In terms of formal education, Gloria did not have anything beyond the normal grade twelve, senior matriculation, and a year of Bible school at Baptist Leadership Training School. Her father had, apparently, offered to pay for university education, but Gloria did not, at the time, consider that teaching or nursing were careers that she wanted to follow. Her daughters and I both agree on the nursing, but I strongly suspect that the education system lost out when Gloria decided against it.
Gloria was rather eager to leave her father's household, and control. Her ambition was only, ever, to be a wife and mother. I can't speak for her first husband, but I found her to be an absolutely wonderful wife. She was a great mother, as well. I once found, and immediately bought, a plaque with the slogan "Great women raise great women who raise great women." I know that Sulla, Gloria's mother, was an absolutely terrific person. Gloria raised two very capable, confident, hard-working girls, who were no slouches either as businesswomen, or as mothers, themselves.
But many people looked down on Gloria as a "mere secretary." As I have noted elsewhere, Gloria was no mere secretary: she was always an underpaid manager. She was able to learn an extraordinary amount about management, and understood it better than many MBAs that I have known. I was the teacher, but Gloria had insights into children and learning that I have never seen equalled in any of my educational colleagues. She was enthralled and delighted by etymology, and delighted in the complexity and expanse of the English language. She was the best copy editor I have ever come across, and every time I see a careless mistake in publicity or official signage materials, I think of her. (She was also a master of the six higher levels of editting.) She was always curious, and learned an awful lot, in a great many areas, over the course of her career as a "mere secretary," in many different enterprises.
But, because many people saw her as a "mere secretary," she was rather sensitive, by the time I came along, about her lack of formal education. On one occasion, I had made a comment about one office in the company I was working with, at the time, and the fact that everybody in that office had English degrees. I meant the comment to point out the relative lack of value of a degree in English. Gloria didn't take it that way. Gloria took it as a remark on her lack of education. On that occasion, as we discussed it, Gloria realized that her reaction was based on other people's comments about her lack of education, over the years, and not on my statement.
I have always taught, even before I was a teacher. I love teaching, and I love learning, and I feel that, having been granted the privilege of knowledge, it is my responsibility to pass that information along to those who may need it, and have not had the same opportunities that I have. I very strongly agree with Isaac Asimov's statement that "Knowledge is not only power, it is happiness; therefore, being taught is the intellectual analog of being loved." However, on another occasion, Gloria reacted very strongly when she made a comment about some new fact that she had learned, and I, trying to express excitement about her discovery, also augmented it, starting with a phrase that I very often used, "and another thing." That set Gloria off again. She was very upset. Apparently, what I saw as celebrating her discovery, and augmenting it with something that I knew, she saw as denigrating her discovery, and topping it with my superior knowledge. That was not my intent at all, but I could see, when she brought up the point, that I was careless with this statement. I tried, subsequently, to be more effusive in my celebration of her new discoveries, and, if I was going to augment them, to do it more tentatively.
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