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Show Nancy Creek in De Kalb County. In 1964 I had started off teaching first grade and I'd taught through seventh. "Now I'd like to take a little time out and perhaps have another child. We lost one during the 1970 campaign. I miscarried after four months. Since then I haven't been pregnant. Now time is running out for us, which is one of the reasons I don't feel too guilty about giving up school. Misses the classroom "I thoroughly enjoyed teaching," Nan Powell asserts. "But what I don't miss are the hours I spent at nights and on weekends grading papers and preparing for class. Most people don't really understand or appreciate what goes into being a good schoolteacher. But I certainly miss the classroom, or at least I think I do. "Washington is a strange city. There's no place that I go to here without somebody saying, 'Well, what do you do?' It's dawned on me all of a sudden that probably what I miss more than the actual teaching is the ability to say, 'I teach school.' And it's really bothering me to say that I'm not doing anything now, but that I'm a schoolteacher and will probably return to work. "Only the truth is that maybe I won't," Nan Powell confesses. "I'm having a great time a better time than I've had before because I've found there's an awful lot of what Jody's doing that I can share with him if I'm not tied down to schoolwork. "A few weeks ago," she continues, "when Jody was preparing Jimmy Carter's fireside chat, my little girl and I went and watched him in action, And a on setting things up. Wednesday night when the President gave his energy speech, we went down and took a picnic to the office for all the press and watched the proceedings from there. There's an awful lot of that sort of thing that I think I can enjoy, the newness of it all. Don't teachers count? "Schoolteaching is Two of the questions most frequently asked of Nan Powell are: "What sort of man is Jody?" and "How is Jody to live with?" According to his wife, blue-eye- d, blond Jody Powell is disorganized, sloppy, brilliant, perceptive, lazy, dedicated, affectionate, literary, imaginative, creative, boyishly handsome, sensitive, athletic, scholarly and shy. He was born Sept. 30, 1943, in Cordele, Ga., and reared on a 400-acfarm that produced peanuts, cotton, corn, pecans, watermelons and cantaloupes. As a boy he performed the usual farm chores, attended Baptist Sunday school and church, was a top student and athlete. In true Southern tradition, he decided on a military career in 1961, gaining entrance to the Air Force Academy at Colorado Springs. Six months re I Nancy Moore wife of Frank Moore, Carter's Congressional liaison man, all of us who are schoolteachers have gotten that same feeling when we talked to other women. "Right now Ive reached the point where I don't mind saying I'm a housewife. I don't have to defend my not working to anybody. It's taken me a little while to come to that. I'd been brainwashed." even-temper- Early up and out "Now at least I get to see him not as much as I'd like to, but much more than in the past. He is always the first one up. He showers and then wakes me up when he's leaving. He sets the alarm for 6, but sometimes he'll sleep as late as 7:15. He doesn't eat breakfast in the morning. We don't sit down together and have coffee. He doesn't drink coffee in the morning. It's pretty much just seeing him out the front door. "The first month or two on the job, he'd come home from the White House 10:30 or 11 every night. Then it kind of eased off a little bit, but with the energy, welfare and other programs, it's really picked back up again. It's generally close to 11 when Jody hits home. It sounds terrible, but when you realize that we didn't see him at all during the campaign, 11 is not so bad. Actually, I'm delighted. On weekends he'll sometimes work both days, or he won't go to the office at all. "People ask me if I'm not overjoyed since Jody's salary was raised to $56,000 a year. He's making more money than I ever thought he'd be making in his life, but it's been a real problem since we've been up here. We still own a home and a condominium in Atlanta, and we've been making at least two mortgage payments a month since February '76. New $115,000 home school for 12 years, describes Jody as " brilliant, dedicated and disorganized." surely an honor- able profession," Nan Powell declares. "But when I used to tell other women that taught school, they always gave me the feeling that it wasn't particularly important or laudable. If a woman wasn't involved with media or politics, then you just didn't