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KATHLEEN HALLINAN: Good afternoon from Minnesota Public Radio. I'm Kathleen Hallinan. Another Minnesota poll shows the DFL and GOP candidates for governor in a very tight race. The Minnesota Public Radio's Saint Paul Pioneer Press KARE TV poll shows Democrat Skip Humphrey with 34% support and Republican Norm Coleman with 33% of the vote. The poll shows Reform Party candidate Jesse Ventura gaining with 23% support.

Humphrey and Coleman are riding the campaign trail by bus today, Minnesota Public Radio's Martin Kaste reports. The candidates briefly crossed paths as they campaigned in the West Central Minnesota town of Litchfield.

MARTIN KASTE: Both candidates are shaking hands across the street from each other. They did briefly shake hands with each other, and it indicates how important this part of the state, Central Minnesota, is to the two campaigns strategically. They both want to win what they consider the swing districts, the agricultural areas that can sometimes go Democrats, sometimes Republican, and they're here in force today.

KATHLEEN HALLINAN: Minnesota Public Radio's Martin Kaste reporting from Litchfield. Jesse Ventura today is setting out on a driving tour he's calling his drive to victory. Ventura says he's targeting people who don't usually vote. He hopes to motivate them to cast ballots next week.

A state trooper is suing over what he calls a hostile work environment. Sergeant David Sutherland of Shakopee alleges that his supervisor, Lieutenant Lori Hodapp, made offensive sexual comments to him and other male troopers. The State Department of Public Safety and Hodapp haven't commented.

The state forecast includes mostly sunny skies in northern and eastern Minnesota. More clouds moving in in southwestern Minnesota, where there's a chance of rain. Highs should range from 52 to 65. That's NPR News. I'm Kathleen Hallinan.

GARY EICHTEN: Thank you, Kathleen. Six minutes past 12 o'clock. Programming on Minnesota Public Radio is supported by standard heating and air conditioning, the Twin Cities home comfort experts for 69 years featuring York heating and cooling products.

Good afternoon, welcome back to midday on Minnesota Public Radio. I'm Gary Eichten. Glad you could join us. With all the emphasis this week on next week's election, we're going to hear this, our Voices of Minnesota interviews, with two women who have played a major role in shaping political life here in the state of Minnesota. First up, Geri Joseph, then later in the hour, Kathleen Ridder.

Geri Joseph grew up in St. Paul and graduated from St. Paul Central High school. She became a Minneapolis Tribune newspaper reporter after graduation from the University of Minnesota, and her expose of the grim conditions in Minnesota's mental institutions in the late 1940s led to a wave of reform at those institutions.

Geri Joseph, who served during the Carter administration as America's first woman ambassador to the Netherlands, talked with Minnesota Public Radio's Dan Olson. Were you a kid from middle class parents?

GERI JOSEPH: Well, I would say probably. We surely didn't have much money. I don't know what you'd call that, probably lower-middle class, and everybody worked hard.

GARY EICHTEN: Grandparents on one side, I think, were immigrants from Russia who came over.

GERI JOSEPH: Right, right.

GARY EICHTEN: And were they alive? Did you know them when you were growing up as a kid.

GERI JOSEPH: Oh yes, happily, I did.

GARY EICHTEN: Your mother, Edith Mack?

GERI JOSEPH: Mm-hmm.

GARY EICHTEN: I have the name right?

GERI JOSEPH: Yes.

GARY EICHTEN: And she was a tireless worker and indefatigable volunteer.

GERI JOSEPH: Yes, she was.

GARY EICHTEN: Was she a model for you in terms of being in the community, doing things?

GERI JOSEPH: In some sense, yes, and she certainly always encouraged me. But she was always doing it from a base of-- I think she was much more domestically oriented than I was. You have to remember, of course, the generation in which she was born, and while she was very interested in my doing those things that I thought were important to do, she often had some feelings of, well, ambivalence, certainly, particularly as I had children.

GARY EICHTEN: The two of you, I suspect, could have been very different, must have been very different people. You were a single mom for a time, and I assume that she had been ensconced in the home life raising her family.

GERI JOSEPH: Mm-hmm.

GARY EICHTEN: And here you were out there as a reporter, as a political activist.

GERI JOSEPH: She liked it, though. She liked it, and she frequently would say, how about writing about this? And she would have an idea. And she was interested in politics.

GARY EICHTEN: Was the decision to go to college a big deal back in the early 40s, or did your family expect that, yes, this kid was the one?

GERI JOSEPH: Oh yes, right, right, they certainly did. But it was hard, because even if, at the time, the university was almost free, nonetheless, it cost. It cost in terms of transportation. And I can't remember what the classes were at that time, but compared to now, it was very inexpensive, but you didn't have much money then, either.

GARY EICHTEN: Why did you want to become a reporter, or did you know you wanted to become a reporter?

GERI JOSEPH: Oh yes, I always knew I wanted to be a writer. I don't think there was anyone else in our family who had gone through university or college except this one uncle who taught at Yale. No one else had gone. So it was a real achievement for the whole family.

