Breaking Through the Glass Ceiling, Traveling the World, and Other Adventures

BREAKING THROUGH THE GLASS CEILING,

TRAVELING THE WORLD,

AND OTHER ADVENTURES

by Bonny Robinson Cook

SMASHWORDS EDITION

PUBLISHED BY:

Bonny Robinson Cook on Smashwords

Copyright © 2016 by Bonny Robinson Cook

Cover by Janelle Carbajal

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

DEDICATION

To my mother, Ellen Robinson Robinson, my hero, who struggled to raise her children, often under dire circumstances, but never complained, and who became an enthusiastic traveler and explorer.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

FOREWORD

CHAPTER 1 LESSONS AND PEAK EXPERIENCES

CHAPTER 2 EARLY YEARS

CHAPTER 3 HI-FOLKS GUILD AND KATIE HEPBURN

CHAPTER 4 COLLEGE

CHAPTER 5 THE OTHER SIDE OF THE MOUNTAINS

CHAPTER 6 SANTA BARBARA

CHAPTER 7 FIRST YEAR TEACHING

CHAPTER 8 BUYING A HUSBAND

CHAPTER 9 MY TEACHING CAREER ENDS

CHAPTER 10 BECOMING A PROGRAMMER

CHAPTER 11 OUR SON IS BORN

CHAPTER 12 AN EARTHQUAKE, A DREAM HOUSE, AND LAYOFFS

CHAPTER 13 GOING TO WORK FOR XEROX

CHAPTER 14 A FREE-RANGE KID

CHAPTER 15 MANAGEMENT STYLE

CHAPTER 16 SPECIAL NEEDS

CHAPTER 17 XEROX COMPUTER SERVICES—MORE STORIES

CHAPTER 18 MOVING TO BIG XEROX

CHAPTER 19 TRIPS TO JAPAN

CHAPTER 20 ADDING COLOR TO PRODUCTION PRINTERS

CHAPTER 21 TEST CENTER AND A 50 MILLION DOLLAR BUDGET

CHAPTER 22 SECRET MEETINGS

CHAPTER 23 WINNING THE XEROX PRESIDENT’S AWARD

CHAPTER 24 INTERVIEW FOR VICE PRESIDENT OF INFORMATION MANAGEMENT

CHAPTER 25 FIRST STAFF MEETING AS VICE PRESIDENT

CHAPTER 26 ROCKING THE BOAT

CHAPTER 27 STICKY NOTES

CHAPTER 28 TRIPS TO BUDAPEST

CHAPTER 29 VICE PRESIDENT OF CUSTOMER SUPPORT SERVICES

CHAPTER 30 ANNIVERSARIES

CHAPTER 31 PRESENTATION IN WARSAW

CHAPTER 32 Y2K—THE YEAR 2000 PROBLEM

CHAPTER 33 AROUND THE WORLD

CHAPTER 34 RETIREMENT FROM XEROX

CHAPTER 35 EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITIES

CHAPTER 36 WORKING IN TEAMS

CHAPTER 37 WOMEN’S ADVISORY COUNCIL

CHAPTER 38 REMARKABLE WOMEN

CHAPTER 39 CARING FOR MOTHER

CHAPTER 40 TRAVELS IN THE US AND CANADA

CHAPTER 41 PRIMARILY GREECE

CHAPTER 42 UNITED KINGDOM

CHAPTER 43 OTHER PRE-RETIREMENT TRIPS

CHAPTER 44 POST-RETIREMENT TRAVEL

CHAPTER 45 GENEALOGY, DNA, AND BRITISH COUSINS

AFTERWORD

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

FOREWORD

I’ve been married to Bonny for over fifty years. We have lived exciting lives together that neither of us had envisioned. I’ve been bugging her to write this book ever since she retired from Xerox in 2003, because I feel her story is not only interesting but instructive.

When I first met Bonny in 1964 she was a teacher. I knew she was bright and ambitious, but I didn’t recognize her full potential, and of course I didn’t know she would one day become a vice president at Xerox.

She told me how she had started the Hi-Folks Guild in her hometown of Old Saybrook, Connecticut and that one of her students called her Miss Tiger. Those were clues to what she would do in the future, but I was paying more attention to the present because I was head over heels in love with her.

