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The Autobiography of Berniece Rabe
My teachers all said I should go to college, but at sixteen the law said no more school was required. Since I had overloaded on subjects all along just in case my education should get cut short, at sixteen I had all the credits the state of Missouri required for graduation, save a quarter credit in physical education, and there was no need for anyone to support me for a fourth year of high school. Broseley High School refused me a diploma without that quarter credit, but one teacher told me that Chicago University would take me with my credits, diploma or no. So I set off with a friend, to go to college in Chicago, in spite of the fact that I was totally broke. Well, city life held all sorts of surprises and things to learn. Being a waitress was really a fine job, for it not only brought immediate money from tips but provided food as well. I called the University of Chicago and asked the cost of tuition. I laid the phone down easily, without even saying good-bye or thank you. I didn't ask about a scholarship, for I didn't know such existed.
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Before
I turned seventeen I got work as a professional model. A year later
I was sent overseas to model a line of fashions and there I met
my husband, Walter Rabe. He was in the army. He seemed so refreshing
to me. None of the sooth lines men usually handed models. I could
tell he really liked me. Above all else I needed to be safe, loved,
and feel I belonged-start a home. He was a country boy, tall and
good-looking, and bright! In fact, he was to bright I felt stupid.
I did not realize here were different kinds of intelligence. I leaned
towards concepts, but his was memory of things and statistics, almost
a photographic memory.
When
I was eighteen and he [Walter] was twenty-two we were married by
a justice of the peace. It was a small unattended wedding because,
just tree months earlier, Walter's mother, along with two nephews,
and a niece, all his age and childhood playmates, were killed when
a train struck their car. Walt was thrown clear and survived the
accident. The remaining family members disapproved of our marriage.
It was too short a time since the deaths and they didn't think I
could cut it as a housewife. (Echoes of my stepmother, who said,
"You'll never hold a man six months!" Though that was because I
peeled such thick potato peelings.) How surprised his family was
to discover that I, too, was a country girl and could stretch pennies
and cook and sew. They learned to like me and I them. 
However,
my modeling career ended when I had my first child, Alan, born December
19, 1947. Brian was born April 2, 1950. Clay on February 24, 1953.
And, almost twelve years later, a daughter-Dara-born August 27,
1964. For those seventeen years I kept busy being a housewife and
homebuilder and decorator. I do mean homebuilder. My husband and
built two houses with our own hands with occasional help from friends
or family or hired help on a really big job like pouring concrete
for the basement floor. One house we sold, the other we lived in
for twenty-three years. It was modernistic in design, fitting the
trend I was most comfortable with during those years. Also during
those years, I got my college degree from Elgin Community College
and National College near Chicago, one course at a time. I loved
college. It was a way to make up for the lack in education during
my childhood and gave me interests and friends outside the home.
I got my B.S. degree in 1963, taught a class of special children
for seven months before I became pregnant with my daughter. During
the first two years of her life, I managed to sneak out once a week
to tutor some special child. But I still felt the restraint late
motherhood foisted on me, I was too used to my freedom. 