GARY EICHTEN: Yeah, and you came out with high honors, and you were hired, it sounds like, just about right out of school by what was then the Minneapolis Tribune Newspaper.

GERI JOSEPH: That's right.

GARY EICHTEN: Somebody has written a plum assignment for a young reporter. And for crying out loud, right off the bat, you find yourself involved in what we now call investigative reporting in the state's mental health system, state hospitals for people who are mentally ill. A big story, and what did you find?

GERI JOSEPH: Well, it was an unforgettable experience. Art Hager and I-- he was the photographer for the Minneapolis Trib-- we had a hard time, first of all, getting into them. They were and are, those that remain, public institutions, and presumably, you cannot be barred from entering.

But Governor Youngdahl, who really was a very effective and a very good governor and a man with tremendous sensitivity to these kinds of issues, he was very fearful, I think, of what we would find and what I would write. And finally, and I went to see him to tell him this is what we wanted to do and how we wanted to do it, and he didn't want to say yes. He didn't want to let us do it.

So finally, Bauer Hawthorne, who was then the city editor of the Minneapolis Paper, said, I'll go with you. Let's go over and talk to him. And then, he reluctantly said, OK, because they can make it much more difficult for you. And so that was the beginning of it. We went into all of them. I think there were seven or eight at the time.

GARY EICHTEN: These were big institutions?

GERI JOSEPH: Oh yes.

GARY EICHTEN: Ward-like institutions?

GERI JOSEPH: Oh yes.

GARY EICHTEN: Sort of on the concept of a hospital?

GERI JOSEPH: Well, I guess I wouldn't go so far as to say that. That's what they were supposed to be, but they're really sort of holding pens by and large for people. The hospitals had very limited staff, very limited supplies. Remember, we had come through a war, and so the budgets of the hospitals were very, very poor. There were no such things as sheets and pillowcases, and it was bad. It was really bad.

For weeks after we went through those hospitals, I can remember waking up and remembering certain sites which were pretty harrowing. And I never again wore the clothes that I wore in going through the hospitals.

GARY EICHTEN: The patients were afflicted with what kinds of conditions?

GERI JOSEPH: All different, but obviously, most of them were in very severe forms of one or another kind of mental illness, because that's how the hospitals got.

GARY EICHTEN: And what was being done to them or for them?

GERI JOSEPH: You have to remember that, at that time, there were no tranquilizers. What they were using more at that time-- I guess they've come back to using it some now-- is the electroshock therapy.

But even routine physicals, which are also pretty important, because these people, they don't know-- many of them can't take care of themselves. There's no real activity. What you saw at that time, and this is a long time ago now, just rooms full of people sitting, some of them tied up in various kinds of restraints.

The smell of the hospitals would stay with you for a long time. If I turned my head like this, I could smell it in my hair. We ate in them, slept in them. So it was really-- it was an experience that I don't think anyone ever forgets.

GARY EICHTEN: What tipped you off to the story? Why did you want to do the pieces?

GERI JOSEPH: The Unitarians. I knew the Reverend Arthur Foote, who was then a Unitarian minister in Saint Paul, a very wonderful, wonderful man. And they had a young man from, I think he was from New Jersey, who had been doing some hospital investigations around the country.

And he had gone to the hospitals for them to take a look, because I'm sure that some of the people in their church had patients who were in there, and they had heard that they were pretty bad. And of course, if I remember correctly, Life Magazine had done a major piece a couple of years prior to that by a reporter called Mike Gorman, I believe, from Oklahoma. And he had done a series in Oklahoma, as well.

And so they came-- they knew me. Some of them knew me, and they came over to the newsroom and asked if I thought I could go through the hospitals and really do a more thorough report than the one they had. And of course, I talked to my city editor, and they were very interested.

GARY EICHTEN: It's interesting that Governor Luther Youngdahl would apparently ultimately, although it was not exactly his permission to give, give permission to outsiders to come in, apparently knowing full well, or maybe not, what the consequences would be.

GERI JOSEPH: Well, I don't know. He probably didn't know full well, but I'm sure he had a suspicion of what was going to be found. And you have to remember, there had been-- I think it was Stassen who had been governor before, and he probably thought, well, this could look not too well for Mr. Stassen. So he was being protective, which is not an uncommon situation among politicians.

GARY EICHTEN: What was the governor's response? So these pieces must have caused, I gather, was a series, must have caused quite a sensation, must have caused an uproar. And the governor obviously had to respond.

GERI JOSEPH: He was extremely sympathetic and very eager to do something about the situation. He sent a bill to the legislature proposing just a whole assortment of improvements, lots of money. I don't even recall how much more of those budgets went up, but it was significant.

And tranquilizers had begun to come in, so they had those, as well. They were able to pay people more. They were able to give training to the psychiatric aides who are, while they are at the lowest level, I suppose, of the career ladder in a hospital, they are the individuals who spent the most time with patients.

