My husband’s grandmother, Florence Chiles, was a cowgirl. This photograph is from about 1885. Florence is the little girl third from the left. The older woman next to her was a beloved ranch employee named Mandy. She was part African American and part Native American. Everyone in the photograph is riding sidesaddle, the proper thing to do, and they are all dressed in petticoats and bonnets to protect them from the harsh South Texas sun.
Mandy took care of the little girls and took them riding often. They would ride out of sight from the house, and Mandy would let them climb down, unsaddle their horses, take off their petticoats and bonnets, and ride the horses bareback like circus performers. They did tricks, raced each other, and developed into accomplished cowgirls. When they were done, they would put on their saddles and petticoats and ride demurely home. They never got caught.
Florence died at seventy-five years old, but all her life she told stories about Mandy and how much the girls loved her. Florence wrote down the many stories of her life growing up that have been passed down like fine heirlooms. We cherish and learn from them still today. Mandy helped those three little girls find their personal power.
This chapter is about my true stories of some of the high points and low points of my life. I take you through them because I want to show you how and where I began to develop my personal power. It is an important perspective because, as you will see, success is not a straight line. You will see how I formed the principles that have guided my life, step-by-step. I hope they help you realize when you reach a pivotal point in your life.
I grew up in Liberty, a small town in East Texas, where I learned a very powerful value system of ethics, honesty, hard work, and a remarkable sense of community. I was a cowgirl as a little girl and have always loved cowgirls’ power, strength, determination, and courage. Their values and spirit are my inspiration for this book.
My mother, Dottie Warren, was a cowgirl herself. But at twelve years old, she lost her right arm to cancer. She had always been right-handed. After the operation her parents babied her and everyone felt sorry for her. One day, after she recovered from the surgery, her high school typing teacher called her out into the hall and said, “Dorothy, it is your choice. You can be depressed and be a cripple all your life, or you can put yourself out there and be all you can be.” That advice had a major effect on her, and probably even more on me.
Mother put herself out there and never looked back. Now as I look at her life, I only remember her being unable to do two things because of her arm: She could not cook large holiday meals and could not sew. But she found a solution for both.
She could do almost anything. (Her college roommates said she rolled her own hair and tied her shoes.) She typed, played the piano and tennis, and had a set of “one” golf club. She played cards, taught embroidery classes to little girls, and never, never complained. Most people didn’t even notice her missing arm until perhaps weeks or years after they met her, because she would cleverly and casually throw a sweater or jacket around her shoulders. She was an incredibly strong and powerful person, and coming across as an invalid just wasn’t who she was. Any power and strength I have today comes from my mother. Dottie Warren was a cowgirl.
My dad, Gene Warren, was in World War II and saw combat in the South Pacific. After the war he got a civil engineering degree and moved to Texas with my mom to find opportunity in the booming Texas oil fields. After a few years he opened his own land surveying business, Warren Engineering. He wore a Stetson hat, a pair of khaki pants, and cowboy boots to his office. When he was in the field doing survey work, the Stetson came off and cowboy boots were replaced by rubber boots. He would come home covered in mud and would undress outside and then head to the bathroom in his underwear. He would draw a hot bath and then pour in some Pine-Sol to kill the ticks and chiggers. He’d soak there with his cigarettes and beer and listen to St. Louis Cardinals baseball games on the radio.
My mom had her own kindergarten, Warren Kindergarten. She was a beloved teacher who taught thousands of kids how to read. She was everyone’s favorite teacher and had a unique way of connecting with kids, regardless of their status in life.
Almost as soon as I could walk, my dad would dress me up in a cowgirl outfit with boots and a hat and a little leather coat trimmed with fringe. He would take me downtown and show off his little cowgirl at Layl’s diner, where some of the biggest oil deals in Texas were made. I, of course, was the center of attention and took full advantage of it!
It was my godfather, Felton Dennison, who made me a real cowgirl. He put me on a horse, and by the time I was six I was riding with him working cattle. I called him Uncle Felton, and he and I would ride for hours through the rice fields checking on the livestock. He always treated me as a grown-up, never as a little girl. His respect toward me has stayed with me all my life and gave me much of my confidence. He taught me so much. In Texas, we call people like Felton Dennison “the salt of the earth.”
