Stephanie: Hi Anne. Welcome to the show.

Anne: Hi Stephanie. Thank you for inviting me.

Stephanie: Oh, it's my pleasure to have you. You and I have a lot of common history in our background when it comes to journalism, so I'm very excited to jump into this story except that I was always interested in print and you went broadcast, but there's a lot of similarities to how our,

Anne: in print, so

Stephanie: Okay. All right. Yeah. Yeah. All right.

Well, let's start at the beginning. Why don't you tell me a little bit about the prologue to our story, which is a transition at midlife. Tell me about who you were and how you became the person at the beginning of our story.

I,

Anne: Okay. I wanted to be a sportscaster when I was 17 years old, and I'm gonna be 70 in March, which tells you how long ago that was. And honestly, back then there simply were almost no women's sports casters. There were some women's sports writers, but no one ever heard of them outside of their local markets.

And so, I was at my high school and we had a broadcast crew. And every morning we did a half hour show. And we read announcements, we played music. It was just the way this, we started the school day and people would give us announcements to do. Because I was the statistician for the hockey team, 'cause I grew up in an arena, I was an ice skater. One of the guys said, Hey, read this on the announcements this morning. I said, great. So I went into the class and I pulled all the sports stories out of a basket, 'cause I figured, you know, we're supposed to keep things kind of in the same blocks. And the guys started yelling at me, they said, you can't read this sports. You're a girl. And Yeah. And it's like I tell this story and people go, they wouldn't do that. Yes, they did in the seventies, they did.

Stephanie: Of course they would.

Anne: The teacher came in and goes, you guys have five minutes to get on the air. They said, well, Annie wants to read the sports and she can't. He goes, if she wants to read the sports, she can. Let's go. So I read the sports. And the next day I came in and did the same thing. I don't know why. I

Stephanie: Yeah.

Anne: did the sports. And the guys got angry again, and I, and, and, and so then they came up with theme music for me. So every time I went on, they'd play Mission Impossible. I. Right. And then they started calling me Big Ann. Big Ann with the sports, it's up next. Right?

Stephanie: Oh

Anne: They thought I would find that offensive, but in fact I really liked it. And so pretty soon everybody who had a sports story would hand them to me all day like, would you read this tomorrow? The football coach, the hockey coach, they would say would you do these stories? Yeah. And I loved it, you know? I'm not a dope. I like being around guys.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Anne: It was mostly guys sports and, uh, no, actually we had some girl sports. So, um, when my mother came up to me when I was, you know, she said, well, you have to pick a college, you know, it was senior year. She goes, what would you, what do you wanna be? I said, I wanna be a sportscaster.

And she looked down at me out of those cat eye glasses and she said, don't be ridiculous. I'm trying to have a serious conversation with you. And I went, I'm serious. I wanna be the now. It never occurred to me in a million years that women didn't do this sort of thing in the real world. It just didn't. I didn't watch that much tv, but I went to college. I went to Miami of Ohio. Wonderful school. Still not sure how I got in. And I went to the communications department, said, I wanna be a sportscaster. They said, you cannot, you're a girl. I. Yeah, I know.

Stephanie: Oh my goodness.

Anne: My senior year, they said, okay, we're gonna do this sports show on our PBS affiliate. Would you like to co-anchor? I said, of course I would. And so I got, I, I started going out to interview coaches for stories. Well, wouldn't you know the football coach, the baseball coach, the basketball coach, all refuse to speak to me.

Stephanie: Oh my God.

Anne: We're not gonna let her interview us. They were offended. And so I'm like, what am I supposed to do now? The other guy went out and did all the big interviews, but then I, I had an epiphany. I said, you know what, there are a lot more sports here. There's

Stephanie: Right,

Anne: there's hockey there, there's gymnastics, there's tennis, there's all these sports no one pays attention to.

Stephanie: Right,

Anne: I started going to interview them and they were thrilled. They didn't care that I was a girl.

Stephanie: Right.

Anne: They were just thrilled someone was paying attention.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Anne: I got the beat of every other team on campus. I do that for

Stephanie: oh, wow.

Anne: a year. But this was, this was a taped show

Stephanie: Okay.

Anne: Quite honestly, I didn't know that much about sports, which was problematic. I knew hockey 'cause I grew up in an arena. I was an ice dancer, a bad one, but I was one. And, uh, so when I got outta college, I couldn't get, even get an interview. I couldn't fill out an application. Nobody wanted to hire me. And so I, I moved to Washington, DC and I worked in a bar in Georgetown, which was a lot of fun. It was the eighties.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Anne: And a year or two, I'm like, this is great. I, it was the tony bar where everybody wanted to be and I worked there. It was great.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Anne: Every once in a while, life takes funny turns. And for me it was a hockey game. My aunt, who was like a sister, took me to see the Washington Capitals play and I'm sitting there and she brought a date and the guy said, you know, uh, he was a nice hockey referee for kids. You've seen the little kids hockey, right? Latin

Stephanie: Oh, I, I have a brother who played it. Yes, I know exactly.

Anne: So he's bemoaning while we're watching the horrible Washington Capitals play. They were horrible. He said, we don't have enough referees. We can't get referees for amateur games. And my aunt goes, Annie skates. She goes, why don't you be a referee? And I said, okay. And I filled out the paperwork and took a class. Never been on hockey skates in my life, by the way.

Stephanie: Yeah,

Anne: Do you know the difference?

Stephanie: I do. Toe pick.

Anne: Yes. I had no idea. I, I, I've been on speed skates, but I grew up on, I figure skates. So I go out there, I've slept three hours. I was in the bar til three, probably. Had my stripes on. I said I was the referee little cap, you know, and

Stephanie: Yeah. With your whistle? Mm-hmm.

Anne: Oh yeah, I was so excited. And I, I, it's six year olds, right? And they've got the hockey jerseys down to their ankles and they're a little slot up sticks and their helmets are too big 'cause their heads are little and they're tilting to the side, kind of rakishly.

Stephanie: Yes.