And if they had no training, and they didn't when I first went through, you can imagine what happens. You get people who can't possibly get a job anywhere else, alcoholics, people who are perhaps mentally disturbed themselves.

GARY EICHTEN: And then in what must have been an-- you'll have the details. In an unusual move, the governor burned the restraints, some of the straitjackets?

GERI JOSEPH: He did. They had this big bonfire. And I went back to the hospital several years later to see if you could see any difference. And oh yes, you could see a difference. Perfect, hardly. That is a very tough assignment. They didn't know very much about mental illness at the time. There was a lot of fear in the community, which there still is, of mentally ill individuals. But there also began to be support groups, and I think that was very significant and continues to be significant.

GARY EICHTEN: What did this particular episode and other stories you may have done, other stories you did do, how did that influence you about your feelings about the power of the press, first as a writer and then later as a public person?

KATHLEEN RIDDER: Well, let me say that I think-- I know that we always tend to think of the time we were in a given situation as having been the best time. And I hope I'm not guilty of that.

But I really do think that-- and I'm talking about the print media now. I think that you had very effective-- I'm talking in terms of my own experience. You had very effective oversight on the part of your editors. They could-- if a story didn't sound right to them, they would demand that you check it out and tell them how you had checked it out. If it didn't read right, if it was poorly written, it came back to you with suggestions for how it could be improved.

You don't have that sense now. You have a feeling now that there's really a kind of different system operating. And I think that there is a lot more of a tendency toward the exposé, which doesn't mean I'm against exposés. I just think they have to have constructive elements in them.

They can't just tear down. They also have to talk with people, the so-called experts, who can say, yes, this is pretty tough right now, but these steps could be taken. Because always, if you leave people constantly with this negative impression, especially of major institutions, I don't think you can do that for very long in a democracy and expect people to care.

GARY EICHTEN: Geri Joseph, you're listening to our voices in Minnesota Interview Series with Geri Joseph. Geri Joseph left reporting for the political arena. She became an advisor to Hubert Humphrey, and later, she became the US ambassador to the Netherlands at the height of the Cold War. While she was an ambassador, Joseph's life was threatened by people opposed to US foreign policy. Let's return to Geri Joseph's conversation with Dan Olson.

DAN OLSON: Had you been thinking about politics while being a reporter? Did somebody come to you and say, you know what, Geri, you should get into politics? What was the chain of events that led to that.

GERI JOSEPH: Eugenie Anderson, who later became our ambassador and one of the first women ambassadors to Denmark, was a good friend. And as a journalist, of course, I knew a number of political people, Humphrey, for example, and Eugenie, and a number of others. No, I had never, never anticipated going into politics.

But Eugenie asked if I would be willing to chair the women's section of the volunteers for Adlai Stevenson. And this was about, what, 1954, I think, or 56, maybe 56, that I really did like that man. And so I said, I don't know anything about politics or how you do this, but I'd be happy to give it a try.

So I did, and at the end of that time, some of the party leadership-- and see, that was not connected to the party at all. It was all volunteers. But some of the party leadership came to me later and asked if I would be willing to run for state chairwoman for the DFL.

I've never been to a ward club meeting. I certainly didn't know what a state chairwoman was going to do. But I talked to Eugenie again, and she said, I think you'd do a good job, but I'll tell you what. You tell them, these men who had come to me, that you won't go out and fight for it, but that if they can get you elected, you will serve. So that's what I did and they did.

DAN OLSON: Had you known Hubert Humphrey from his days as mayor of Minneapolis? Certainly had been aware of him, but had you gotten to know him pretty well by this time?

GERI JOSEPH: Mm-hmm, yes, I did know him.

DAN OLSON: What did you think of this political figure?

GERI JOSEPH: He was really tremendous. He was a very appealing human being. He was funny. He was serious. He liked people enormously, and a lot of his energy, a lot of his creativity, seemed to flow directly from people. There were all sorts of stories about him.

I remember one time-- and this one, I knew about personally-- where his milkman had, in those days, they delivered milk to your door. And his milkman had come to him and said that I don't-- somewhere on the north side, an elderly woman was being evicted because she couldn't pay her rent, and all her belongings were out on the sidewalk, and the poor thing was sitting there weeping.

And Humphrey immediately got into the car and drove over there, and the landlord was also there. And he went over and talked to that man for about 20 minutes. And at the end of that 20 minutes, they put all her furniture back in her house. And I have no idea what kind of arrangements were made so that the woman could stay there. It's certainly no great-looking living quarters that she had, but at least it was a roof over her head.

But that was the kind of thing he would do, and it was spontaneous. It was a feeling about people, that you don't treat people like that, that you try to work out these problems with them.

DAN OLSON: What were the, do you suppose, the best pieces of advice you gave him? I guess you've been identified pretty singularly as maybe his only or maybe one of his few women advisors. I don't know how common women advisors were to--

GERI JOSEPH: Well, Eugenie, Eugenie was, too.

DAN OLSON: OK.

