She’s ALL That!

Today, on International Women’s Day, I am launching a little project I have dubbed 90 Women in 90 Days, where I will highlight women I know who I think “are ALL that!” We don’t do enough to highlight each other and I thought I would put my money where my mouth is and start with people I know.

Today’s featured woman is actually three women – my mother, Lee Sigler, and my two grandmothers. I specifically want to highlight who they are as role models and what I learned from them.

Lee Sigler

My mom was a very young mother and had to drop out of college when she had me. She then went to night school for 9 years to get a degree in computer science along with her MBA (and had my brother somewhere in there). I had a conversation with her last week about how she ended up at Purdue studying computer science (and being a marksman) and she told me a funny story about how she chose computer science because she didn’t want to do what was considered “women’s work,” which, to her, meant being a teacher or nurse (like my two grandmothers, but more on them in a moment).

I have learned so many things from my mother – some are practical things like cooking, knitting, quilting, sewing, playing (and counting) cards, gardening, and fixing almost anything, but some are more important, like perseverance and persistence. My mom was an amazing role model as a single mom, who picked up her two kids and what she could fit into her car and drove 2400 miles in three days to California where her brother and sister lived. She was also a business owner and entrepreneur and in high school, I worked for her strategic marketing consulting company where I learned to keep books, do market research, and administratively how to run a business. She is now semi-retired and is always looking to help B2B companies with their strategic marketing efforts. My mom is ALL that! And then some!

Now for my grandmothers – Edith Krog Marck Rector and Frances Flora Sigler. I learned my love of family from them and their kindness. They are definitely ALL that!

Grandma Edith

Edith was a nurse and married my grandfather during WWII. She had 4 kids and after she retired from nursing, she helped my grandfather run his geology business. She did silver work and jewelry making and always had the latest National Geographic story to share with us. She made all her own bread, grew almost all their own food, sewed her own clothes (and made matching outfits for her two daughters) and knitted like a fiend. She taught me how to do dowsing and how to read signatures and what minerals would do what to your body. I learned how to play piano at her house and gained my love of music from her and her father who played cello in the Danish Symphony Orchestra. I learned my love of Denmark and other Danish things from her. My grandmother Edith passed away a year ago at the age of 93. And she was ALL that!

Frances was a farmer’s wife, and had 5 children after attending Ball State (Teacher’s College). She taught math, accounting, and short hand in high school for over 40 years. She even had each of her children in her own classes, but you did not mess with her. One stern look and a short sentence of, “you best not be doing that” and you fell in line. She retired to a home she and my grandfather built in Florida. She taught me photography and fostered my love of taking pictures of flowers and how to play the organ. She is turning 100 in June this year but I don’t know if she still plays or not. I’ll have to find out during our next visit! She kept the farm books in Quicken herself until recently and she still does the crossword puzzle every morning to stay sharp! She is ALL that!