Anne: And, uh, I go out to take the face off and I go, I'm gonna blow my whistle stand there. I leaned over to take the face off and I fell because there were no toe picks. Never occurred to me. I never had them on before. But I was skating since I was five.

Stephanie: Right.

Anne: This is embarrassing. So what did I do? I dug the toe of that hockey skate into the ice and fell again because there's no toe picks. I fell three times.

Stephanie: Oh God.

Anne: Finally I got up. I remember nothing about the game except that part. What I do recall is driving home. I'm driving home. I probably had three hours sleep. I'm exhausted, and I, I realized I didn't know enough about the games to be a good sportscaster because I grew up before Title IX. I didn't play the games. Today I would play hockey. I wouldn't be an ice dancer.

Stephanie: Right.

Anne: No. Today I might play football. I don't know.

Stephanie: Right.

Anne: The bottom line is I hadn't played the game, so I decided then, and there I would take five years and I would learn, I, I would become a certified official, amateur official in football, baseball, ice hockey, soccer, and basketball.

The five main team spectator sports. I would work in the bar, which of course I enjoyed. And, and I would, somewhere in the country there had to be a forward thinking news director that after that period would know that I understood the games. Because lemme tell you, coaches do not take tests every year. I took national tests every year.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Anne: They have scrimmages, but we have to work scrimmages for football, which I ended up doing for 40 years. We start in June. We have classes twice a week.

Stephanie: Right,

Anne: Every year I have to get a 90 or above on a national test so that I can referee high school football.

Stephanie: Right. You know it better than the coaches. Yeah.

Anne: And I believed someone would hire me to be a, a sportscaster,

Stephanie: Mm-hmm.

Anne: And that is exactly what happened.

Stephanie: Mm.

Anne: I ended up working for five TV stations including ESPN, where I anchored Sports Center.

Stephanie: Well, tell me about how'd you get your first break? So you, you spend this five years really investing in learning these games, and then where was this forward thinking news director? Where'd this person come from?

Anne: Interesting because two things happened. Again, life makes these funny little twists and turns.

Stephanie: It does. ,

Anne: I was working in the bar. We had all kinds of athletes and famous people coming through all the time. And, and there happened to be a husband wife team that were a director and a producer from the CBS affiliate, I think in Washington. And they were producing an hour special called long shots, and they were doing features on four people that wanted to be something that they weren't.

Stephanie: Mm-hmm.

Anne: And they had a guy who was a truck driver who wanted to be a country western singer. They had a woman who wanted to be a boxer. Today, that's not so strange, but women were not boxing then.

Stephanie: Right.

Anne: I can't remember the other person, but they apparently needed a fourth person. And they used to come and sit in my section or sit at the bar all the time and they go, Hey, you wanna be a sportscaster, right? I said, yes, I do. They said, we'd like you to be part of our show. So they followed me around for like a week. Came to the restaurant. They followed me to a baseball game. To a hockey game. I was with Central Casting at the time and did some, it's not modeling like you think it is.

Stephanie: Right.

Anne: I wore the hard hat and the tool belt type of modeling. They set up a modeling shoot and then they, they put me on their set and had me read some sports. And so it went on. It was great, fine, wonderful. But it was a brilliant tool I now had,

Stephanie: Yeah,

Anne: In those days, there was no internet. I know that's shocking to young people,

Stephanie: I know.

Anne: There was no internet. I know you were journalists, you remember Broadcast Magazine?

Stephanie: No, I don't remember that one in particular.

Anne: It was all about the broadcasting industry. The last five pages was want ads.

Stephanie: Yep.

Anne: But they're sneaky because they didn't say, Seattle CBS affiliate wants a sportscaster. It would say, sports reporter wanted. Send your application to box 3 2 9 7 5.

Stephanie: Right.

Anne: You have no idea.

Stephanie: No idea where you're going.

Anne: No. And so I did. I periodically applied. This guy called me. He goes, we'd like to hire you to be our sports director.

Stephanie: Director?

Anne: Cool. And this, I'm 28 years old at this point.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Anne: My parents have already had an intervention with me. They came down, took me to lunch, said, we're gonna send you back to college because, because we're embarrassed. It's mostly my mother. My dad didn't say that. But she said, what are we supposed to tell our friends when they ask what you're doing? I said, tell them I'm a, I'm a referee and I'm gonna be a sports caster.

Anne: You know, I think part of it is she was unhappy. My mother just died by the way, in July, she was almost 99.,

Stephanie: My condolences.

Today, she would never marry. She'd, she'd be a Supreme Court Justice or a governor or something. I don't know if you ever saw the TV show Mad Men.

Yeah.

Anne: My mother is, is the blonde, married to the lawyer?

Stephanie: Okay.

Anne: Oh, the ad exec, you know the handsome one? John Hamm.

Stephanie: Yeah. Yeah.

Anne: My mother is that woman. Okay. She had her own job. She had her own apartment. She had beautiful clothes. She had a college degree, which was, I was the only kid with a mom with a college degree.

Stephanie: Right,

Anne: And she had been a reporter in radio and print. And then she was 28 years old and back then you have to get married, right.

Stephanie: right.

Stephanie: Right,

Anne: camera people. And

Stephanie: right.

Anne: I couldn't figure it out. And then part of me thinks my mother was bitter that she didn't do more. Because, you know, in her time you just didn't do these things.

Other women made fun of her,

Stephanie: Yeah.

Anne: because your children are all gonna be warped because you work. And she's like, by that time she was in public relations

Stephanie: Yeah,

Anne: and the bottom line is, I think it was a bitterness in her.

Stephanie: yeah.

Anne: That she wa she felt if she'd been born later, she could have done more. I kind, I sometimes feel the same way.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Anne: If I were born now, it wouldn't be such a big damn deal.

Stephanie: Right, right.

Anne: The only woman in the press box or whatever.

Stephanie: Well, the,

Anne: Because you see more women now.

Stephanie: The other thing you said about your mom, you just mentioned it, you said she was a little mean, and so she was mean as you were growing up about your looks, right?