GERI JOSEPH: Right, and probably more so than I, but--

DAN OLSON: So what did you tell him that you think saw the light go on in his eyes and you thought it was a pretty good piece of advice?

GERI JOSEPH: I know I was concerned, for example, about the length of his speeches and the fact that many people saw him as purely as a talker, which was really not true. And if you go back and look at the record, you can see that it's not true.

But he was one of these people who, even as he was talking, something he would say would trigger something in his brain, some other idea, and off he would go. It was so-- we kept trying to tell him, and I certainly did that he had to be just a little more focused, that he didn't have to tell people everything he knew.

And he'd take it. And he certainly tried. He really tried to cut down on the length of his speeches. But I'd have to say that even though I might have scolded him about them, by and large, I usually enjoyed them.

DAN OLSON: You did-- was it three?-- cross-country national campaigns on behalf of Hubert Humphrey, and I think became a very good friend of Muriel Humphrey Brown in the process going across the country. I guess the impression we have, of course, is that they're grueling and draining.

GERI JOSEPH: Well, they are. It was a kind of thing I can remember, for example, waking up at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco at about 2:00 in the morning, and not knowing where I was, and being totally bewildered. You don't eat right. You never eat on time, that's for sure.

But there is an excitement about it and a sense of doing something that is genuinely important that carries you along until after it's all over. For me, I think one of the most gratifying things is that you learn so much about this country.

I don't think there's any other way you can do it, unless maybe you're a journalist who deliberately is traveling to do stories and you want to know what the differences are, and what the similarities are, and how people think and feel.

But politics, it really brings you into just about every part of the community. If you're open to it, it's-- and you have to be open to it-- you really do. You have to care a lot about this country And sometimes, you're disappointed. Sometimes, you really are let down. But I must say, in the years that I was involved, I really felt that we usually got better than we deserved.

DAN OLSON: We're indebted to a reporter colleague of yours, Kay Miller, for-- you mentioned waking up in San Francisco not being sure where you were. Kay Miller recounts in one of the pieces she did on you that you and Muriel Humphrey Brown were campaigning in Wisconsin, and were a little hazy on directions, and found yourself at a gathering that-- well, maybe you should finish this story.

GERI JOSEPH: Oh, it was a long, hard day. You're meeting hundreds of people, literally hundreds of people. You're in many communities over a day's time. You're either flying in a small plane, which can be tiring, or you're driving in a car, which it can be even more tiring. And it's talk, talk, talk, talk, all constantly. And if people are serving something, it's always something sweet, which you really don't need, and more coffee, and more coffee.

And so finally, it was towards the end of the day, I think it was somewhere around 4 o'clock, I think. And actually, we were led into this place, or I should say, misled, by the advance people who presumably had scouted all this out and had this on our schedule. And we walked in, and I think we both were at that point tired enough, so we didn't notice too much. And Muriel began to move around, shaking hands, and introducing herself.

And all of a sudden, we saw this open casket. So we literally bolted. We said, sorry, and we bolted out of there about as fast as two women ever got out of anywhere. We both have laughed about it practically hysterically many years after. But yes, it was-- that can happen.

DAN OLSON: Where were you, and what were you doing when you got the call from the Carter administration wondering if you'd be wanting to be ambassador to the Netherlands?

GERI JOSEPH: I was in my basement ironing.

DAN OLSON: And the telephone rings?

GERI JOSEPH: Yes, and it was Fritz Mondale, who was then Vice President. And he was just presumably just making some kind of inquiry. What would you think about serving as ambassador? And I said, well, I never really have thought about that, but I don't know.

We talked. We chatted for a little while. I had no idea what my family would think. I didn't know what I thought, to tell you the honest truth. And some weeks later, he called, and he said, congratulations, Madame Ambassador. I really thought he was kidding.

DAN OLSON: And here among other assignments, you were given the task. The Cold War was raging and United States arms negotiators and NATO very much wanted to deploy nuclear weapons on Dutch soil. So there you were, the US representative, the ambassador. You had to negotiate with the Dutch about putting these nuclear weapons on their soil.

GERI JOSEPH: Yeah, that was a very, very tough time. There's no question about it. The Dutch tend to be pacifist, not just peace-loving but pacifist. And they didn't want those nuclear weapons on the soil of their very small country. It was a very tough position.

And fortunately, though, I did have a very good relationships in the Dutch government with the defense minister and with the prime minister, both of whom had assured me that the decision would be made to deploy but begged me not to speak openly about it in the various speeches that I gave around the country. Well, I couldn't keep totally silent. You can't do that. You're representing your government and the position of your government.

DAN OLSON: Did this piece of US strategy square with your personal philosophy about how to stand up to the former Soviet union, how to deter the unthinkable?

GERI JOSEPH: Well, I'll tell you something. I suppose when I first went over there, I was less sure about where I really stood on that issue. Nobody favors nuclear weapons. Nobody wants them around. And you know that. I talked with I don't know how many members of Parliament. I'd have them for lunch and for dinner, and we'd go over all of this at great length, so there was no doubt where they stood.