My godmother and Felton’s wife, Elouise, was a saint. She stepped in for Dottie when it came time to prepare the big holiday meals. (I still use her recipe for Thanksgiving dressing to this day.) And she could sew like nobody’s business. One of her greatest acts of love for me was hand-sewing thousands of sequins on my ballerina tutus. You would have thought we were doing Broadway productions right there in Liberty, Texas! She never complained. Not once. I loved her dearly.
My mother always said that when you have a small family or no family, you get to pick them out for yourself. The Dennison family certainly filled that role, and Elouise and Felton’s daughter, Ann, was and is like a true sister to me. Fourteen years older than me, she built my creativity and curiosity through fun and games, sometimes on horseback. I will never forget the day she left for college. I sat in my mother’s kindergarten classroom and cried my eyes out, saying, “My bestest friend ever is leaving me.” She never really left me, and has always been like my sister as we navigate life.
It was a different time for sure. We didn’t know anything about what was politically correct. And we certainly had no concept of privacy. People thought nothing of just “dropping by”—arriving unannounced, just to see what was going on. People casually wandered in and out of each other’s homes. These impromptu meetings kept things interesting. Everyone knew everyone and everything about you. If you had visitors from out of town, the news would be covered in the local paper a couple of days later. If you “snuck out” of your house as a teenager to toilet paper the quarterback’s front yard, inevitably the neighbor who had insomnia would see the whole thing, and as they poured the first cup of coffee in the morning at Layl’s diner, it would be the main topic of conversation.
It was a wonderful life on the surface. Liberty was in the middle of an oil boom; it was an exciting time. Deals were being made, a new country club was built, and fortunes were won and lost overnight. My dad was right in the middle of it all and, by all appearances, everything was fine.
My dad was haunted with nightmares about his combat experiences in World War II. He would scream from his dreams at night. In retrospect, I’m sure he had post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but people did not understand it at the time. He drank too much. There were horrible arguments that I witnessed and fights between my parents, mainly over money. Eventually, he was prescribed Valium, a powerful tranquilizer. The medical community at the time did not understand the dangers of Valium. One night the combination of alcohol and the prescription medication killed him. I was thirteen.
Suddenly, he was gone.
A guy who had served with my dad in the Navy showed up from California to attend his funeral. After the ceremony was over and we were all visiting, he told Mother and me why my dad had a scar on his neck. He told us that he was with my dad in the Philippines and that my dad was left on the beach as a casualty. He was stabbed in the throat by a Japanese soldier. The medics were putting him in a body bag when he found his last bit of energy and courage and reached out and said, “Let’s give it the old college try.” They were able to save his life that day.
My mom and I had never heard that story before. We could not believe it. As strange as it may seem, the men and women who served in World War II were told, “Go back to work or go to college and move on with your lives; leave it behind.” Rarely did anyone talk about the atrocities of the war. But many, like my dad, were not able to leave it behind.
Mother’s friends, like mine, tried to get things back to “normal” for us after his death, but they allowed us to grieve. My mother said right off the bat, “Never be afraid to talk about your dad. As long as we talk about him, we will keep him alive in our lives and hearts.” We did talk about my dad a lot, and because of it, I remember to use his sharp wit, intellect, and compassion for people every day of my life. He is always with me.
Dottie Warren was not long wounded after being left a widow at the age of forty-three. She somehow recovered. Dottie was tough, resilient, and independent. Asking for help just wasn’t in her DNA. However, she didn’t have to ask for help when Dad died in May 1969. The people of Liberty didn’t let us down, and supported us with love, advice, and just pure human kindness. Sure, I was terribly sad at times, but I never felt alone. Everyone knew exactly what was going on and helped the best way they could. That sense of community, filled with homespun humor, helped my mom and me to move on.