Anne: Yes, I was obese as a child until I was about 14, 15 maybe, and she was horrified by this. In fact, Lane Bryant, which was a store, you know, had plus size clothing.

Stephanie: I remember.

Anne: My mother had to take me there.

Stephanie: Okay.

Anne: I'm in a, a, a cubicle, whatever, and she's trying to squeeze me into a size 14 dress. And I'm like, in fifth grade.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Anne: 135 pounds in fifth grade, which then was enormous.

And, the, the, the sales lady said, I'm gonna have to get her a bigger dress. And my mother goes, no, no, this one's mismarked. And then the lady went out and brought a 16 and I could fit in that. My mother was horrified. Horrified. She said she's 11, or whatever the hell I was.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Anne: And she would do things like we'd be out, out in public and she would think people were staring at me. Now, I was not morbidly obese, I was just

Stephanie: Right. A a bigger kid. Yeah.

Anne: Yeah. I was a bigger, and I was five, five as at 11.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Anne: was, I was bigger than all the other kids. Some people thought I was the teacher.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Anne: And, and she would look at people that stared at me. She goes, it's not my fault. I feed her fish and salad with no dressing. I didn't do this. And I'd be standing there going, Hmm, I'm fat, but I'm not deaf. I can hear what she's saying. I never said anything to her. She used to make me be in Lane Bryant fashion shows, all big girls, right. And when I was 64,we're having tea and coffee across the table. Go, Hey mom, you remember the, the fashion show when this happened? She goes, don't you know I never saw the fashion shows. I just dropped you off and left.

Stephanie: Oh,

Anne: She's horrible.

Stephanie: Even when you're 64, she's still mean.

Anne: 60. Okay. My father died. I think I was about 66 and I was going, my mother said, you know, we gotta clean out the closet. So I found my dad's tuxedo. My dad was a ice dancer till he was 80. Then he was a ballroom dancer till like the day before he died.

Stephanie: Oh my God,

Anne: And so I put on his tuxedo, and as I'm changing in front of my mother, she's pointing at my belly. She goes, you got a gut there, don't you? I'm like, I'm 65 years and I'm not heavy at all.

Stephanie: Right.

Anne: And I'm like, I'm 65, mom. What am I supposed to look like?

Stephanie: Was she a exceptionally thin woman or did she just have some major body dysmorphia?

Anne: No, she was, she was always in good shape.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Anne: Yeah. And, sports to her were what you do to stay fit. She swam, she played golf, you know, those things. But she was so freaked out that I was out on a football field or on a hockey rink or baseball diamond. She didn't understand any of that.

Stephanie: Hmm.

Anne: Yeah, she was an unhappy human being. And I'm, I'm fine with it now.

Stephanie: Sure, sure.

Anne: But growing up, it was difficult.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Anne: You know, I, I just stayed at my friend's houses who had nice moms.

Stephanie: Yeah, yeah. Well, and that, that definitely leaves, it leaves marks Right. That, that we'll come back to, you know, when we get in into the rest of our

Anne: I'll think I'm fat the rest of my life.

Stephanie: Sure.

Anne: And I'm not.

Stephanie: No.

Okay. So you're 28 and you get, your first, uh, sportscasting job, news director, and now you are on tv. Tell me about the next, seven or eight years of being a sports reporter, sportscaster.

Anne: I, I will admit here that after I got that job, I went to Columbus, Georgia, which is quite a change from Washington, DC.

Stephanie: Mm-hmm.

Anne: I'm a Jersey girl. I, the Georgia freaked me the hell out, you know. And I, I felt like Scotty beam me, 30 years earlier for a lot of reasons. And I was engaged to an NFL player at the time.

Stephanie: Really. Oh.

Anne: He lived in Washington, DC, played for the, what was then the Redskins. Today the Commanders. And he's black. And, when I first got my job in Georgia, my boss called me and he said, we know all about Mark. If you bring him here, you're fired. I said, excuse me. He said, let me make this perfectly clear. He said just a couple years ago there was an interracial couple sitting at a stoplight. A white man pulled up and shot them both to death, and he got off. He said, you get my drift. And I went, holy crap. Mark came down once. He said, never again. He's, he's 6, 6, 300 pounds. He goes, A bullet can kill me as easily as it can kill anyone else. He

Stephanie: Right.

Anne: You come home every weekend. So that was the deal. I had to drive a hundred miles to

Stephanie: Atlanta,

Anne: take a plane home to Washington. That went on for eight months and then I decided to go home and marry him, and then I changed my mind. Yeah, so I spent another year trying to get another job, and I finally got a job in Rochester, New York. And then I just continued on from there. So I had a little break in there where I came to my senses and went, no, this isn't gonna work.

Stephanie: Yeah. This is in the mid eighties by this point, right? So tell me a little bit about what it was like to be an on-air personality on TV in the eighties.

Anne: It's about your hair. It's probably still about your hair. I, you know, I, I was very fortunate that many, uh, most of the stations I worked at had very nice people.

Stephanie: Mm-hmm.

Anne: I was very fortunate that that two men that I worked with, who I replaced, both men who wanted to be sports directors, and I got hired to be that, didn't take it out on me and were kind.

Stephanie: Mm.

Anne: That was nice, but it freaked people out.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Anne: There weren't many, I guess there were other women in the country, but it wasn't anything people knew about.

Stephanie: Right.

Anne: We didn't have the internet, so I think there were probably just a handful of us at that point.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Anne: And I always got hired by stations that were the lowest in the ratings in the town because they figured it'd be shock factor.

Stephanie: Right,

Anne: We've got a woman doing sports! Wow!

Stephanie: Right.

Anne: So I mean, I enjoyed it. I got paid to go to ball games. And most all the stations except ESPN allowed me to keep officiating. And, it's funny, because there's no way I believed in the beginning that I would keep officiating after I got my job on tv.

Stephanie: Right.

Anne: But I fell in love with that. I, I stuck with football for 40 years, as I said. I did baseball for 25. And here is where I will admit I quit baseball 'cause I never wanna get hit with another baseball. I do not know how people go to pro games and reach out to it for a screaming line drive. I hide under the seats.

