Kathleen F. Kane

Yes!

After high school I didn't go to college right away. My folks didn't have the money (I have seven younger siblings), and the Revolution was calling me! I got work as a typesetter, and threw myself into women's liberation activism, including being a founding partner of a feminist bookstore in Clayton in 1976.

I started college at UMSL in 1979, and I liked it so well that I never wanted to leave. I majored in speech communication with minors in assorted fields like English and history. Then I did a year in the graduate program there in history. I won a fellowship to go to the School of Speech at Northwestern in the Radio/TV/Film department, so in 1984 I moved to Chicago and got my M.A. and Ph.D. I taught at DePaul U for ten years, then finished up my teaching career at Northeastern Illinois University, which no one has ever heard of, on the north side of the city. I loved teaching but I was not real good at academic politics.

I met my partner Fran Parr in St. Louis, and we were together for 32 years until she died in 2017. That was a a really hellish time for me. Fortunately I have a lot of good friends and family and neighbors and colleagues. A couple years later I met another widow, Mary Margaret Smith, and we got married last summer. Quarantine honeymoon ensues.
I now live in St. Paul MN, and Steve Lehman lives here too and is friends with my spouse’s friends!

I retired last September, and I have been taking French classes at the Alliance Française just for the hell of it.

Working on The Echo newspaper with Linda Webb and Ed Rucker. It was a weird year. Our faculty adviser was Greta Owens. Community Campus was cool, a kind of intellectual playground. Our underground paper The News!

I can also say that I got a really good education, especially in French. All those plays we saw at the Loretta-Hilton. Mme Eggers, Monsieur Loveless! We read things in French that most people didn’t read until college—in English.

I remember high school as a busy, free time with lots of friends and interesting times. And maybe kind of rebellious.