the neighborhood kids. 

            “I graduated [high school] on a Friday, I had a job lined up for Monday.” Vera worked for a bank and then for a drug store, both times in an office. Her last job in Pittsburgh was in a small steel company that is no longer in business today. Vera’s real story begins in 1960 when she was 26 years old: her parents, both of whom were born in Italy, took Vera to visit their home country. After her first trip overseas, she found herself; in her an incredible, ardent desire to travel was embodied. “All I wanted was Europe,” she told me.

            The steel company she was working for had offices in Italy. She, with help from her father and his ability to write in Italian, wrote letters to the company. Looking back on it now, Vera had an incredible support system; if only her father had known the danger she would face, living on her own thousands of miles away in foreign countries, perhaps he would not have so readily helped her. She received some responses, but none positive. However, fate brought her to an ad in the newspaper; “In the ad section of our newspaper, the U.S. Department of State had an ad that they were interviewing… so on my lunch hour I went down and talked to a woman.” The woman told her that her chances were very slim of going to Europe, so Vera declined, not wanting to take the chance.

            The next year she saw that the position was open and, still looking for job opportunities overseas, she tried again. This time a man interviewed her and he said, depending on what was open, it was possible that she could get a position in Europe. The only job that was open was a code cryptologist; Vera had to learn how to read code and type 40 words per minute. With amazing determination, she used her lunch hour each day to practice and finally got up to 40 words per minute and took the test. It took her a year to finish all the paperwork and requirements, not even certain she would get the position. In June of 1962 everything was completed and by the end of the month she was in Washington DC for training. 

What Vera did as a government worker was unheard of for a woman. “It was still the pattern that you graduated high school, you got a job, you met somebody, you got married, you raised kids. And that was it.” As a twenty-six year-old woman in the 1960’s, marriage and children was what was expected of Vera.  There was so much more in store for her, though, and so much more to her story. Reader: in the next few weeks prepare to be amazed as we journey along the path explored by the woman who broke the pattern. Keep an eye out for my next article and the next chapter of Vera’s adventure.

            My name is Jillian DiPersio and I am a sophomore at Windham High School. After learning the stories of my own grandparents, I have been interviewing the elderly. Through my research and interviews I have been able to dig up some incredible bits of history from the lives of local residents, as well as learn about people who are the products of a different generation. If you or someone you know would like to share your stories, please contact me at jillian@dipersio.com.