Stephanie: Right, right.

Anne: I've been hit with a hundred baseballs and they frigging hurt.

Stephanie: Yeah. Yeah.

Anne: I, I'd rather be run over by football players than hit by baseballs. So I did baseball 25 years. And the other ones I sucked at basketball and they sucked at soccer. I tried.

Stephanie: Yeah,

Anne: I was terrible. And one must know what they're good at and what they're not good at.

Stephanie: Right.

Anne: at. And I would've stayed with hockey. Hockey I did for five years, but I moved to places, I was in Phoenix. It's hard to find ice.

Stephanie: Once you figured out how to work the skates.

Stephanie: Mm.

Anne: When I get to wear the white hat and blow the whistle.

Stephanie: Yeah. Okay,so you've been on TV for a while now. You've moved around. You were down in Arizona, right? You ended up, was that right?

Anne: I was in Arizona. I went from Columbus, Georgia, to Rochester, New York, to Phoenix

Stephanie: Yeah.

Anne: where I live now. Great station. Most everybody was kind. Uh, I had a great news director who believed in me and I, I walked in and that was the year the, uh, Arizona Cardinals moved here. We got our first NFL team. And he made me their beat reporter.

Stephanie: Okay.

Anne: There were guys that had been here for a couple of years and they were like chomping at the bit for that gig. And that of course means that I travel with the team. I've covered their stories every day. I interview the coach, I interview the players.

Stephanie: Yep.

Anne: I was the beat reporter for two years for the Cardinals, which was kind of a, an honor.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Anne: Really was. and so I was here two years and then, my agent called and he said, ESPN just called, they wanna hire you. And I loved it here.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Anne: but how, I'm gonna say no to ESPN?

Stephanie: No, again, eighties.

Anne: No, I don't know. It's what people pick outta my resume, but it was so, it wasn't fun at all.

Stephanie: Really,

Anne: I was used to going out and, you know, oh, my job today is cover the Suns and the Lakers, you know? Oh, bummer for me. But no, ESPN never let me outta the studio. I, I did SportsCenter

Stephanie: Okay.

Anne: and they treated me like I was an idiot.

Stephanie: Oh

Anne: They hired women because the government said you can't have a whole building full of white men.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Anne: And that's what it was.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Anne: So they started hiring people that weren't white men. But even when I went to work, I worked the, uh, the overnight shift, the late shift. So I was usually the only woman around, or there might have been a producer, another woman, but other than that, it's all dudes. And I don't mind that.

Stephanie: Sure. Sure.

Anne: But it was that they didn't expect me to know anything. And, are you a baseball fan?

Stephanie: Only slightly,

Anne: Well, I'm, I'm gonna guess some of your, some people that are listening are are baseball fans. So I'm gonna tell a quick story.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Anne: When you do SportsCenter, you, you're lucky if you get to see your highlights before you go in the air.

Stephanie: Okay.

Anne: Sometimes that doesn't happen. Games and late, and some young production assistant will come sliding in between commercial breaks and throw highlights on your desk, and then the camera goes on and you've gotta read them.

Stephanie: Yep.

Anne: And so the first shot I go, oh, let's go to Wrigley Field. Oh, some fan got hit with a foul tip in the front row. That is a mistake. That's not possible by baseball rules. And I'll explain in a minute why. So at the end of every Sports Center there's something called a postmortem, and that means everybody involved in the show sits around a big conference table, like 12 of us, and we discussed what went well, what went poorly, what can we do better.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Anne: So I raised my hand and I said, Rich, to the production assistant. I said, we need to talk about that first play. He goes, you mean where the guy got hit with a foul tip in the front row? I said, yes. I said, that's not possible. A foul tip is the ball that goes from the bat to the catcher's glove. He catches it. It's a strike. It's a live ball. That means if someone's stealing home, they can do that. If it's a foul ball, it's a dead ball. Goes into dead ball territory. Two entirely different things. Silence,

Stephanie: Oh, 'cause you knew too much.

Anne: Everybody's looking around at each other. And finally, Rich looks at me. He goes, you are just being a picky bitch.

And I said, no, I'm an umpire. And I said, I know the difference between a foul ball and a foul tip. And the producer goes, well, is it really that big a deal? I said, yes, it is, and ESPN should care. But that's not even the worst part. The worst part was the next day my boss called me into his office and ordered me to apologize to Rich because I hurt his feelings. That that's the kind of thing.We had a, we had another gentleman, Howie, who wandered around all the time. I didn't even know what Howie did. I find out that this, this is just as the internet was coming up, so we didn't have endless ability to find out facts.

Stephanie: Right.

Anne: And so he's the guy that knew every fact about every sport in the history of the universe, or he could get it for you pretty quickly.

Stephanie: Yep.

Anne: And one night I was in a bind and he walked by my desk. I turned around and said, Howie, and I asked him for a piece of information and he gave it right back to me. I said, thank you. You're great. Went on the air, read the story with the fact he gave me, got called into my boss's office. He goes, why did you say that? That was wrong. And I went, I, I was afraid I didn't wanna throw Howie under the bus, I turned around and he's in the doorway. And I went, okay. I said, Howie told me that last night before I went on the air. And Howie looked at me and he looked at my boss. He said, I never told her anything.

Stephanie: Oh my God.

Anne: So this is the problem. It was miserable. It really was.

Stephanie: Well this is some really, difficult stuff for young people to hear now. And I, I often talk to people who are beyond 40, and can see the transition from a little bit further away. And, and when we can do that, we can put it into more context and we can see sort of the bigger picture versus when we're going through it. It's very immediate and up close to us. But you're really bringing to life a little bit of how life was before this modern era before.

Anne: I bet it's still going on in some places.

Stephanie: It is going on. It's, it's, it's definitely going on, but I think it's not quite as prevalent.And there are people who are aware now. You've got things like the Me Too movement and,all of these things where, we're asking people to be accountable to their behavior, which, which they weren't at that point in time.