But as I came to learn more about it, and came to-- it was really a defensive position, really. And I certainly did support it. It would be wonderful if the world were such a peaceful place that everyone could disarm, and you'd just throw them all somewhere where you'd never find these weapons again. But it isn't. And people say, well, let diplomacy work. Well, sometimes it works, and sometimes, it doesn't.

DAN OLSON: How seriously did you take the personal threat to your life that was caused by the US position? You were the ambassador to the Netherlands. Protests were raging, apparently. People who were Dutch did not like this idea. How seriously did you take the personal threat to your life?

GERI JOSEPH: Well, it scared me. For one thing, I thought the Dutch security people were really very relaxed. The Netherlands, this lovely little country, wooden shoes, tulips, the windmills, you don't associate terrorism, kidnapping, whatever, with a country like that. And I don't think the Dutch did either, although they had plenty of reason to, even while I was there.

DAN OLSON: People had been killed.

GERI JOSEPH: Well, the British ambassador had been killed. I think it was the first year I was there. A lovely, lovely man, but apparently, it had been presumed that he was involved somehow in attempting to settle the Irish dispute, so he was killed.

It was a very frightening time. You don't show it, because. you can't show it. You have to go on. You have to do your job. This is something that the Foreign Service people face all the time now, even in countries where we presumably have very good relations. The movement across borders now is so much freer than it used to be that by the time you find out that someone is there who wants to do you harm, you could be gone.

So yes, I took it seriously, and they insisted on putting Dutch guards with me. One would ride in the front seat with a submachine gun, and then they'd have these backup cars and one in front. Any time I went anywhere, they were with me.

Once, I was supposed to play-- I don't know if Kay had this, but I was supposed to play tennis in-- the diplomatic community attempted to have some tennis contests, and I was supposed to play. And we could only get the courts because they were so busy. We could only get them at night.

So these two guards came with me, walked in with-- they didn't have the guns out. They had them in cases. But everybody knew. And I left after one set, because it was just too upsetting. And it took me a long time to get over it. I think I handled it OK while I was there.

DAN OLSON: Apparently well enough so that the Reagan administration pretty seriously wanted to keep you on.

GERI JOSEPH: Yes, they had asked if I would stay on, but--

DAN OLSON: But you were ready. You were done.

GERI JOSEPH: Yes, I was, then-- I'd already shipped some of my things home. My husband was not eager for me to stay there in that situation, obviously.

DAN OLSON: How are women political candidates and office holders faring these days? We had the year of the woman a few years ago with women arriving in Congress in larger numbers. What do you think is the mood of the electorate these days towards women seeking office?

GERI JOSEPH: Well, obviously, as more women run and as it becomes more routine, you have that candidate's a man, this candidate's a woman, it becomes more ordinary. They are making progress. It is not huge.

I think there was a story in the paper the other day, for example, that women on boards had gone from, what, 10.6 to 11.1% or some such thing? They're in no danger of taking over. And the same thing is true in politics. Most men who run come out of some kind of professional or business connection, and they know a large number of people.

It's one of the reasons we decided to organize a Minnesota Women's Campaign Fund, is because we knew that it was harder for women to raise money. And I think that's been a very, very effective organization, nationally, as well. It doesn't take care of everything it costs to run for office, but it helps, and it helps to get you started.

There is no doubt, though, Dan, that if you have a very full life, which means that you're married, you run a home, and you have children, it is harder for women. There's just no-- people can argue about that as much as they like, but I've been involved for a very long time, and I have lots of women, younger women, who have talked to me about how difficult this really is.

You can do it, but it takes great determination, and usually, it takes some other woman who can help you out with your children, because you're certainly not going to leave them there on their own, especially if they're fairly young.

As they get older, as children get older, I think that's a good experience for them. I really do, to be exposed to politics, to learn something about it. And it's really public service I'm talking about. Yes, government, public service, in whatever capacity, you can be in it.

People talk a lot about how we've let our communities go downhill, but I'm really not so sure that that is true. Think there are more people who are involved on a community-level than were when I first went into politics.

You have to remember, though, when you're involved in that way, that you've got to be involved unselfishly. If you care about the kind of place you live in, and if you care about the future of your children-- and of course, now, it goes way beyond that, because we really live in the world, and you have to know something about that world. You can't-- if you're ignorant of that world, and you make your decisions on the basis of that ignorance, heaven help us.

DAN OLSON: Geri Joseph, a pleasure talking with you. Thank you.

GARY EICHTEN: You're listening to our voices of Minnesota interview series coming to you today here on our mid-day program. Kathleen Ridder is a native New Yorker. She arrived in Duluth back in 1943.

A new bride, Kathleen Ridder had married into the wealthy Ridder family of Knight Ridder Fame, the media company which owns the St. Paul newspaper and newspapers all around the country. She says her mother taught her that a woman has to be prepared to make it on her own, and she told Dan Olson her mother's dress shop business helped shape many of her attitudes.

DAN OLSON: You were raised in a privileged background, which you acknowledged throughout your memoir. And how did this fit with the people you found in Duluth?

