Chapter 01: A Sketch of a Family

Chapter 01: A Sketch of a Family

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Description

In this segment, Dr. Escalante names her family members and sketches their ethnic and economic background (Mexican/Cajun).

Identifier

EscalanteCP_01_20140603_C01

Publication Date

3-6-2014

City

Houston, Texas

Topics Covered

The Interview Subject's Story - Personal Background; Personal Background

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

Disciplines

History of Science, Technology, and Medicine | Oncology | Oral History

Transcript

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

So tell me, I was reading in your Legends & Legacies essay, because you were one of the people included in that book that was created by Liz Travis years ago—

Carmen Escalante, MD:

Right.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

]—that you felt your mother—even though there was no one in the sciences in your family, your parents really had an influence on you and your ability to kind of move ahead and achieve. Can you talk to me about what that was like? How did they encourage you, support you, inspire you?

Carmen Escalante, MD:

Well, you know, neither of my parents had finished high school. My father finished high school, got a GED when he was in the navy, and my mother did very well in school until she was in the ninth grade. She had polio when she was like three months old, so she started school late, I think about two years. Back then, they didn’t even know she had polio till she was eleven years old when someone finally told her that’s actually what she had. And she still has a limp and she has paralysis of one of her—I think it’s her left—one shorter than the other. But, you know, she was quite different back then, but she was a very smart little girl, and she did very well in school.But my grandparents, who spoke French before English, didn’t really place a lot of value on education. I mean, they had, both, maybe second-, third-grade educations. I remember when I was a child, my maternal grandmother could barely sign her name. She couldn’t read. She had trouble paying bills, but back then in a small town, they quit—they had to quit going to school to help work.So my mother decided when she got to ninth grade, where it was changing schools and high school, she was afraid of it, and so she just dropped out, and my grandparents, really, it didn’t make a difference. In fact, none of my mother’s brothers finished high school, finished school at all. They all quit.So later on when I was in medical school, my mother went back and got her GED because she wanted to finish school, and she had done very well. So when we were growing up very young, my mother said, “Y’all are all going to go to college. You need to do well in school.” When we got home—she was a housewife, my father worked, my mother was at home—the first thing we did, we got a snack and we had to do our homework, and the expectation is that you make As and Bs, you do very well in school, you’re going to college. And there are six of us, and so she’d tell us—

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

Why do you think—what did she see as the possibility? I mean, what was she—she was insistent on the education. What did she see for you?

Carmen Escalante, MD:

I think she saw opportunity that, you know, it was a small town, there were only so many jobs, and that you’d get a better job and you’d have more choices in life. And as a kid, you don’t understand all of that, I mean, and I think her experience of—you know, she was always sorry. She always told us that she wished she would have finished high school, that that was not a good thing that she had quit school, that, you know, if she could do it all over again, she would have finished school. And I think she wanted to make sure that that didn’t happen to us. So it was drilled in our head, you know, “You’ve go to do well.” She helped us with her homework, she checked our homework, and it was an expectation.My dad worked, but, you know, he had no college education. And there were six of us and we were all very close in age, so we were not rich. I mean, we were low middle-class. I mean, you know, we ate a lot of potatoes, and she stretched meals a lot. And we were happy, and you really didn’t notice a difference. I mean, we got one thing for Christmas. It’s not like my kids now get a bunch of stuff. But, you know, it was something that you didn’t really know the differences, and the value of education was very high on their priorities.My mother was home more, so I think I associate that more with her than my father because he was working. But even though my dad didn’t make a lot, she started a savings account for all of us and put money aside every month, and that was going to be for college. Whatever money that was put in there was for your college fund, and, I mean, we were not rich. I mean, we were not even probably—

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

But that’s huge.

Carmen Escalante, MD:

—upper middle-class. That was—you know.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

That’s huge and symbolic, though, I mean, that this is happening.

Carmen Escalante, MD:

Yeah. Every month she would—I remember she had an envelope, and she’d take my dad’s paycheck and she’d make all these little things, and one was—you know, it could have been five dollars, it could have been ten dollars, but it was something that she’d go to the bank and put all of it in our individual savings accounts.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

That’s a really neat story.