Anne: When you've got a building full of guys, or department full of guys. You know, it's funny, I was on the radio a couple years back with, with a guy that replaced me at Channel 10 when I went to ESPN, real nice guy, Kevin. we're on the NY and we're live. And he goes, Annie, I just wanna say I'm sorry. I'm like, what are you sorry for? He said, I'm sorry for, for the way I treated you. I said, you never did anything to me. He said, I always did it behind your back.

Stephanie: Oh.

Anne: And here's the thing, I'm, I was like, it's okay. He said, we, we mistreated you and we should not have done that. Well, here's the thing. We're talking 30 years later.

Stephanie: Right?

Anne: And Kevin has daughters now.

Stephanie: Yes.

Anne: I think that some of the people that may have treated me or any other woman in a position where they think they didn't belong, they now have daughters and they're like, oh, crap.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Anne: I was an, I was an ass,

Stephanie: Karma.

Anne: My daughters deserve equal rights.

Stephanie: Yeah. My daughters deserve better than that. Yeah.

Anne: And I, I understand that I didn't fit in. and there were plenty of nice people. There are plenty of nice guys.

Stephanie: Sure, sure.

Anne: You know, the jerks kind of still stick in my head a little.

Stephanie: Yeah. Yeah. Alright, so all this is really a setup for you are now approaching 40. You've been broadcasting for 10, 11, coming up on 12 years. Tell me a little bit about what happened at that point.

Anne: One day my boss called me in. He said, we are not renewing your contract. This happens in tv. You, I mean,

Stephanie: Yep.

Anne: IT's not that strange. What was strange is that he goes, go to your desk, get your things. Security will show you out. I didn't do anything wrong.

Stephanie: Right.

Anne: This was just the way it is. You know, people, I, I, I, I worry about young people who are very sensitive.

Stephanie: Hmm.

Anne: It's just the way it is. So I was shocked, but my agent said, don't worry, we will get you another job. Well, I'm 38 years old, and the sports target audience is 18 to 34-year-old males.

Stephanie: Yep.

Anne: And I suddenly couldn't get a job anywhere.

Stephanie: Mm.

Anne: I waited for four or five months, nothing. I couldn't get an interview.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Anne: I think I had one interview in New York and didn't go anywhere. I'm in debt at this point. I was married at the time. My husband was, uh, an alcoholic and he was an umpire. He'd been a minor league umpire, and, he was, they were supposedly looking at him to go up to the major leagues and his supervisor said, don't marry Annie. Please don't marry Annie, because we don't like our people involved with the media.

So he goes, that's ridiculous. And I said, okay, let's put off the wedding. He said, no, they're not gonna fire me. They fired him four days after we were married. And, and so he blamed me. He

Stephanie: Yeah.

Anne: he was angry. And so that was miserable.

We're in debt and I can't get a job anywhere in the country. And so I ended up going back to Phoenix. He stayed, he had become a chef. And, my girlfriend took me in. She was, like I said, I got two big dogs and four cats. She said, get in the car, drive here, we'll work it out. And I got here and my old boss at Channel 10 said, I'm gonna have a job for you in a couple months. I went, yay. And then one day I opened the newspaper and he'd been fired.

Stephanie: Oh

Anne: And, uh, I, here I was, I had no money. I had, I, I said I was in debt, living on credit cards. And uh, nobody would hire me.

Stephanie: yeah.

Anne: So I even went to a sports bar I could, I worked in a bar for a long time.

Stephanie: Right.

Anne: They had a brand new sports bar and they said, we need a bartender. I said, look, I can entertain your, your patrons, whether they're sober or not. I can talk sports with 'em all day long and I make a great cocktail. And the guy looked me up and down

Stephanie: Yeah.

Anne: and he said, I don't think so. I realized he was looking for some 20 something in a short skirt and a pushup bra.

Stephanie: Yeah,

Anne: And that kind of cemented it in my head that I, you know, did I, what did I do wrong? Why couldn't I get a job?

Stephanie: yeah.

Anne: I was just too old to be in front of a camera. I.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Anne: I didn't look pretty enough anymore. And that's a hard thing to handle.

I mean, when you consider how young I was, I'm like, this is really sad. But this was the reality and sometimes continues to be the reality for women in visual mediums, whether it's TV or movies. It's getting better. It's

Stephanie: Yep.

Anne: a lot better than it used to be.The horrifying thing for me is I came back here, back to Phoenix, couldn't get a job doing anything, and the only skill I had was officiating. So I suddenly found myself working Pop Warner little kids football on Saturday mornings, and I had just been on national TV on ESPN.

Stephanie: Right.

Anne: And I, I did baseball. I went back to doing baseball. I didn't wanna see anyone I knew because they would say, Hey, what are you doing now? I'm like, I'm calling Little League.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Anne: Because I can't get a job. And I was horrified and I spent a great deal of time feeling sorry for me.

Stephanie: Mm-hmm.

Anne: And I wish I hadn't wasted quite so much time. But you know, you go through periods like that and you, you can't seem to get yourself out of a hole.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Anne: And, and all I wanted to be was a sportscaster and no one would hire me.

Stephanie: I'm really curious. So obviously there's the, the ego stuff of just being right, like you, you were on top of the heap and now they just kicked you outta the heap for not even a really good reason. But also I'm wondering if any of the mom stuff came up in that too, right? Because this is about your looks.

Anne: It probably did. It's not easy when you're in a position where,you, you look in the mirror and go, yeah, okay, I have some wrinkles.

Stephanie: Sure.

Anne: A lot more now. I don't care now. And I wasn't gonna get my face cut.

Stephanie: Right.

Anne: Refuse. I refused. Then I said, why aren't you gonna hire me for my knowledge and my skills?

Stephanie: Yeah.

Anne: You know, I have a, I have a perfect voice for tv and I, I'm a really good writer,

Stephanie: Yeah.

Anne: I didn't know at that point. And that's why ESPN said they hired me 'cause I was a good writer. I have all these other skills and it's just 'cause I have some wrinkles. And 38, I look back at my pictures, go, I don't have hardly any wrinkles!