KATHLEEN RIDDER: You say I was raised with a privileged background. I was, but I had a mother and two sisters who came from-- really did not fit into that privileged background because they were working women.

DAN OLSON: Business, women, the dress shop, Kathleen's Dress Shop.

KATHLEEN RIDDER: That's right, and--

DAN OLSON: Which was not really a shop. We're talking about a hundred employees here.

KATHLEEN RIDDER: And it was-- but then again, you've got to remember that in the beginning, it was a very small shop, and it was the beginning of an entrepreneurial adventure by my aunt right after the First World War.

DAN OLSON: They had to work. They didn't start the shop as a lark.

KATHLEEN RIDDER: In my family, it was what you would call an upper mobile family, Irish family. And my aunt was the first woman buyer for Stearns, so that we came from a tradition. Even in Ireland, my great aunts all were educated, because there was a feeling they may have to take care of themselves. They were ahead of their time.

DAN OLSON: Interesting lesson for a girl, a young woman, because you visited the shop. You saw the people working there. You saw all kinds of people.

KATHLEEN RIDDER: For instance, mothers, workforce-- I'm sorry, salesforce, were women whom we today would call displaced homemakers. They were divorced women. And I quickly saw what happened to women who were divorced. Now, these women all came from privileged backgrounds, but because of divorce, they ended up having to work.

DAN OLSON: The unions, you point out at one point in your book, tried to organize Kathleen's Dress Shop and did not succeed, you say, because it was run fairly. The wages were fair, and the unions couldn't make inroads. I won't question your accuracy of that recollection, but I assume that even though it was run fairly, the women must still have been working under-- they must not have been paid very much.

KATHLEEN RIDDER: I don't think the women in today's standard were paid very much but in relationship to the standards of then. And you must remember, this was a family business. And I used to go with my mother when a couple of the workforce-- I'm sorry, the workroom-- were ill or something, Mother would be out there helping them.

I'll never forget, mother taught the rhythm system in the workroom. Not publicly in the workroom, but she would teach it to those young women who wanted to know how to limit their families.

DAN OLSON: Now, that was, I gather, a truly radical stance to take in some regards.

KATHLEEN RIDDER: Well, you can imagine it was a radical stance, but my grandfather refused to sign the archbishop's petition to eliminate family planning services in the state of New York.

DAN OLSON: So you and your brand new husband were transported out of the Eastern environment, settling in Duluth. And here you were, a pretty clearly defined Republican woman, wife of a budding business executive, in the heart of Democrat and farmer-labor country. What was it like, making yourself known and introducing yourself to the people of, the community of, Duluth?

KATHLEEN RIDDER: Well, the people that I saw in Duluth were of the privileged class, the upper class, the business people to begin with. And of course, I fitted right in. But then, I missed the mix of New York City. I mixed the excitement of different races, different problems.

And I didn't think I consciously decided what to do. And also, I liked to study, and I had promised my parents, if possible, I would finish my degree at college. And so I saw the opportunity, and I went back to Duluth State Teachers College.

DAN OLSON: Your reference to Duluth State Teachers College reminds me of what you describe as your first cause as a student. You joined a cause to, I believe, encourage the development of Duluth State Teachers College to become University of Minnesota Duluth.

KATHLEEN RIDDER: That's true, And I went on strike with the rest of the teachers. Not teachers, because they didn't go on strike-- the students. It was just a one-day strike in which we all didn't go to classes.

DAN OLSON: You would, when you graduated from college, become the first woman in your family with a college degree. What significnace do you attach to that?

KATHLEEN RIDDER: Well, for Mother, you say-- it was the culmination of what she wanted me to be. Mother felt, Mother always felt, that even that I-- I used to say to Mother, well, Mother, I don't need a bank account of my own. And mother would say, you never know what might happen.

GARY EICHTEN: The Women's Institute became a big part of not just your social but your organizing life in Duluth and later in St. Paul. What was the Women's Institute about?

KATHLEEN RIDDER: The Women's Institute was started down in St. Paul in 1939 by BH Ridder, who then was the publisher of the newspaper. And he had discovered that the merchants want advertising in the newspaper.

The lifeblood of the newspaper is advertising. And why wasn't there any advertising? Well, the women in St. Paul were not shopping in St. Paul. They were going across the river to Minneapolis. How to stop that flood of women crossing the river was on Uncle Ben's mind. And so he came up with the idea of the Women's Institute.

GARY EICHTEN: The Women's Institute, even with its roots in promoting business, I gather, also became a significant feminist force.

KATHLEEN RIDDER: Yes, but at the time, we didn't realize it was a feminist force. We only realized that women who had leadership qualities were able to exhibit them within the framework of the Women's Institute, because their program became a huge civic program.

GARY EICHTEN: We've left ahead now to the point where you've moved to St. Paul with your husband and he's taken on his business down here. The Women's Institute at one point sponsored the appearance of Eleanor Roosevelt drawing 12,000 people, which is--

OK, I guess that's not too hard to imagine now. If Hillary Clinton were to come to town, I suppose she'd draw at least that crowd just because people are curious to hear what she'd say about things. But that must have been a huge crowd at the time.

