Abstract
Beverly Irene Nanes begins Part 1 of her interview by sharing some general family background, her reasons for attending Pembroke College, and her first impressions of the campus. She explains that she had no preconceptions about what she wanted to do after graduation and that her economics concentration was enlightening.
Nanes describes living in a dormitory and interacting with male students on campus, and the rules that were associated with both of those aspects of Pembroke. She also recalls working in the economics department during the summer before her senior year and struggling to decide whether she should pursue graduate school.
Nanes says that Pembroke prepared her for her first job at IBM, both intellectually and as a woman, and she details her experience there. Additionally, she shares the difficult her mother had with Nanes’ choice to pursue a career and not have children. She concludes Part 1 with a conversation about post-graduation marriages.
Part 2 is only ten minutes long. In it, Nanes discusses her own marriage, how she met her husband, and why they decided to marry. She concludes the interview by summarizing the reasons why she loved her time at Pembroke.
Part 1
Part 2
Recorded on January 11, 1986 in Walnut Creek, CA
Interviewed by Elizabeth Bernstein
Suggested Chicago style citation: Nanes, Beverly Irene. Interview. By Elizabeth Bernstein. Pembroke Center Oral History Project, Brown University. January 11, 1986.
Biography
Beverly Irene Nanes grew up in Boston with her parents and younger sister. With constant encouragement from her parents to attend university, Nanes decided to attend Pembroke College. She graduated in 1963 with a degree in economics and went on to hold system analyst positions at IBM and Honeywell. She met her husband at a sewing class in Cambridge and they moved to California together a few years later.