A class act: father and daughter at Goucher
Twenty years ago, no one would have heard of a father and daughter attending Goucher College. Today, Donald and Barbara Gabriel are breaking new ground at the once all-female institution.
"When I was an undergraduate at College Park in the '60s, I was used to thinking of Goucher as an all-women's school," says Mr. Gabriel, a Baltimore native.
Founded in 1885, Goucher was originally called the Woman's College of Baltimore City. It stayed a single-sex school until 1986. The Continuing Studies program, which Mr. Gabriel attends, started in 1977 and always accepted men. But this is the first time that a father and daughter have attended the school together.
"I never thought I'd be going to the same school as my dad," Barbara, 21, says. "Especially not Goucher."
BAt 55, Mr. Gabriel is starting a program in historic preservation. He takes a night class at Goucher once a week to help him in his job as a real-estate appraiser. His daughter, a senior English major, takes courses in Chaucer and Shakespeare during the day.
"She'll be out before I am," Mr. Gabriel says. But he's determined to stick to the books for a year and a half, until he gets his certificate. "I just enjoy the classroom environment," he says.
"I've no doubt he'll ace his classes," Barbara says. "He's very motivated." Mr. Gabriel holds bachelor's, master's, and law degrees, and the Goucher program will give him his second Continuing Studies certificate.
"My intentions are to have dinner in the dining hall with Barb," Mr. Gabriel says. "That is, whenever I can get her permission."
Stacey Crown co-owns a marine supply distribution company, but she can't even go to a boating supply store for a piece of rope and be taken seriously.
"Boating is a male-dominated industry and sport," explains the 25-year-old Baltimore resident.
At work -- where she is often dismissed as her male business partner's secretary or family member -- Ms. Crown gets lots of phone calls from women about her company's wood finish for boats.
"I realized a large market of women wasn't really being addressed," she says. "So, I decided to do something about it, and the National Association for Nautical Women was born."
She formed the organization as a division of her company, Boatek, in 1993. With the help of her partner, Harry Sarazin, and Amy Halsted, a volunteer in Annapolis who does marketing and promotion for the organization, Ms. Crown began actively recruiting members in February.
The group now has about 200 members. They include sailors and power-boaters and range in age from 7 to 66.
Members pay $35 annually, $5 of which goes to a woman's group involved in boating.
"One of the main goals of the organization is for women to feel more appreciated as customers -- for their purchasing power to be recognized," said Ms. Crown.
Membership perks include commercial discounts from 150 marine companies; a glossy, quarterly magazine, Nautical Woman; access to a computer online service for boating information and interactive "chat"; and free crew exchange advertisements in the magazine.
The association "isn't a quick fix," she says. "But even if women are able to feel more comfortable going to a marina, we've accomplished something.
"Women call us to thank us all the time. They all thought they were the only women out there boating."
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Laura Barnhardt