The Hi-Folks Guild made Bonny an activist at an early age. She started it when she was in high school to counter adults who were bad-mouthing young people, and the resulting publicity got her and several of her friends a meeting with Katherine Hepburn, Old Saybrook’s most prominent citizen.

Two years after we were married she stopped teaching, partly because of bad principals and partly because she had suffered a back injury. I knew she could find another job if she wanted to, but I was surprised when she said she wanted to become a programmer. I was working at IBM in a technical position, and had done programming, system design, and other kinds of customer support, so I gave her a programming manual to read.

Bonny got a job as a programmer with no experience and no formal training, another clue to what she was capable of. She survived being fired and/or laid off from two companies, and went to work for Xerox where she stayed for thirty years and became a vice president, although she almost didn’t last the first week.

Her rise in the ranks at Xerox is a remarkable story, but it’s more than that. It happened against the background of the women’s movement, as told by Gail Collins in the book, When Everything Changed. Bonny and other women shattered the glass ceiling and paved the path for young women of the future.

Starting with our first date, Bonny and I have traveled extensively, first within North America, and then internationally. She logged well over a million air miles flying for business. The experiences she had in her travels and the insights into other cultures add another layer of interest and understanding of how human beings behave.

It’s time to let you read about Bonny’s adventure in her own words. As they say, the rest is herstory.

—Alan Cook

February 2016

CHAPTER 1 LESSONS AND PEAK EXPERIENCES

Forget about gender, race, or family background barriers. Continually work on building your own self-esteem. Make an effort to become a more interesting person. Have fun in your work and personal life. Gain business experience in a broad set of areas; don’t just stay in one, comfortable environment. Alternate between leadership positions and follower positions. Keep your eyes and ears open and look for new ideas and opportunities.

When I was a vice president at Xerox I gave this advice to the Women’s Information Network, which included all the women who worked at Xerox throughout the world, and it was published in their newsletter.

In one of the mystery novels written by my husband, Alan (Catch a Falling Knife) the lead character who is a senior citizen, says, When do we get old enough so that we’ve learned all the lessons? Unfortunately, the answer appears to be never, but I’ve certainly learned a lot in my life, and writing this book has brought some of these lessons to mind.

Interwoven with the lessons have been many of what psychologist Wayne Dyer calls peak experiences, and I’ve included them too. After all, don’t we live for peak experiences?

An early lesson I learned was that if you want something done you probably have to do it yourself. That’s why I started the Hi-Folks Guild in my hometown of Old Saybrook, Connecticut. It gave me experience in leading a group of people and it led to a peak experience—spending an afternoon in the home of Katherine Hepburn.

When I was a teacher I learned that your principals won’t necessarily support you. That was one of the reasons I quit teaching, but it also helped prepare me for being a manager. As a manager, I always tried to support my people.

A definite peak experience was meeting Alan. On our first date we drove over a hundred miles to the San Diego Zoo, the prelude to many wonderful trips all over the world. Having our son, Andy, was a peak experience, but we had many anxious moments until he became healthy.

After I quit teaching I became a programmer with no formal education in computers and no experience in programming or business. If there’s a lesson here, it’s to keep your options open when you’re young, and don’t shut yourself off from possible opportunities.

During my first week working at Xerox I almost got fired. If I had been fired I probably wouldn’t have become a vice president, and certainly not at Xerox. I would never have had responsibility for a fifty-million dollar budget. I hate to think what the lesson is here, but it’s probably something about what part fate plays in our lives.

I took a class introducing me to the Xerox way of doing things. The instructor invited some members to his home to go skinny-dipping in his hot tub. I was glad I wasn’t invited. Not everybody at Xerox was like that, but when I was still new at the company I was kissed by a vice president. I punched him in the nose, which, as it turned out, was probably the right thing to do. He never tried anything again.

I traveled all over the world for business and had many interesting experiences, including eating a twenty-nine course meal in Japan, practicing for a presentation in a simulated coal mine, and being protected by the mob.

When I won the Xerox President’s Award the ceremony started out badly for me because members of the Xerox Board of Directors, who apparently weren’t yet used to female high achievers, congratulated Alan instead of me, but it turned into a peak experience with the help of the people who had assisted in getting me there.

And when I attended my first staff meeting as a vice president of Xerox, the first question somebody asked me was, Bonny, what are you doing here? It took time and a lot of hard work before I was fully accepted by my peers, but I always received support from my friends, and that helped keep me going.