Stephanie: Right, right,

Anne: But the attitude was, guys won't wanna look at you anymore.

Stephanie: Right.

Anne: Now they're smart. They don't say this anymore.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Anne: Because then that's lawsuits today.

Stephanie: Right.

Anne: Back then. there was another woman who I worked with, they did the same thing to her.

Stephanie: Yep.

Anne: And we just suddenly weren't, you know. They're hiring them now at like 25, you know, so I, I don't know. Honestly, I'm so glad they fired me.

I did work two years for the Phoenix Suns after that. I was a studio host for them. And that was fun, but it was part-time.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Anne: Only during the NBA season.

Stephanie: Right.

Anne: Then I was done completely.You know, I did a complete turnaround.

Stephanie: So you, if I remember correctly, you went back to officiating sports, but you made a friend while you were, you found an officiating partner. Tell me a little bit about that.

Anne: That's Don. Here, here I was all twisted up in my sad little world.

I'm in debt. My husband's a drunk. I'm, uh, right. And I went out one day and, uh, there was a, an umpire who I didn't know. You know, they frequently send us to different fields. He worked with different people. He, he had white hair and a white short, white beard, good looking, big guy. Andhis name was s Don Clarkson. And Don was a Vietnam veteran. And he had a very pronounced limp. He'd been shot. He and I became partners for, for five years, baseball partners. We, um, we would work four or five nights a week. I don't know if you've ever been to kids' baseball games, but umpires like park in the parking lot and get their chairs outta the back of their cars and we'd get dressed in the parking lot. We sit there between double headers.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Anne: So Don and I became best friends and, and Don would tell me stories about Vietnam, stories about Vietnam. He was special forces. And I would bitch about my life.

Stephanie: Mm-hmm.

Anne: I would say, oh my God, that is horrible, horrible. My life is horrible. And then he never complained.

Stephanie: Right.

Anne: Agent Orange poisoning. He died at 60,

Stephanie: yeah.

Anne: of complications from Agent Orange and cancer and all these things. The man never complained.

Stephanie: Yep.

Anne: And I complained all the time about stuff that was completely unimportant. And after a while I came to realize I was a jerk. And, and I adored Don. And he had eight kids. And his wife sometimes didn't understand that we were friends. Eventually she did, but it was a difficult, it was a little odd. He would invite me to family parties and people would go, who the hell's she?

Stephanie: Right? Yeah.

Anne: My baseball partner.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Anne: And so Don basically made me start to rethink what was important.

Stephanie: Mm.

Anne: And, and I realized all the stuff I was whining about was not.

Stephanie: Yeah. Yeah. That's a tough, God, that's such a tough place to be, to be, you know, displaced from something you're good at for, for reasons out of your control.

Anne: I am sure it happens a

Stephanie: It does. I mean, I, I have a story in my professional background of something I was pretty good at and yet was, actually there's a couple of 'em, where I was like, I'm good at this, but, was displaced, was, let go, was, discontinued from service. And, it's a tough thing to swallow because it could be personality conflicts,it can be all kinds of reasons other than the fact that you are good at your job or that you know what you're doing, your knowledge.

And, and so one of the issues is we, we put so much of our identity, especially when we're young, in the outside facing pieces of ourselves, right? Our job, our accomplishments, our stature in society, real or perceived, our looks and all of these things can be taken from us.

Anne: Yeah. And they, and you know, I, I, I ended up being a teacher and I used to tell my students, I said,life's not fair. It's never going to be fair.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Anne: And you just have to learn to roll with that.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Anne: And sometimes those, those curves in the road turn out to be better than life was before.

Stephanie: Yes.

Anne: And, I think people are afraid of change, and that seems to be the number one thing they're afraid of, other than, what's the other thing? Everybody's afraid of, ah, public speaking. But change is part of life. If life never changes, it must, it's gonna be pretty boring. So I. I, I think we have to, we have to hold on to change and, and, and see what we can do with it and not be so terrified of it. I mean, I, I stalled any changing for, I don't know, four years before I started making decisions that changed my life.

I kind of wish I had a little of that time back. Now, I did go into print reporting during that time,

Stephanie: Yep.

Anne: which where nobody cared that I was older. Um,

Stephanie: Right.

Anne: But the bottom line is that wasn't paying my bills. I didn't have a full-time job.

Stephanie: Mm-hmm.

Anne: I, I just think that, that we're supposed to change.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Anne: And the other thing is our jobs. And I was just like you said, my job was who I was. No, it's not. It's what you do. It's not who you are.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Anne: And, and that's something that I think is hard for people to learn because as young people, twenties, thirties, our job is to be successful in the career of our choice and that's who we are. It's not. It's not. That's why I think some people, older people who retire, freak out.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Anne: I'm not that thing anymore.

Stephanie: Right.

Anne: I struggled with when I first retired.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Anne: Yeah, I think that's common and we need to stop doing it.

Stephanie: Yes, yes. During that five years, talk a little bit about, I know you, you were complaining a lot to Don and you, and you finally were sort of realizing, I'm guessing he wasn't saying anything about this, but you were sort of realizing like, my side of the conversation looks like this, and his side of the conversation looks like that.

Right. So it was like a, a slow dawning, but

Anne: Oh, yeah. It took a while.

Stephanie: Yeah. Which.

Anne: Before I started going, hey, how come I'm whining? Don should be whining.

Stephanie: Right, right. Talk a little bit about though, uh, how you, how you shifted your identity. Like what, what was that piece of, of letting go of the sportscaster in order to become something else?

Anne: I kept thinking that somewhere I somehow I get a job. I.

Stephanie: Yep.

Anne: Somebody would go, oh, Annie's there, we should hire her. I kept thinking that was going to happen.

Stephanie: Yeah,

Anne: But years went by.

Stephanie: Right.

Anne: I realize now I was probably depressed.

Stephanie: Sure.