Carmen Escalante, MD:

Yeah.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

Tell me when you knew it was going to be the sciences for you, or medicine.

Carmen Escalante, MD:

I think probably in high school, probably around ninth, tenth grade, somewhere in that area. I mean, I did very well in school. I guess I was so obsessive compulsive. You know, I was an older child, and I got upset when I got a B. You know, I just wanted to do my best, and I did well in all the subjects, but I think it really interested me more.And I think what really made the decision totally was in high school I had two teachers that I always will remember, a chemistry teacher and an advanced math teacher that I had from tenth grade on. And they very much influenced me, and they told me, “You can do it.”At first my father said, “Well, you know, it might be expensive. Maybe you should be a medical technologist.”And my teacher said, “Oh, no, no, no. You have much more potential than that.”

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

So they were talking about you becoming at MD at that point.

Carmen Escalante, MD:

Yeah, yeah. You know, “You have more potential. You need to go to medical school,” because I was interested by that time in medicine.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

What had interested you in medicine?

Carmen Escalante, MD:

I’m not sure. I mean, I knew some of the local physicians, and it seemed challenging. It seemed like something—I knew from that point I wanted to get out of that small town. I mean, it’s not anything bad about it, it’s just there were limited opportunities. I didn’t want to just stay there the rest of my life. Even in high school I remember saying, “I want to go to Europe. I want to do this.” There were certain things on my list of this is what I want to do, and I knew I couldn’t do it there, and I had no interest in staying and living my life in the same town like my mother had done.And, you know, everybody has different ideas of what they want out of life, and I wanted something challenging. I saw medicine as a challenge. I liked the idea of being able to take care of people, and I liked the idea of learning more and learning about the body, and I think those were—and then I think I was very much encouraged. My parents, of course, you know, once they knew that that’s what I wanted to do, encouraged and supported me. I knew they would not be able to pay for my education and that would be expensive, but then those two teachers especially said, “Oh, you know, you’ll find a way to pay for it. Don’t worry about the money. You need to do it.”

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

And these two teachers, can you share their names?

Carmen Escalante, MD:

Yeah. And I’ve sent them one of the books from the Legends & Legacies—

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

Oh, did you?

Carmen Escalante, MD:

—because I mention them. One was Lorena Watkins, and actually, so nice, I sent her a book, and I hadn’t talked to her probably since I left, since either college or—and she’s long since retired. And she actually wrote me a note back and called my parents, because she didn’t know where—got to get my address. And she wrote me a really nice note back.And then my chemistry teacher was Lorraine Grabert, and it’s G-r-a-b-e-r-t, I think, the last name. And her daughter was actually in my class and we were friends, but we kind of lost touch when in college we went different ways. I sent her a book. I didn’t hear back from her. I mean, now they’re probably in their eighties. But they really were—you know, I have to thank both of them.And then I gave a talk. I was invited to give the graduation speech at my college that’s near where I grew up, and I mentioned their names as mentors when I gave the talk. And one of Miss Watkins’ relatives was in the audience and told her, and I think she called my parents to tell me thank you and she had heard it. So it’s very nice. I mean, they were very generous with their time, and I don’t know if at the time they really knew what influence they had.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

Well, I’m struck, too, that these were both women in nontraditional fields.

Carmen Escalante, MD:

Yes, yes, in a small town. (laughs)

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

In a small town. So did that have an influence on you?

Carmen Escalante, MD:

Definitely, and I’m very interested in women’s issues. But, yes, Miss Grabert, she told us that during the war, World War II, I think she was either maybe getting ready to go to college, but she wanted to go to medical school, but she wasn’t able to because I think they were taking men. And Mrs. Watkins, I’m not sure how—and she’s African American, Mrs. Watkins. And so I think for her to be teaching, and she was such a great teacher, probably she even faced more challenges than we ever knew about. But very professional women. For me in a small town, especially women leaders, I thought very highly of them and they were much influential on my life.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

It’s a great story.

Carmen Escalante, MD:

Yeah.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

A story about, mentorship, which is just so important, for men but also, I think, key for women.

Carmen Escalante, MD:

Yeah, yeah.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

Very key for women.

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Chapter 01: A Sketch of a Family

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