Working Mother

This item was written by Will Andrews, managing editor of BusinessWeek’s Investing channel.

I guess you’ve heard by now about McGraw-Hill Companies’ decision to “explore its strategic options” for BusinessWeek, which is a corporate way of saying that our future is up for grabs. Inevitably, some of the news stories in the days that followed referred to the publication’s age – 80 years old – and the circumstances of its birth, namely that it was launched right around the start of the Great Depression.

That part of the story struck a chord in me. For just as the folks at BW are wondering about the future of our long-lived enterprise, my family is preparing to celebrate the 80th birthday of another Depression baby: My mother.

Like BW, my mom has seen her share of triumphs and setbacks through the years. (Thankfully, she never wrote a Death of Equities story.) She was the first member of her family to attend college, graduating with a degree in physics in 1951. She immediately went to work for Brookhaven National Laboratory as the Atomic Age was in full bloom (when I tell people that my mother was a rocket scientist, I’m not joking).

She later married my father and left the lab to become a homemaker, conducting an even greater experiment: the care, feeding, and education of seven children on a teacher’s salary. My mom had the knack of somehow “making each feel like an only child,” as one sibling put it.

With the last of the children off to school, my mother re-entered the workforce for her third career, as an educator. (I remember her sometimes coming home with white chalk on the back of her blue jacket, a dusty badge of honor for drilling proofs and formulae into countless young minds.) Though we were devastated by the death of my father at age 52, my mom soldiered on with the pluck, resourcefulness, and religious faith that have been her hallmark throughout her life.

She pulled off one more nifty trick in the years that followed: retiring at age 55. Since then, my Mom has been a great many things: World traveler, math tutor, tireless volunteer, choir member, social director for church groups, and anything else you may need if you’re ever in a jam.

For the purposes of this blog, I salute my mother as a working parent, and an exemplary one at that. But I’ll sneak in another tribute: Along with my dad, she helped spark the curiosity and love of learning that helped make me what I am today.

So happy birthday, Mom. I’m looking forward to a big, lively celebration this weekend. And perhaps my mother, well known for dispensing largely sagacious advice to her children, will have a few useful insights for the other 80-year old -– and the people who give it life – as they ponder their future.

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1. Growing Up Old