Anne: I was depressed. And I, I couldn't seem to get going. And, and I, I was involved in things here in town. I was on some board of directors for sports and things like that, but these weren't jobs.

Stephanie: Nope.

Anne: And I kept running into people who said, why aren't you a teacher? I don't wanna be a teacher. I don't wanna be a teacher. My parents, when they had the intervention,

Stephanie: Mm-hmm.

Anne: said, we'll send you back to school to be a teacher.

Stephanie: Mm-hmm.

Anne: I don't want to be a teacher!

Stephanie: Yeah.

Anne: Right. And they kept saying this, why aren't you a teacher? So after, I don't know, four years or so, I decided to go back to college at 42.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Anne: And I went back and got my teaching certificate. I think in the beginning I believe that I'd teach a couple years and somebody would come to their senses and make me a sports reporter again.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Anne: I got a job in a Title One school and Title One means that at least 75% of my kids lived in poverty. It was probably more than that. And all of the things that poverty brings, you know.. Drug abuse, neglect, violence, foster care, all of those things. So here I am, a kid who grew up in a middle class family where mom and dad both went to college.

Stephanie: Mm-hmm.

Anne: right? Got the trips to Europe, uh, you

Stephanie: Mm. Yep.

Anne: I didn't live in that world. And I went to the school. I said, oh, I'm gonna teach you for a couple years and I'll go back to tv. I taught in that school for 20 years and, like Don, it changed me immeasurably.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Anne: When I first went marching in there to teach their video program, I was a bitch.

I. I mean, I was used to, yeah, you gotta be on time or you're never gonna have a job. I just took over, the class and one day this little girl stood up in class. She goes, we don't like you. I went w,hat? She said, we don't need you. We're leaving, and every kid in my classroom left. They walked out. I started crying,

Stephanie: yeah.

Anne: in front of this empty classroom. And I'm thinking, what did I do wrong? I just want them to be successful people. I want them to learn punctuality. And I want them to finish their, their work on time. And what am I doing wrong? And this little teacher came and she patted me on the shoulder. She goes, it'll be all right. I said, no! They left. A couple days later, another teacher said, come here. She sat me down. She goes, have you ever considered being nicer? I. I said nicer? I said, there's no nice in a newsroom. There's no nice on a football field. And she said, you need to be nicer. They're kids.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Anne: I said, well, but they're high school kids. You know, they look, some of 'em look like grownups.

Stephanie: Right.

Anne: And so I'm fighting this nice thing. And, one day I was doing a class and, and I took this kid outside and I started giving him crap because he was late every single day. Not two minutes, 15 minutes, 20 minutes. And so the kid's looking at his shoes, he's like 14 and he goes, Ms. Montgomery, I'm really, I'm really sorry, but I slept on my uncle's couch last night and I don't know the bus system from his house. And, and I never know where I'm gonna sleep. And it gets very confusing. And I went, holy crap. This child is homeless. And this light bulb went off on top of my head. I went, I'm an ass.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Anne: Because, I didn't get to know the kids enough to go, what is this child dealing with?

Stephanie: Right.

Anne: Did that kid continue being late every day? Yes. Did I give him any crap? No.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Anne: Because he was doing the best he could. And from that time on, I started making sure that I understood what my students were dealing with. Some of kids didn't eat, didn't have food. So we provided them with food, breakfast, and lunch. And

Stephanie: Yeah.

Anne: My gosh, what do we do on the weekends? So our school sends boxes home with them.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Anne: Some kids don't have shoes.

Stephanie: Right.

Anne: I had, there was a kid who had size 16 feet, couldn't find any shoes. So the social worker goes, call your friends at the Suns. I did. They sent shoes. Because they got a lot of big shoes.

Stephanie: Right, right, right.

Anne: So, uh, we had a, a clothes pantry we put together so that if kid needed a coat or, or a blanket or something because if they're hungry, they're not gonna do their homework.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Anne: If they're being abused. We had 400 kids in foster care.

Stephanie: Yep.

Anne: So slowly but surely, I, I became nicer, though I still held them accountable for what they were doing.

Stephanie: Sure.

Anne: But I understood, if a child didn't do something, there might be a good reason why.

Stephanie: Right. So you were able, at that point, you held them accountable, but in an age appropriate, context appropriate manner, versus the hard ass in the newsroom that you reported to as a 35-year-old woman.

Anne: Right. Because at the newsroom, nobody gave a shit why you didn't get a story done. They, they cared there was a hole in the news broadcast.

Stephanie: Yep.

Anne: You took crap for it.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Anne: And, and I, I don't know why I thought that was okay.

Stephanie: Yeah. Well, and I mean, it makes sense, right? It's, I mean, it is a story of transition, right? You, you had to fight your way. You had to claw your way in a man's world at a time when it was 99% of man's world. And so you were used to being brash and, and brassy and, all of these things because you had to be.

And then you left that space and you had to start detaching from that identity. But when you moved into your next phase, you hadn't yet detached from, or evolved the way of operating to be more in alignment with the environment you were in. I mean, it makes so much sense to me after hearing so many of these stories that this transition is probably like seven or eight years long for you, from the time you, left your last TV job to the time when you became good at your teaching job.

Anne: Well, it took a while.

Stephanie: Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

Anne: It's hard to admit you're not right all the time.

Stephanie: Yeah,

Anne: And, and I, I, you know, because I hadn't grown up in situ, I, I'm sure bad things were happening in my neighborhood as a kid.

Stephanie: Of course. Yeah.

Anne: When there's so many children that are struggling, I, I got to where I knew right? I could pick 'em out right away.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Anne: after a while. And, and I really, I, I realized that my attitude was wrong. That, that they were never gonna learn from me. Honestly, today probably half the kids I taught hate me still.

Stephanie: Sure.

Anne: The other love me. There don't seem to be any in the the middle. But I, I just didn't understand because you're right, I, I was working in a world where no one gave a crap about my feelings.

Stephanie: Mm-hmm.

Anne: They didn't if they hurt my feelings. And you just, you know, shuffle on.

Stephanie: Yep.