KATHLEEN RIDDER: It was a huge crowd, and that's what the institute drew for years, that number, for their six programs that they had. Now, in another article that I have written for the Ramsey County Historical Society Magazine, I have written an article about the Women's Institute.

And in there, I have a quote from a woman who now runs [? Sonny's ?] dress shop, in which she said that she was working in the blouse department at Schuneman's. And she was so excited to go hear Eleanor Roosevelt because she'd never heard a woman speak as a speaker. So you can imagine what an influence this had on the women.

GARY EICHTEN: Life sounded and looked very rosy but probably not all the time for you. You were increasingly concerned about your husband's drinking, and he came home one night and said, I'm joining Alcoholics Anonymous. This was obviously an occasion for great joy on your part, but still, obviously of great concern.

KATHLEEN RIDDER: Obviously, it was a great concern, because I had known from experience in Mother's shop what happened to women who were divorced, even women who came from wealthy families.

And so Rob made the decision to join AA. And I was completely uninstructed in alcoholism, and although it was all over my family, but no one talked about it. So when he joined AA, you can imagine what a joy it was to me, but I still had this nagging feeling. How long is he going to stay on?

And I didn't want him to feel that I didn't trust him, I say this in the book. And so I decided I would go back to the University of Minnesota and get my teaching degree, which I had not finished, at Duluth State Teachers College, although I'd graduated.

GARY EICHTEN: Kathleen Ridder, she's written about her life in a new book called Shaping My Feminist Life, published by the Minnesota Historical Society Press. When she moved to St. Paul, Ridder became active in Republican politics. She was one of the first women to serve on the Metropolitan council, and she joined civil rights and feminist groups. Let's return to Kathleen Ridder's conversation with Dan Olson.

DAN OLSON: This is by no means a picture book, but it does have a few photographs in it. And one of my favorites is on page 35, where in 1964, there was the dedication of the renovation of Rice Park, one of Minnesota's most beautiful public parks in the Jewel in downtown St. Paul.

What a picture, a group of what appeared to be hundreds of women, and there you are in the foreground. This is the group that led the renovation. I guess my eye is drawn to this picture, because I think you referred to it as an announcement that what-- you had discovered feminism or something like that.

KATHLEEN RIDDER: Oh, it was an awakening, but it took me a while now. You've got to remember that experience has come along, and at the time, you're not really conscious of what's going on.

DAN OLSON: And then really not too long after that, you you got into politics in a way that I suppose can only be described as at the grass roots level. You were going around organizing for Republicans in your area, which included Hastings and I guess Dakota County.

And there were parts of the political life that clearly did not suit you. I gathered one was an early bout with deal making where I think you had to decide if you wanted to be a delegate or an alternate delegate. You had to cut a deal with somebody.

KATHLEEN RIDDER: Yeah, when you start in, or when I started in, I still was young enough to be very idealistic, and that you worked in politics-- obviously, I was not, at that time, even thinking of running for political office. I was doing this out of a sense of responsibility to my community.

But then I discovered that when I went out raising funds, that some of my economic social peers were giving to both sides of the aisle. In time, I discovered why, and it made sense to them. To me, it was a little bit shocking in my idealism.

DAN OLSON: Because you thought that was untrue to their cause?

KATHLEEN RIDDER: Yes, it was untrue-- from my perspective, it was untrue to their cause. But obviously, if you were in the grain business, you needed the subsidies, the farmers to have subsidies, and I soon discovered that. But how the subsidies were delivered was the key question between the Republicans and the Democrats. I learned about the Farm Bureau, and I learned about the Farmers Union.

DAN OLSON: You at another point in your life later on then decided, well, it's time for me to try to run for office. You sought endorsement from your district to run for the Minnesota legislature. You didn't get it. What was that experience like for you?

KATHLEEN RIDDER: At that time, in the Republican party, the pro-life movement was beginning to be established as a force politically, and I felt that as a feminist, women ought to have a choice. Now, being a Catholic, I did not urge it upon other Catholic women.

But then again, you see, I came from a background in which women were abused. New York City was not the same background as Minnesota. We knew about abortion subrosa, but it was there. I saw women who worked because they had eight or nine children. My grandfather had said, there's nowhere in the Bible that says you have eight to nine children if you can't support them.

DAN OLSON: Then the immigration, the Civil Rights era, came along, and you essentially wasted no time in deciding had to have a part in that, a role in that, became, I think, a director of the board of the Urban League in St. Paul.

Then later, you left the Urban League because the Black Power movement, I suppose, was a natural evolution, some people would argue, in the progression of the Civil Rights movement. Did you have the feeling as a white woman, a moderate white woman, you were being crowded out and that you'd served your time, you'd done what white people needed to do at that moment, and the Black Power movement superseded it?

