Carolyn Dimmick Final PDF.indd - Washington Secretary of State

Hughes: Where had she gone to school?
Dimmick: The University of Washington. Well, she had gone to some other school first.
She had gone to Montana.
Hughes: And her degree was in general studies as a teacher?
Dimmick: I don’t think they even had a major at the time. She was a teacher. And she
wrote a thesis and got her degrees and all that. She was very young. She started at 15. She
said, “There’s nothing else to do.” So she studied. Well, I found other things to do.
Hughes: So she was just an extraordinarily smart lady?
Dimmick: Yes, she was.
Hughes: Apart from sort of critiquing her children’s proclivities, did she have some pet
peeves? Was she a stickler for great English and expected people to do their homework?
Dimmick: Oh, of course. But you know in those days we didn’t have a lot of homework. I
don’t remember a lot of homework, did you?
Hughes: No, and I grew up in the 1950s, and it seemed like it was a lot easier than what
I’ve seen lately in schools.
Dimmick: I think so. My grandkids now, my goodness, they are just working like mad.
Hughes: It’s interesting isn’t it? We talk about the good old days, walking to school in
the snow and all of this schoolwork drudgery, but I thought the rigor my children faced in
school in the 1990s was a lot more demanding than anything I had.
Dimmick: Certainly. And with the grandchildren it is even more.
Hughes: And all the hoops that you have to go through now to get into college.
So, your mother is a college-educated woman and a teacher in her teens?
Dimmick: Yes. And she became an author. She wrote a lot of stories.
Hughes: What kind of stories?
Dimmick: Well, she wrote real romance – true romance, those kinds of romance stories
and articles. And she never used a woman’s name. She used a man’s name because you
could never get anything published as a woman.
Hughes: What was the name she used?
Dimmick: Chadwick Holland.
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