• • •
In my house, whenever there was an important discussion, it took place in my parents’ bedroom. There were always butterflies in my stomach as I walked up the stairs, because usually those discussions meant I was in trouble for one thing or another. In my junior year of high school we had several of these closed-door meetings. We were having “the conversation.” I wanted to spend less time with music and explore other possibilities. My parents were adamant that I shouldn’t stop playing the violin—that it would be tossing aside the life endeavor that had defined me since I was six. It was, they argued, my calling.
But was it? I could only rely on my feelings. I had no idea what the future would bring. But I wanted a chance to find out if I might have a different calling. My parents were very clear that they weren’t trying to make me choose music as my career. They were very respectful of me. I understand that they just wanted to protect my musical promise, and also to spare me from making a rash decision that would affect the rest of my life. My mother later admitted that to some extent she was thinking of herself and the opportunities she had let pass her by when she was young. “I was smart, but I never applied myself,” she told me. “I could have been a doctor. I could have been anything, but I just didn’t see it then. I wanted you to appreciate your incredible gift and make the most of it so you wouldn’t look back with regret.”
Quitting was anathema in my family. Our motto was, “Never give up.” My parents would often tell us, “We don’t quit in this family.” Now my mother said urgently, “Don’t give up.”
“I’m not giving up,” I replied.
But in a sense I was. It had been percolating in me for a while, this awakening. Why would I quit something I was so good at—the music that had been the centerpiece of my life? There was no question that I could have had a career, perhaps a great one. Years later, after I won Miss America, Mary West told a newspaper reporter that I could have been one of the greatest female violinists of all time. But as a teenager, it felt like a tunnel to me, a direction in life that would shut out everything else. Besides, at that point I didn’t think of it as stopping violin, just setting it aside for a time.
My parents were deeply disappointed, and I think my mother thought it might be a phase. For her it was a matter of not shortchanging your God-given talents—and also always having something to be passionate about. She said, “Promise you’ll find another goal to achieve—maybe one where you can use your violin talent.” But she was also very cleverly thinking of more creative ways I could use my violin talent than just competing and going to Aspen.
I’m pretty sure that’s how the Miss T.E.E.N. pageant came about. I was definitely not a pageant person, and I never watched pageants on TV. But my mom showed me some literature about how it was definitely not a beauty contest. T.E.E.N. stood for Teens Encouraging Excellence Nationally. The judging was based on grade point average, talent, interview, volunteer service, and poise. No swimsuit!
Miss T.E.E.N. was a scholarship pageant, so it had that appeal. But for my mother there was another benefit—a chance to get me back to practicing violin and to showcasing my talent on the stage. Since I wouldn’t be going to Aspen that summer, she wanted me to have a goal that included music.
I decided that since I was in it, I was going to try to win it. My competitive spirit kicked in. The competition was in late July, and I spent the spring and early summer between my junior and senior year getting ready. That meant practicing the violin, but it also meant community service, because volunteering was a big part of the score. Fortunately, I already had a lot going on in the community service arena because it was an important value in our family. No matter how busy we were, we always volunteered. I did Meals on Wheels and I helped out a woman who had multiple sclerosis. I also did a project for March of Dimes that won an award. It was a Balloon Derby. The goal was to sell balloons for a dollar each and then release them at the Pumpkin Bowl, which was the big football game on Halloween. I felt proud of that project, and to this day I am a March of Dimes volunteer as a national celebrity spokesperson and a member of the national board of trustees.
A couple weeks before the Miss T.E.E.N. pageant, I had a huge scare that shook me to the core. Anoka is considered a tornado alley. Our high school football team was the Anoka Tornadoes, and we had the Tornado marching band. I’d never experienced one in my life, but my father had talked about two very close calls when he was a child. In one instance, he was driving with his father and brother, and his father slammed on the brakes, pulled the kids out of the car, and ran down into a ditch by the side of the road. Then he lay down on top of them, shielding them with his body. Miraculously, they were unhurt.
On July 3, 1983, my mother and brothers had gone to a tennis match in Saint Paul, and Kris and I were alone in the house with Dad. We had just come home from church. It was a very heavy, humid day, and I looked out over the river and there was a green haze.
Kris and I were sitting at the kitchen table when my ears started hurting. There was terrible pressure. (My ears were always extremely sensitive to climatic changes.) I went upstairs to tell Dad, and he was standing at the big picture window looking out. The wind had started to kick up, and Dad was staring at the pontoon and the speedboat.
“My ears are killing me,” I cried.
“It’s okay,” he said, and then his next breath was a shout: “Run!” I turned and raced down the stairs, hearing that noise people always talk about, like a train coming through.
Dad grabbed Kris and closed the back door, which was whipping in the wind. We headed for the tornado room under the stairs going down to the basement, and the three of us huddled there. It was over almost instantly—literally seconds. We stayed crouched in the tornado room for about ten minutes. Dad told us to wait and he went to take a look.
When he returned, there were tears running down his cheeks. “There is a lot of damage to the house,” he said.