Mom went on to do great things, enjoy life, and was the best cheerleader I could have ever dreamed of. I naturally became the center of her life. And she wanted me to be the center of everyone’s life. I half jumped and she half pushed me onto the drill team, debate teams, student council, National Honor Society, plays, parades, and trail rides. I was in everything and excelled. In fact, if I did not have my picture in the Liberty Vindicator newspaper once a week, she would be outraged. I had so many opportunities to perform at an early age in front of amazing crowds and people. I was confident and poised, but along the way I felt that I had to do all of this to please the people who loved me. They counted on me to win. They were all deeply invested in my success. Sometimes I pushed myself so hard to win and be loved—to make the people who adored me proud. After my father died it got even worse. As an only child, I had to please my mom. I was all she had in this world. This put daily pressure on me to add to my list of accomplishments. My mother was caring and loving but a very demanding taskmaster. She believed it was all for my own good, but now I understand that a lot of her worth was tied up in my success. It was tough to live up to such standards. No matter how high I jumped, there was always a new hurdle facing me.
I collect tamale stories, so indulge me one here: In Texas, tamales are part of the traditional Mexican celebration of las posadas, which commemorates Mary and Joseph’s search for shelter before the birth of Jesus. The steamed, husk-wrapped bundles of masa (corn dough) and meat are a part of our culture. Throughout the years the labor-intensive process of making tamales became a social event for ranch women. Rhett Rushing, folklorist at San Antonio’s Institute of Texan Cultures, said, “By the time the day was over and the tamales were made, the family would be caught up, the arguments resolved, differences aired. It wasn’t just about the masa and the meat. It was the love and tears.”3
For me, the significance of tamales dates back to my childhood and my dad’s introduction of them to me. Every year my dad would go to Del Rio, on the Texas side of the border with Mexico, to deer hunt with his buddies. To prepare to meet and greet some of the Mexicans in Villa Acuña, on the Mexico side, he would listen to Spanish records before turning in at night in my parents’ bedroom in Liberty. He would lie on the bed in the dark, repeating Spanish phrases, and all you could see was the burning ember of his cigarette.
One year he insisted that my mother and I go with him to the deer lease. Not so much to hunt deer, but to meet some of his new friends. I remember driving over to Acuña one evening and coming upon a very modest dwelling. My dad jumped out of the car and knocked on the door, and out came a man with a big smile on his face and a hug for my dad. Dad motioned for us to come in.
Once inside all that was spoken was Spanish. My dad was so excited to be able to practice all he had learned. Mother and I were a bit out of the loop, but felt welcome. They served us a typical Mexican meal of refried beans, rice, and tamales. I had never had a tamale before, but they sure were good!
In 1964, there was only one Hispanic family living in Liberty, and certainly no Mexican restaurants. But that same year after our taste of tamales in Mexico, my dad decided he would ask Mrs. Garcia in Liberty to make tamales for us. Her son, James, delivered them to us, and my dad paid him and gave him a nice tip. This tradition went on until my father’s death in 1969. Mother and I had enjoyed the tamales, but never knew that my generous father was also encouraging and helping James.
Like many others, James made the walk up our stepping-stone to our house the day my dad died. With tears in his eyes, he confided in us how much my dad had meant to him because Dad had gone out of his way to treat him with kindness and respect.
And to think, it all started with a dozen tamales.
For years after his death, people would tell me stories of acts of kindness Dad did that my mother and I never knew about. Some were simple; some were pretty big efforts to help people. He never asked for any credit or told us about his desire to help people. Today, I am still in awe of his profound acts of kindness in that little East Texas town.
My mother always lived above her means. It was important to her to appear affluent. She bought me lavish gifts and ran up big bills at Neiman Marcus and other Houston department stores. She accepted money from her parents, which made my dad angry because she was spending too much. And it embarrassed him that she was always trying to appear more upper class than we really were.
I began to realize that our financial resources were limited and that my mom was not very good about managing money. I took over my own finances at fourteen years old. I got a monthly support check from the Veterans Administration and Social Security. I opened my own checking and savings accounts. I got a job doing engraving in a jewelry store. Mother was always wanting to buy me something, and I was usually able to slow her down.
My father had taken a partial interest in some of the land he surveyed instead of charging the owners fees. When my mom needed extra money, she would sell a piece of land. I did not know about this until I was a senior in high school.
I got an art scholarship to the University of Texas at Austin. Felton Dennison helped pay my sorority dues and loaned me a Jeep to drive back and forth to Austin. I was able to get a job as a teaching assistant in the art department. I got by but just barely.
