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of any kind.
    In high school, one of my smartest girlfriends dropped out of the accelerated courses because her boyfriend wasn’t in them. Another didn’t want to have her grades posted because she knew she would get higher marks than the boy she was dating. These girls had picked up the subtle and not-so-subtle cultural signals urging them to conform to sexist stereotypes, to diminish their own accomplishments in order not to outperform the boys around them. I was interested in boys in high school, but I never dated anyone seriously. I simply could not imagine giving up a college education or a career to get married, as some of my girlfriends were planning to do.
    I was interested in politics from an early age, and I loved to hone my debating skills with my friends. I would press poor Ricky Ricketts into daily debates about world peace, baseball scores, whatever topic came to mind. I successfully ran for student council and junior class Vice President. I was also an active Young Republican and, later, a Goldwater girl, right down to my cowgirl outfit and straw cowboy hat emblazoned with the slogan “AuH,O.”
    My ninth-grade history teacher, Paul Carlson, was, and still is, a dedicated educator and a very conservative Republican. Mr. Carlson encouraged me to read Senator Barry Goldwater’s recently published book, The Conscience of a Conservative. That inspired me to write my term paper on the American conservative movement, which I dedicated “To my parents, who have always taught me to be an individual.” I liked Senator Goldwater because he was a rugged individualist who swam against the political tide. Years later, I admired his outspoken support of individual rights, which he considered consistent with his old-fashioned conservative principles: “Don’t raise hell about the gays, the blacks and the Mexicans. Free people have a right to do as they damn please.” When Goldwater learned I had supported him in 1964, he sent the White House a case of barbecue fixings and hot sauces and invited me to come see him. I went to his home in Phoenix in 1996 and spent a wonderful hour talking to him and his dynamic wife, Susan.
    Mr. Carlson also adored General Douglas MacArthur, so we listened to tapes of his farewell address to Congress over and over again. At the conclusion of one such session, Mr. Carlson passionately ex claimed, “And remember, above all else, ‘Better dead than red!’ “ Ricky Ricketts, sitting in front of me, started laughing, and I caught the contagion.
    Mr. Carlson sternly asked, “What do you think is so funny?” And Ricky replied, “Gee, Mr. Carlson, I’m only fourteen years old, and I’d rather be alive than anything.”
    My active involvement in the First United Methodist Church of Park Ridge opened my eyes and heart to the needs of others and helped instill a sense of social responsibility rooted in my faith. My father’s parents claimed they became Methodists because their great-grandparents were converted in the small coal-mining villages around Newcastle in the north of England and in South Wales by John Wesley, who founded the Methodist Church in the eighteenth century. Wesley taught that God’s love is expressed through good works, which he explained with a simple rule: “Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can.” There will always be worthy debates about whose definition of “good” one follows, but as a young girl, I took Wesley’s admonition to heart. My father prayed by his bed every night, and prayer became a source of solace and guidance for me even as a child.
    I spent a lot of time at our church, where I was confirmed in the sixth grade along with some of my lifelong buddies, like Ricky Ricketts and Sherry Heiden, who attended church with me all the way through high school. My mother taught Sunday school, largely, she says, to