We staggered back upstairs. Twenty-eight trees were down on our property. The pontoon, which was a very large boat, had flown up over the high bank and landed in the neighbor’s garden, mere feet from their house. Our windows were blown out. In my room I found a piece of roofing from a house across the river. It was the scariest experience of my life. And Mom and my brothers missed the whole thing.
We relocated for a few days, and I got myself together to keep preparing for the pageant. It was my secret, and the weekend I snuck off to compete, I didn’t even tell my friends. It’s funny now that I thought I could keep it from them. What if I won? I kept it a secret because I wasn’t a “pageant person”—or at least I didn’t want anyone to think I was. I knew it wasn’t a beauty pageant, but I’m pretty sure that’s what everybody thought.
I wore my prom dress, played the violin, and I did win. To my great humiliation, on the first day of school after the summer, the principal came on over the loudspeaker: “Big congratulations go out to Gretchen Carlson, our new Miss Minnesota T.E.E.N.!” Everyone stared at me gaping—Whatttt? I blushed furiously.
The national competition was scheduled for Albuquerque in December. Now I was in full competitive mode. I thought I had a good chance of winning the national title, mostly because people kept telling me I did. When I got down to Albuquerque, I heard from many people that I was certain to win—and I believed them.
When I came in first runner-up, I admit I was devastated.
One of the judges approached my parents and me after the competition. Not noticing how shattered I was, he said he was disappointed I didn’t win. He told me I should try and turn the loss into something positive, and it was good advice. I didn’t really hear him right away. I went up to the hotel room and cried my eyes out. I so didn’t like to lose. As my dad always described my behavior that night, “She got her nose bent out of shape.” It was true. Later, I thought about what the judge had said and wondered how I could think of my loss in a positive way.
It wasn’t the first time I had to seriously consider how to make something out of failure. I’d lost competitions before, and I knew about losing. Maybe this one hit me especially hard because I had taken a risk outside my comfort zone and it hadn’t paid off. Would my failure make me less inclined to take risks in the future? I was determined not to let that happen. My grandfather used to tell me that you need failure in your life to succeed, and I’d never really understood what he meant. But now I was starting to. I decided right then that I was going to keep pushing myself out of that box, keep taking risks. If I failed, I’d pick myself up and work harder.
Even with losing the competition, my senior year of high school was pretty great. I was blossoming. That’s when I started dating Kurt Larson, who I would continue to date on and off for the next six years. Kurt was three years older. He was drop-dead gorgeous, but what I really appreciated was his personality. He was easygoing, incredibly nice, and very fun to be with. He represented relaxation for me. I sometimes wished I could be more like him and just roll with the punches. Most amazing, Kurt put up with all the restrictions on my time. He was so good-natured about it. And he was supportive during those times when I was stressed out.
Molly was dating Kurt’s best friend, and we all went to the senior prom together. When we rode down the escalator with these two “older men,” the principal and teachers who were chaperoning were alarmed. I heard one of them say, “Uh-oh.” We all got a kick out of that.
I was still searching for a place in the world that would allow me to stretch my abilities beyond music. And that search aligned with making a decision about college. I never thought seriously about going to Juilliard, but other schools had strong music programs. I had earned a scholarship to the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, so that was a possibility. Mostly I was drawn to a top-of-the-line liberal arts college, where I could stretch my brain, not my violin fingers. In particular, I was interested in Stanford and Yale. I figured I could still play, and then if I decided to pursue music later it would be an option.
My parents were pushing Yale because it was close to New York City and Juilliard, and they thought it might inspire me to keep my music interests alive. But when I visited New Haven, Connecticut, I wasn’t impressed. It was raining, and the kids who took me on a tour said all they did was study. On the other hand, Stanford in Northern California was warm and sunny, with kids walking around in shorts even though it was February. That’s where I wanted to go.
I agonized over the decision, and I knew the direction my parents were pushing me in. I remember we all put our choices in envelopes. I opened theirs. Yale. Yale. I opened mine. Stanford.
My heart sank at the realization of how much they wanted me to go to Yale—and how much I wanted to go to Stanford.
In the spring of my senior year, I finally chose Stanford. I almost missed the acceptance deadline—we even had to call the postmaster to come in and stamp the envelope after hours.
At Stanford I didn’t have to select a major until I was a junior, but I thought about it constantly. The whole world was suddenly open to me. What would I be? I was interested in so many things. I changed my major in my mind a million times. I thought about communications, but Stanford didn’t have a top program. I thought about pre-med—Stanford called it “Human Biology,” or “Hum-Bio.” I even thought about industrial engineering. For a while I was thinking about business school, but after I took a class in accounting I was surprised at how much I hated it. I knew one thing: I wanted to express my personality in whatever I did.
Eventually, a friend suggested majoring in organizational behavior, and that intrigued me. It was a hot topic in the 1980s, and it would set me up to be a business consultant. I was attracted to the idea of being a problem solver and working with people to fix their companies. Organizational behavior was the major I eventually settled on, with a plan to go on to law school and become a corporate attorney.
But that was later. In the beginning, Stanford represented only one thing for me—escape. While other freshmen were embarking on the greatest challenge of their lives, I viewed college as a way to get away from the burdens imposed by my talent.