One Saturday morning, Dottie drove to Austin accompanied by one of her friends, who was driving his big shiny Rolls-Royce. She waltzed into the University of Texas Pi Beta Phi sorority house with a gift box in hand. I heard a page go through the house, and I was summoned to the front foyer. When I got downstairs I was delighted to see my mother, until I looked at the rather large box. I thought, “Oh my, what has she bought for me now?” Imagine my reaction when I opened the box and found a chinchilla coat.
I was devastated by the thought of what it must have cost. I tried to maintain my composure and not embarrass her in front of the crowd that had assembled. Some forty years later I still have that coat. I have taken excellent care of it, but I am always reminded every time I wear it that money doesn’t come easy. That day I took total control of her finances. Within a few weeks, when I better understood her financial situation, I realized that I would have to help support her for the rest of her life. She had gone through all the land, was basically broke, and was living on a teacher’s salary. And she bought me an expensive coat. I grew up pretty fast.
Here I was struggling with my own finances and yet I was living in a sorority house full of girls from some of the wealthiest families in Texas. Living up to my mother’s expectations, the expectations of my sorority sisters, college professors (and not to mention the high goals I set for myself), I had a tough burden to carry. At times, I almost hit the wall. I found myself driven almost to the point of depression, and it required a deep self-examination about who I was, what I wanted to do with my life, and what it was really all about.
I tell these stories, good and bad, because all of my values and ethics come from my family, the Dennisons, and all those wonderful characters from Liberty, Texas. When my instincts kick in, they are the culmination of all of these stories.
I had a great time at the University of Texas. I lived two entirely separate lives. As an art major I always dressed in blue jeans and a big floppy T-shirt. When I came back to my sorority house, I changed into much more fashionable attire and lived the Greek life. Many of my Pi Beta Phi sorority sisters at the University of Texas came from the wealthiest families in not just Texas, but the entire South, and I was intimidated by them. After about six months in, I started to feel snubbed by some of the “big-city” girls. They looked down on me as a small-town hick. So, I was determined to show them I was worthy. I took on leadership roles at UT and in Pi Phi. I made top grades and was asked to join several honor societies.
Through my wit and humor, I won them over. I was invited to their lavish debutante balls, and private parties in their family mansions. I learned so much from these people. It was the first time I walked into a home and saw art on the walls by painters who I was studying in my art classes. I got spoiled staying at one friend’s home in Highland Park, in Dallas, when I was invited for the Texas–OU football weekends each fall. Servants would wake me in the morning with fresh-squeezed orange juice, and freshly baked homemade biscuits and croissants. We had brunch at the Dallas Country Club and took the bus to the Cotton Bowl to be a part of the pageantry and energy of the big game of rivals. My Pi Phi friends were included in so many events and celebrations that I would not have experienced without their kindness. Many of us are still close friends to this day.
I sat up straight in the saddle, put myself out there, and proved I was competent.
At the University of Texas, I was considered by my creative advertising professor to be one of his top students—one who could land a job at any of the best New York advertising agencies. He thought anyone in the advertising business who was not in New York was a loser. Instead, I chose to take a job at The Richards Group (a smaller, boutique creative agency on a fast track) in Dallas, where my fiancé was in dental school. My UT professor was furious when he learned of my decision. He never spoke to me again. I always wanted to ask him why he was teaching advertising in sleepy old Texas, but I couldn’t because we weren’t speaking.
I was the second woman at The Richards Group ever hired in the creative department. The catcalls and razzing I had to deal with in those early days make Mad Men look pretty tame. The first day on the job, I was shown to my little cubicle and given my first assignment. This went pretty well for a few months, but over time I felt more and more isolated, and the creative muses got harder and harder to call upon. I felt like I was almost brain dead. At the time, I was working on Air Florida mechanicals (the manual way we had to put together ads in those days) that were both tedious and something I was not trained to do in the first place. Life became so miserable that one day, Stan Richards and I came to the same conclusion. It just wasn’t working and I needed to move on.
Devastated that I had failed, I couldn’t figure out why I had been so successful as a teaching assistant at UT, where I would brainstorm with other students about great ad concepts. I would later come to understand that my personality type doesn’t do well at all in isolation.