Anne: And, but then I, I realized that it was just my, my attitude sucked.

Stephanie: Yeah,

Anne: And, and I changed. And change is hard.

Stephanie: yeah,

Anne: Change hard for grownup people. Um, but those kids, I, I couldn't be more grateful that TV got rid of me.

Stephanie: Right?

Anne: My life changed immeasurably. The other thing that changed, is that I couldn't have any children,

Stephanie: Mm-hmm.

Anne: um, which was very hard, you know, when you're, you're my thirties, so I'm like, okay, I'm ready.

Stephanie: Yep.

Anne: And they're like, no, you're not having any children. And it, it was hard. It was hard. and all my friends were having babies and I was like, ah, I don't wanna see that. So I didn't have any kids.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Anne: And it's okay. I was fine. I got over it. And, and then when I'm 55 years old, I. I'm gonna backtrack just a little. I, I had my students, some of them over and over again because I had the, I taught newspaper and I taught a video production so the kids would take it every year.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Anne: And, um, so I got to know them very well. And so I worried about them in the summertime because they got 10 weeks off. Maybe they don't have food, maybe they have an abusive parent. Mostly it's neglect and, and so I always put my phone number on the board. They told you never to do that. Don't give the kids your number.

I said, here's my number. You get in trouble and you don't know who to call, call me and I'll try to help you if I can. So one summer this kid started calling me. I only knew him for one semester and he, he was very small and shy. And, and I, I knew something was wrong, but he wouldn't tell me what it was.

He just said, no, I just wanna say hi and see how you're doing. And I said, okay. Now I put you in my class next semester. So I can't wait to see you, Brandon, when, when the class starts. Class started and he didn't show up. For two weeks. I called his number, it was disconnected, and I was very worried because he had called me a couple of times over the summer. And um, the phone rang, he called me in class. And we didn't, I didn't have a cell phone at the time, and he said, Ms. Montgomery, I'm hungry. I said, what do you mean you're hungry? He well, I'm in foster care now. And, and they lock up all the food in the morning so the kids won't eat it. And, and they, they didn't get my paperwork to my new school, so the, they won't feed me lunch.

Stephanie: Ah,

Anne: I was freaking horrified.

I'm so glad there were no children in my classroom, 'cause I was swearing in my classroom. And, and the woman who told me to be nicer, came in, she goes, what's the matter? I said, and I told her what happened. She goes, oh, well if that bothers you so much, why don't you call foster care and say that, that he can come live with you? I said, don't be ridiculous. I said, I'm 55 years old. I've never been a mother. She said, then stop complaining. And I'm like, oh! And I, I went to the phone and I went crap. And I called foster care and they said, well, okay, well, you know, all my fingerprints were in the system. I'm a teacher, you know. I have background checks already done. And I knew a man who was a judge because he was a referee that I worked with. And, uh, that child was dropped on my doorstep two weeks later.

Stephanie: Wow.

Anne: And, today he's 29. Calls me mom.

Stephanie: Aw.

Anne: And I have a grandson who's seven.

Stephanie: Aw.

Anne: I have, uh, three other children, all of whom were my students.

Stephanie: Anne!

Anne: I know.

Stephanie: You're making me verklempt.

Anne: So if I hadn't lost my job in TV, and I hadn't become a teacher, I would not be a mom and a grandmom today.

Stephanie: Yeah. And, and that is just so, emblematic of these shifts that we go through at midlife because we, we are forced to give up, many times forced to give up the things that we are sure we are meant for. And, we gnash our teeth and we rail against it and, and the unfairness of it all. And yet what's happening is it's making space for the things that are meant for us.

Anne: I wouldn't change anything.

Stephanie: Right.

Anne: Except I had better teeth. I think I mentioned I had better teeth. But other than that, I mean, how this all worked out, you know, I,

Stephanie: Right.

Anne: I, I have, you know, kids, which is astonishing to me sometimes. And none of that would've happened.

Stephanie: Right,

Anne: And, and that's what I'm saying. We, we need to plan our lives. We need to say, oh, I wanna do these things, but understand that the plan is not always gonna work the way you think it will.

Stephanie: Right, right.

Anne: So I, yeah, I'm thrilled with how things turned out, but I, I still admit there were some bad years in there.

Stephanie: Yeah. Yeah.

Anne: I should have turned it around sooner. I should not have been so busy feeling sorry for me for so long.

Stephanie: But that was your path. One of the things that I, say, and I did it myself, is some of us make a mess of the transition. I talk to some people who make it through so gracefully and they're like, I realized my identity was caught up in this, and I, I realized I needed to think about what I wanted next and what I wanted for myself, and I needed to invest.

And I'm like, how did you know any of those things? I was just railing against all of the things that weren't going right for me and, and, and doubling down on the things, you know, the, the terrible relationships, 'cause God, if I just loved him more, he would, he would pull out of this and he wouldn't be an alcoholic.

And he, yes, yes. So, the wishing that we didn't take so long is, if it hadn't, if you had gotten through it any sooner, you wouldn't have been there for Brandon.

Anne: Maybe not,

Stephanie: Right,

Anne: or Troy. Or McKayla,

Stephanie: Right,

Anne: My life would be so strange. My partner is such a good sport. We've been dating 31 years. Um, I forgot to tell him I was bringing a child home, 'cause we live eight houses apart. And he goes, whoa. I said, oh I forgot. I have a 15-year-old boy now living with me.

Stephanie: right.

Anne: And so yeah, he, he, he went through about a week of like, are you frigging kidding me? And now they all call him pops.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Anne: And when they, when they do something wrong, they tell him.

You know how mom is. So I'm very proud of all of them.

Stephanie: Oh, Ann, what a wonderful, wonderful, ending to that story. What a wonderful outcome that, that your mess really turned into something beautiful.

Anne: Thank you.

Stephanie: , Thank you so much for, for being here today and just for being so generous with your story. I've, I've really enjoyed my time with you today.

Anne: Well, thank you. I'm glad you invited me.

Stephanie: Mm-hmm.