• • •
Stanford was freedom. Nobody knew who I was or that I played the violin. I was doing everything in my power to be anonymous.
I had promised my parents I’d continue studying music, but it was a promise I didn’t keep. Two weeks after I arrived, I auditioned for a teacher at the music school, playing the last page of Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso, by Camille Saint-Saëns. When I finished, I looked up to find him staring at me dumbfounded. “Why have I not heard of you?” he finally asked. I shrugged, not answering. He couldn’t have known how much I didn’t want to be there. “I think we can take you on!” he said enthusiastically. I did take a class halfheartedly, but after that I put my violin in a locker at the music school and there it stayed for the whole year. I didn’t take lessons or play in the orchestra. It may seem strange that I could so readily set aside music, which had been my great love, but my state of mind was cloudy. It felt like pressure, not joy.
As always, I was serious about my grades, and I studied hard, but then I stumbled with academics too. It was a class called Great Works, and my teacher just didn’t like me. I don’t even know why, because I read every book, while some of my classmates never cracked a page. Plato, Dante, the Iliad—the works. There were only eight of us in a class and we sat around a big table, and no matter what I did, this teacher was very chilly toward me. I could feel her disapproval, and I wasn’t imagining it. Worse still, she gave me a C for the class. I’d never had a C in my life, and I was devastated. I didn’t think I deserved it, although in hindsight it’s possible that I did, and I was just so used to getting perfect grades that I was blind to my own academic flaws. Whatever the truth, that C brought down my GPA for the rest of my college career. I was used to getting all As, and I worked my fool head off for them, and that C hurt me. In the coming years I killed myself to maintain a 3.7 or 3.8, but that stupid C was like a drag on perfection. I had to accept at the very beginning of my college life that 4.0 was not attainable.
I didn’t appreciate it at the time, but there was a lesson buried in this experience. Life was not about perfection. Arbitrary events and people could come along and change your trajectory. I had to come to terms with the fact that life wasn’t a series of perfect moves, that working hard was important, but that sometimes it didn’t create the desired result. I had to figure out how to seize the day in the face of this reality.
Even with this setback, I was doing well in my studies. I had always been a good student, and during high school I’d had my music too. Now I had nothing to worry about except going to class, which caused my mother a great deal of angst. She thought I was slacking off because I wasn’t performing in the orchestra or doing volunteer work or stretching myself in other ways. Dad disagreed, telling her to let me be—that just going to classes was challenging enough. I didn’t say so, but Mom was right. I was used to doing so many things at once. It was unusual for me to have just one thing to focus on. That was the way I wanted it, though. The truth is, I was tired. I needed the break.
Mom didn’t stop worrying, though, and she was still trying to find ways to keep my music going. She believed my talent should be showcased. So she arranged for me to do a big recital in Minnesota after my freshman summer and right before I started my sophomore year. It wasn’t exactly that I was being forced to do the recital, but my parents did pull the “we’re paying for college” card.
I had been looking forward to the summer of my freshman year. I’d found my first summer job outside my dad’s dealership, as a waitress in an Italian restaurant at the mall. It was a lousy job, but I got it on my own. But my parents made me quit after three weeks to practice for the recital.
Putting together a whole recital was very challenging. It was something all great young artists did as a way of co
ming into their own. I thought I put together a pretty impressive program, even though my heart wasn’t 100 percent in it. I did nothing but practice that summer, and I barely saw Kurt. I was relieved when the day of the recital came and went. But I overheard the man running the audio say he didn’t think I’d performed that well. Who was he to judge? His stinging remark really hurt.
My mother kept strategizing about ways to put musical opportunities in front of me, and that’s how the idea of the Miss America pageant came up at the end of my junior year. I’d been happy at Stanford, and I was excelling. I was lucky enough to spend the spring quarter at Oxford, and before I left for England I learned that I’d also been accepted to an international business course through Georgetown University that would allow me to stay at Oxford for the summer.
Oxford was for me the quintessential learning experience. My classes were so different than Stanford’s. They weren’t lectures, they were tutorials where you got to work one-on-one with a professor. You could choose your topic, and I decided to take on a challenge and study twentieth-century women’s literature, a subject I knew nothing about.
For my first class I went to the professor’s house and we sat in her tiny study and read Virginia Woolf and discussed her novels. I was intimidated at first, because the spotlight was completely on me and my ability to make sense of the material. But it was also exciting and felt like a very adult learning experience.
The workload was demanding, and I didn’t have a lot of free time. There was a pub down the street from our dorm, and they stopped serving drinks at 11:00 p.m. So we’d study like crazy until about 10:00 and then make a mad dash down to the White Horse Pub. I don’t drink beer, so I’d order alcoholic cider, called scrumpy cider. As it got close to 11:00, we’d order extra drinks and sit there talking and drinking.
May Day was a big celebratory event in England. We drank Pimm’s liqueur mixed with ginger ale, and it was awful, but we didn’t care. We stayed up all night, dancing in the streets and watching the crew races and eating scones with jelly and whipped cream.
Getting Real Page 7