KATHLEEN RIDDER: I think it best explains a bit in the book. Because of my political activity, I had been appointed to the Board of Human Rights. Now, when my term on the State Board of Human Rights ended in January 1972, I did not seek reappointment. And after 15 years in the Civil Rights movement, my active involvement with race relations came to an end.

With the passage of national and state civil rights legislation. I trusted that the laws would be implemented and enforced with all deliberate speed. Instead, roadblocks appeared at every turn. Blacks had reacted by becoming more militant, forming the Black Power movement. Paralleling that was white backlash. What I knew was that I'd been able to work cooperatively in the Selby Dale area with men and women, Blacks and whites, and that we shared the same goals. Things had changed.

At the end of my two years on the Board of Human Rights, I sensed the same easing out I'd experienced in my final year of the Urban League. My being a white woman who lived in the suburbs had money and was a Republican married to a man in the media appeared to disqualify me for any effectual work.

DAN OLSON: That's a hard-- that would have been a hard pill to swallow if I'd been in your position here. You were used to moving easily in circles of influence and some power. And your time was up. You'd been eased out.

KATHLEEN RIDDER: I'm sort of a pragmatic person. Also, that's probably, once again, from my background. I used to listen to Mother. She tried to make a sale. She didn't make the sale to a woman. She thought the woman ought to buy the dress. She failed. But then there was another customer coming in, and so you moved on. Well, Mother had multiple customers. I had multiple options.

DAN OLSON: Yeah, and then later service on the Metropolitan Council, which was by then a pretty new organization, late '60s, early 70s. And I'm not laughing. I have to smile, though, at the issue, which really caused a fair amount of contention, landfills, suburban landfills, from civil rights to landfills.

KATHLEEN RIDDER: When I got on the Metropolitan Council, somehow, I thought I was-- and in fact, I was involved in policy making. But in part of the policy making was deciding where landfills would be located. And where are a lot of the landfills to be located in the district in which I represented? Dakota County.

And one of my last public meetings was running a very contentious landfill meeting outside of Farmington. And it got out of hand. And finally, I called the meeting to an end and said that we were working within the legislation that had been proposed.

And the Metropolitan council, although they all were obviously irate at us, this was what we were supposed to do. And if they wanted to continue on with this discussion, the members here from the council would be delighted to talk to them individually.

DAN OLSON: You were a supporter, I think, in 1972 of passage of the Equal Rights Amendment, which did not pass. And this sets you apart, I gather, from, I suppose, a number of women in the Republican Party. When it failed, what did that cause you to think?

KATHLEEN RIDDER: When it failed, I began to reevaluate. Not that I hadn't always been involved in this interest. And that was that, really even with the ERA, if women were going to have equal opportunity and be able to live a full life, they had to be able to get into the marketplace.

And I had always felt that we live in a capitalistic system. Money is the reward that you get for your work. Once again, back with Mother, the women in the shop, because they worked, they were independent. They could do what they want. Now, many of them worked because of their families, but at least they were running their families as divorced women, displaced homemakers.

And so I kept thinking, it's the laws that are inhibiting women to be independent. You must remember, we couldn't have checking accounts unless we'd gotten our husbands' consent to that. Pension laws were very disadvantageous for us. And so that got me into interest in the economy.

So after the ERA failed, I went down to Washington along with Abigail McCarthy, and we had what we all thought, and a lot of women's organizations, let me say, we just arrived on the scene at the right time. We had a conference in Washington called Women, the Economy, and Public Policy, which dealt with the fact that public policy affected the economic status of women.

And then you must remember that Senator Durenberger was the cosigner along with Granstrom, and I have all the materials here, of the Economic Equity Act. Now, the Economic Equity Act came along after the ERA was defeated, but the Economic Equity Act did many, many things for women, issues that dealt with pensions, insurance, child care, civil service pensions, issues that were very important to women, especially after their husbands retired and they died. What happened to those pensions?

And these were things that it took a while to get through. I have a picture here of Dave Durenberger standing with three women members of the House of Representatives, Republicans and Democrats, four women signing on to the Economic Equity Act. It went on for, I don't know, 10 years, I guess. These were incremental things that were passed at each congressional session that immeasurably helped the economic future for women.

DAN OLSON: Kathleen Ridder, a pleasure talking to you. Thank you.

KATHLEEN RIDDER: Thank you, Dan.

GARY EICHTEN: Kathleen Ridder's book is called, Shaping My Feminist Life, published by the Minnesota Historical Society Press. Our voices of Minnesota interview series is produced by Dan Olson. That does it for midday today. We're going to be rebroadcasting these voices of Minnesota interviews at 9 o'clock tonight. Interviews with Geri Joseph and Kathleen Ridder rebroadcast at 9:00 tonight.

Tomorrow, it's off to the Westminster Town Hall Forum. We're going to hear from Iris Chang, the author of the Rape of Nanking-- the Forgotten Holocaust of World War II. Also tomorrow, a focus on the second district congressional race. Ray Suarez will be along right after the news with a conversation about the political climate for gay and lesbian candidates.

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