I like the path I chose. I’ve had a…wonderful opportunity to have about four careers when you think about it because I’ve been a nurse, I teach at the medical school so I’ve been a nurse, a lawyer, a teacher, a mother all of those…you know they’re all wonderful opportunities and I’m very happy that I’ve been able to do that.
This is the interview of Kilbyanne Garabedian who was born in 1944 in Boston, Massachusetts. She attended Assumption College, was a part of the Worcester Women’s History Project, and now works for the General Council for UMass Memorial Hospital in Worcester. Kilbyanne talks in the interview about her parents’ lives and her family’s lineage dating back to the Mayflower coming to the New World. She discusses growing up in an all Protestant neighborhood and going to high school in the 1950s. Kilbyanne went to school for many different things including nursing, medicine, and law. She married young and was developing her career at the same time she was raising her children. In the interview, Kilbyanne talks about the struggles she faced as a woman trying to enter the medical field and giving credibility to her profession. She notes how she has seen women, including her daughters and granddaughters, become much more independent and expressive over the years and have more influential careers. Kilbyanne deliberates on the fact that although women have earned more power in today’s society, neither money nor power can replace family and true traditionalist values.