When I left The Richards Group I only had two weeks’ severance pay, and I had to get a job pronto to make ends meet because my husband was still in school. Thankfully, I landed a position at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas, the largest health-care facility in the Southwest. My role was in media relations, and I thrived. I quickly became accustomed to the drama associated with hospitals. I sat in on a surgery to repair a hand almost completely cut off by a band saw—the first successful procedure of its kind. I was there in the early days of rapid advancement in heart surgery. I was in and out of the emergency room, and while I never became callous to the blood and gore, I learned how to deal with it like any cowgirl would do. I honed my writing skills, did hundreds of interviews, and made friends with almost everyone.
Within the year, I was promoted to assistant public relations director at the ripe old age of twenty-two. This was 1978. Boone Powell, Sr. was chairman of the Baylor Foundation at the time, and he and I worked on several fund-raising projects together. He took a real interest in me and became my first mentor. Several months later, the director of public relations had to leave due to a troubled pregnancy. Instead of going outside to find a new director, Mr. Powell and my boss tapped me for the role. I couldn’t believe the responsibility they gave me, but with their help and the help of a great staff, we achieved some true milestones. Later when I told Mr. Powell that I wanted to get my MBA in marketing, he asked, “Why?” I tried to explain and then he interrupted: “Forget it. You could sell ice to Eskimos.”
One early morning I woke up in Dallas to a phone call from the US State Department informing me that Baylor would be receiving a very high-level international political prisoner. They planned to “move in” to my office to help manage the surge of national press reporters. The patient was Benigno Aquino, Jr., who was jailed in the Philippines by Ferdinand Marcos, but was allowed to travel to Dallas to undergo a coronary bypass.
As soon as I could get to the hospital, I went to Mr. Powell’s office and told him I was scared I would make a mistake or misstate something. He looked me in the eye and said, “The very fact that you are going to be so cautious makes me know you will not screw this up.” I didn’t screw it up. And I got a huge boost in my confidence and in myself because of the unconditional faith Mr. Powell had in me that morning. And I learned that I was completely capable of dealing with the press.
I got to spend some time with Senator Aquino while he was recovering. I remember him telling me that he would be assassinated if he went back to the Philippines. I assumed he would seek asylum in the United States. But he did go back in August 1983 and was shot at the Manila International Airport (which now bears his name) while disembarking the China Airlines plane he flew in on. I am still stunned today by his bravery.
My husband was accepted to the orthodontics residency at Emory University, so off we went to Atlanta. It would be my first time to live outside of Texas. In an interesting twist of fate, I passed up an opportunity to work at a large advertising agency and instead took a job working with Leadership Dynamics, a management consulting practice owned by a couple of Harvard MBAs. They specialized in business consulting, mainly in the areas of leadership development, team building, motivation and strategic planning for Fortune 500 companies. Again, I thrived because it was a people job. They taught me about the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and how to use it to build more effective management teams. That experience in learning to understand people based on personality type was one of the biggest influences on my future career. Those guys were so smart. The knowledge I gained from them and the case studies I was writing was worth far more than that MBA I wanted.
I learned about the intricacies of the MBTI and the DiSC Model of Behavior and really started to understand my own strengths and weaknesses. I learned that, to be successful, I had to surround myself with people who I could collaborate with, people who would share ideas with me so we could make them better. I remember that when I understood that, it was like a lightbulb going on. Again, at an early age, my career was catapulted because I was realistic about my leadership style and learned to be able to see myself objectively. And I had already learned through painful lessons about my weaknesses.
We saw challenges with personality types come up over and over again in our consulting work with corporate management teams. People tend to be drawn to people who are like-minded. Introverts tend to flock with introverts. Feeling people love to be with other feelers. But allowing teams to be type-heavy one way or another is a recipe for disaster because the teams will consistently be blind to other ways of thinking and doing. The MBTI assesses personalities along four mental functions—sensing, intuition, thinking, and feeling. It also examines four attitudes—extraversion, introversion, judging, and perceiving. The combinations yield sixteen possible personality types. I was hooked and became a lifelong student, champion, and teacher of the intricacies of personality type.