In 1964, having graduated from Craiglockhart Teacher Training College – with distinction, I wrote to Stoneridge Academy of the Sacred Heart in Bethesda, Maryland asking if there was a possibility that they might find a use for me. I had no family connections and very little money. The Reverend Mother found me a bedroom, a place at the table and a beautiful winter coat donated by one of the sisters before she had entered the Noviciate. Then one summer afternoon I was called into Reverend Mother’s office and given the wonderful news that I was to be the Grade 2 teacher. It was several weeks before the start of the new school year. Occasionally parents would pop in and so I met a wonderful family who had three daughters and decided that a fourth would be a good idea.
The Crofter's Daughter
To this day, we are close.
One day during term time, Reverend Mother asked me to go down the driveway to the large limousine which was parked there, to introduce myself to the chauffeur and his passenger and to accompany the elderly lady back to the house. And that’s how I met Mrs Eleanor Roosevelt. We chatted. She told me of her wartime experience in Britain.
The children at the school came from mainly privileged backgrounds, as you can imagine in the Washington DC area, and therefore I met many distinguished parents. Prominent among these was Senator Eugene McCarthy. During his presidential campaign – you will remember he won the New Hampshire Primary – Senator and Mrs McCarthy asked me to travel with them to accompany their children. A few years later I met my husband and we had our wedding reception at the McCarthy’s home.
Ian and I met at a Scottish Country Dancing class I was teaching in DC. After our honeymoon he had to take a laser in his briefcase on a flight to Newark, New Jersey. He asked me to drop him off at Washington National Airport. I teased him about meeting a mysterious blonde. Apparently we were overheard because when Ian was sitting in the departure lounge he was converged on by five serious men. ‘What’s this about a mysterious bomb?’ The plane was delayed for 15 minutes.
Soon after the moon landing Ian and I moved to new careers in California where I finished my first novel. I attended a Writers’ Conference in San Diego and heard the wonderful words from the famous editor Charles Block, ‘I think this will go.’ Rejoicing, I went for a swim in the deserted swimming pool. A man appeared and asked if I would mind if he joined me. We stayed there swimming and talking for ages, mostly about Italy, until we realized it was dinner time. We were late and had no idea where to sit until we found a space and sat together. Quite a few women were glaring at me and I was taken aback when he was called to the stage. He had never mentioned that he was the Conference’s very special guest Michael Shaara, the Pulitzer Prize winner of the superb civil war novel, The Killer Angels. Next morning we met in a field where he was due to give a lecture and after the lecture when hordes had rushed for food, he stayed behind and told me exactly how he had researched and written his prizewinning book. My signed copy has, of course, a very special space.
After 13 happy years in California we returned to Scotland in 1982. Ian changed from little lasers to big ones and I continued to write. I took my turns as Scottish Secretary of the Society of Authors and later as Chair of the Romantic Novelists Association.
Mathematics is not my strong point but I think that must be about seven things.
A Crofter’s Daughter by Eileen Ramsay. Published by Zaffre, Paperback Original, audio and eBook £6.99 12th December 2019.