In my career I met a lot of remarkable women, such as Sally Ride, the astronaut.

As a world traveler I’ve accomplished three of my major goals: sitting on the steps of the Parthenon, kissing on the Great Wall of China, and sitting in an ancient ruin under a full moon.

Looking back, I wouldn’t have missed these experiences for anything.

CHAPTER 2 EARLY YEARS

World War II

Although I wasn’t born on Easter (I was born Tuesday, March 12, 1940), for years my brother Frank thought the Easter bunny had brought me and was confused about when my birthday really was. Frank was born in 1936 and my other brother, John, Junior in 1934.

After World War II started, my mother, Ellen Robinson, was pushing me in a baby buggy when a low-flying blimp cruised over our heads, dragging the ropes that were used to moor it. She could have reached out and grabbed one of the ropes. The pilot would fly over Long Island Sound looking for German submarines.

My parents were working at separate defense plants not far from our house in Old Saybrook, Connecticut, which was close to the beach. I believe my father, John Robinson, Senior, had at least a temporary deferment from the draft because of his job. However, one day in October 1943 Ellen was brought home from work by her car pool driver and found a note from John. It read something like this: I’ve gone off to join the navy. The car’s at the train station. The keys are under the front mat.

There was no information about where he was headed or where he would be stationed. Ellen was beside herself and didn’t know what to do. She found someone to drive her to the railroad station to retrieve the car, and then called her parents, Frank and Lillian Robinson, who lived in Wallingford, Connecticut. Since both my parents had the surname Robinson, all of our close relatives were named Robinson. It wasn’t until many years later when I started doing family research using DNA that I proved my parents weren’t related.

Ellen received a postcard from John, Sr. within a few days saying he was at Camp Peary, Virginia. He had joined the Seabees. However, as she soon found out, he had marked single on his enlistment form, meaning that she wasn’t receiving the monetary allowance she was entitled to, part of which should have come out of his pay.

We were renting our house at the time for forty dollars a month. As soon as the company that owned the house found out my father was gone, the principals decided my mother wouldn’t be able to afford the rent, and they tried to force us out. Representatives of the company showed us cheaper locations they had for rent, in Deep River and other communities near Old Saybrook.

One was an apartment that had been constructed within a barn. It was shabby and dingy with not much light, but with stables and barn smells. When I saw it I burst into tears. Grandfather Frank was looking at places with us, and he said there was no way we were going to live in a barn.

My grandmother, Lillian, handled the finances for their family. She met with her banker and somehow figured out how she and my grandfather could afford to buy the house for about eleven thousand dollars. In addition, they found out that families of men in the military couldn’t be kicked out of a rental property while the husband was on active duty.

Our house was a prefabricated model, manufactured by American Motohome, and sold by Sears for a reasonable price. The buyer furnished the land and a concrete foundation. Ours had been a demonstration model. Only a few were ever sold, including another one in Old Saybrook. The house was well built, but it couldn’t be altered because of the metal used in the construction. It was also small—around 1,000 square feet. The garage was converted into a bedroom for John, Jr. and Frank.

Ellen may have paid my grandparents some monthly rent during the war, but probably not as much as my parents had been paying. My grandparents didn’t buy a house for themselves until 1949. Immediately after my father died in 1967, Grandfather Frank executed a Quit Claim Deed on our house, giving it to my mother for a dollar.

Within a short time after my father enlisted, I was sent to Wallingford to live with my grandparents. My brothers were both going to school, and stayed in Old Saybrook. Grandfather Frank and Grandmother Lillian were living in a two-bedroom apartment. Lillian’s sister, Minnie Drucquer, lived with them. I slept in a crib that had been my grandfather’s, in my grandparents’ bedroom.

I have happy memories of living with my grandparents. My grandmother would wash my hair in the sink, and then we would walk to the park across the street where she would brush it dry in the sunlight.

My first Christmas with them was wonderful. I remember walking into the living room where the Christmas tree was located. A couch had been set in front of the tree, facing me. It was covered with dolls. Friends of my grandparents had made the dolls out of socks. A bride doll, that had been in the family for years, was sitting in a position of honor, and was wearing a new dress my grandmother had made.

Grandfather Frank was a dye cutter with International Silver. He started as an apprentice after he finished eighth grade, and worked there for fifty-nine