count. We've all felt that way Nancy Jordan Presidential adviser Hamilton Jordan's wife, and acbusiness. I am I'm the one his disorganization. cept who picks up after him. "My mama always told me that if I didn't pick up after him his clothes, for example somebody else would be picking them up. And if I wanted to let someone else pick them up, fine. But I don't know. He's been home so little in the past couple of years that is, until we moved up here that it hasn't bothered me at all. before graduation, he was expelled for cheating on a history exam he had glanced at a course outline during a break. He returned home, entered Georgia State, earned an A.B. in political science. and He later told his wife-to-b- e Jimmy Carter about his expulsion, then learned to look back on it with humor, humility and grace. His mother, a schoolteacher in Dooly County, Ga., for more than 30 years, taught him tolerance and touched him with a modicum of liberalism. "But she did not," according to Nan Powell, "teach him how to organize. I am the organizer in this family," she declares. "I don't guess a bill would ever be paid if I didn't take care of all that kind of "We were forced to move out of the first house we had here on Foxhall Road and have bought one on the corner of 45th and Lowell. It belonged to a naval captain who died last November. It has three small bedrooms, and we got it for $115,000. "Everybody says its a 'steal.' But Jody said just the other day, 'If my grandfather who was a banker were still living, there's no way I could ever make him understand what we paid for the house.' "In Atlanta, when a young couple pays $100,000 or more for a house," Nan explains, "that means they have arrived. In Washington, real estate prices are astronomical. We've paid $115,000 for a house that's not large enough for three of us to live in, and everyone tells us it's a bargain. Well, I guess it is, and we ought to feel good about it. But somehow the price structure takes getting used to." Like her husband. Nan buys clothes the rack. "I've never had anything that didn't come off the rack," she says, "and usually the sale rack, if I can find it. Clothes and cooking are two things which rank fairly low on my priorities list." Mrs. Powell also avoids beauty parlors and hair salons. "I do my own hair," she confesses, "and haven't been to a beauty shop probably in 10 or 12 years. Jody cuts my hair. I'll start cutting the front, and he'll cut the back. He's very helpful that way." As to how long the Powells intend to remain in Washington, Nan says, "I don't know whether it will be two years or four or eight. It really doesn't make a great deal of difference to us. In the end I'm confident that Jody will wind up as a writer. He has a very substantial writing talent even though he wasn't trained as a journalist. off No 'Potomac Fever' "At this stage I can't see us making Washington our final home or coming down with what they call 'Potomac Fever.' I imagine if we ever settle down for good and it's hot in Atlanta, then it will be Vienna a, pronounced Georgia, which is really Jody's little Vah-enn- hometown. "We're quite happy here, but my one big regret is that Jody's father didn't live to see his son working in the White House as the President's press secretary. Jody's daddy shot himself two years ago. He had a small spot on his lung, so small the doctors missed it the first time. When they caught it and recommended radiation, Jody's daddy thought he had incurable cancer. Jody's grandmother and great-aun- t, who lived with him, had died long, slow cancerous deaths, and Jody's daddy thought the same thing would happen to him. "He hadn't been able to farm for 10 years, and that was a very frustrating thing. He suffered from abdominal pain and had undergone surgery a couple of times, but the surgeons could nev pinpoint the trouble. And gradually he grew depressed and fearful of a slow, lingering death; so he put himself away. . . . But all of that is in the past. Caught up in work "Jody's caught up in his work, I'm caught up with Jody, our daughter Emily loves the Horace Mann School she attends here. We have a house and a pale-greVolkswagen. Both my parents are alive her father, a retired Air Force major, sells chickens to the military. I have three fine brothers. Jody's got a great sister, Susan, who teaches music in Bluffton and Hilton Head, S.C Jody's mother is alive and well and tremendously proud of her son. And please remember when you write your article, my name is Nan not Nancy just Nan Sue Jared Powell. I was named after Nan Sue Rogers, one of mama's best friends in Adel, Georgia." en 5 |
