Lives in contrast

THE BALTIMORE SUN

Endlessly characterized as brimming with disposable income and determined to remain young, America's 78 million baby boomers are becoming more diverse as they age. In 2007, the oldest boomers, born in 1946, will turn 61. The youngest, born in 1964, will turn 43.

The stories of two Baltimore-area boomers, Yvonne Christie and Mary Murphy, reveal the range of experiences that define and also separate the first and last members of this generation, especially the women.

Christie, a retired homemaker, was born Jan. 1, 1946. Murphy, an assistant state's attorney for Howard County, was born Dec. 30, 1964. When Murphy was born, Christie was already working as a Teletype operator, a job she would leave when her first child was born.

Although these boomers' lives have been very different, both are mothers of two children and they also share a skepticism about just how they fit into the country's biggest generation.

01.01.1946

Yvonne Christie

A lifelong Baltimorean until two years ago, Yvonne Newman Christie came of age at a time when teens danced on the Buddy Deane Show and young women made sure to wear white gloves on job interviews. She did both. Now she and Thomas Christie, her husband of 40 years, visit their old Hamilton neighborhood from their home in Ocean Pines, right across the bay from Ocean City. Yvonne lived on the same street, Birchwood Avenue in Northeast Baltimore, for almost 50 years; first at her parents' home, then at the house she and Thomas bought two doors up the street, where their younger son lives now.

When Christie was born, Yvonne de Carlo was a glamorous young starlet who left an impression in baby names. Now, as Christie, a retired homemaker, looks over many satisfactions -- including a multi-generational childhood she calls "One Big Happy," her two sons, and years as a stay-at-home mother -- the conversation keeps returning to dancing. Glamorous dancing.

Christie started turning heads on the dance floor as a teen. In the 1960s, she and her cousin Charles appeared on the Buddy Deane Show, the local show that inspired Hairspray. She met her husband on the dance floor of Sweeney's bar in Waverly in December 1965. Despite his skepticism about her white go-go boots, they were married the following year. During the 1970s, the couple took full advantage of the disco years, spending Saturday and sometimes Wednesday nights at such clubs as Stars and Girard's, a club Christie calls "our Studio 54."

Now the Christies dance at the Ocean Club in Ocean City's Clarion Hotel -- reserving the same floor-side table every Saturday with their friends Buck and Barbara Godwin. When the couple travel, they choose cruises that offer dancing.

Christie says she doesn't much identify with the Woodstock, war-protesting, bra-burning segment of her generation. As a young woman, she liked Elvis Presley, and her beehive hairdo. She didn't learn to drive a car -- neither her mother nor grandmother ever drove -- until 1972, two years after her first child was born.

College wasn't in the picture. In 1964, after Mergenthaler High School, Christie went straight to work as a Teletype operator for Chesapeake & Potomac Telephone Co., a job she had begun

before graduation. Working for six years, this would be her only job outside the home. One of her most vivid memories, she says, was working during the 1968 riot that followed the assassination of Martin Luther King, when National Guard troops surrounded the C&P; building.

Although she's reluctant to discuss politics and current issues, she says she used to feel defensive when people asked her what she "did."

"In the '70s, around when the boys were first born, you almost felt like you didn't want to say you were a stay-at-home mom because people would look down their noses at you," she says. "I lived through the real women's lib thing and you were almost expected to say you worked somewhere. I think today's young mothers are reverting back to that way (staying at home) -- at least they don't have to feel ashamed to say so."

Christie also worked as a bookkeeper for Christie Home Improvement, the business her husband started in the early 1970s. And, a passionate cat lover, she has volunteered with Animal Rescue, cleaning cages and litter boxes and tending to animals.

"When I hear stories on the news about abusing animals, it just about breaks my heart," she says. "If I ever won the lottery, I would open some sort of sanctuary."

One aspect of boomerhood that Christie has embraced is fitness. In addition to dancing, she bowled for decades in duckpin leagues. And she was an early disciple of fitness goddesses Jacki Sorenson (aerobic dancing) and Judi Missett (Jazzercise).

Now she takes an aerobic dance class three times a week in the Ocean City recreation center and walks with Thomas, 67, at least an hour every day. Although he had his hip replaced last May, he was back on the dance floor six weeks later.

"I held a picture of my parents' 40th anniversary in 1985 next to a picture of our 40th taken last year. It almost looks as if my mother is twice the age as me -- and I'm the same age now that she was then," Christie says. "It seems this generation is more into eating properly and fitness and traveling. We're more outgoing."

Most significant historic event within your lifetime John F. Kennedy's assassination

Favorite music / artist

Michael Jackson

Favorite authors and / or book Nora Roberts, Mary Higgins Clark, James Patterson

Favorite movie West Side Story and Sound of Music

Most recent birthday celebration Welcoming 2007 and her 61st year at a gala New Year's Eve dance at the Ocean Club

Dream trip Mediterranean cruise

Favorite current TV show American Idol and any dancing shows

Favorite old TV show Mickey Mouse Club: "I liked Annette, I thought she was so cute."

12.30.1964

Mary Murphy

When Mary Murphy, assistant state's attorney for Howard County, considers her membership in the baby boom generation, she's often puzzled. With 4-year-old twins and a challenging career, the 42-year-old attorney often feels closer to Generation X -- many of the children born to the first wave of boomers -- than the boomers themselves.

"My impression is that they're all older than I am," she says. "Many of them had their families when they were much younger and some are enjoying their first grandchildren. Now they're winding down and getting ready to retire. And I'm so far from that! The biggest thing that surprises me is that I'm still categorized with them.

"Another perception is that boomers have worked very hard. It's the generation that broke through some thresholds for the rest of us, particularly when we're talking about the women of the generation."

Murphy's story reflects the concerns and triumphs of older boomers' activism. Employed in the state's attorney's office since 1991, the prosecutor now tackles the additional challenges of working motherhood.

Born in New Jersey, Murphy settled in Columbia with her parents when she was 6. When they divorced, she moved to Towson with her mother and became a member of the sixth co-ed high school class at McDonogh School. She received a political science degree at Wheaton College in Massachusetts and a law degree from Georgetown University in 1989.

"There was never a question of whether I'd go to college," she says. "For my classmates and myself, it was merely about where you would go and what you were going to do."

As an only child, Murphy says her family had the largest influence on her life. She paid close attention as her college-educated mother, Virginia Stacey, started working as a newly single woman in her early 30s. Going into business with another woman, Stacey opened a store selling Irish clothing and products and eventually returned to school, earning a master's degree in social work. She now works at Stella Maris Hospice.

Murphy says she inherited her interest in community service from both parents and began volunteering for such organizations as the Special Olympics in high school. Before her daughters were born in 2002, she was president of the board of the National Kidney Foundation of Maryland and remains a member of the advisory board.

Although she originally considered practicing family law, she loves working in criminal justice.

"Right now it's particularly challenging because I deal with a lot of the child abuse and sex offender cases and, in the era of CSI and the technology, there is a desire by the jurors to see the kind of DNA and fingerprints that show up on an hourlong TV program. But with child abuse or sex abuse that may have happened years ago, there might not even be a picture of the room it took place in. So my job is to develop the evidence through testimony.

"The best part is making sure a dangerous person isn't on the streets ... and also meeting wonderful people involved in a case, although you may meet them at a really bad time in their lives. ... I always wanted to be in a career where I could help people or feel I was doing something productive."

While Murphy's mother was 23 when she was born, Murphy was almost 35 when she married her husband, a construction manager. They live in Columbia.

"My work was my life until I met my husband, married and had a family," she says. "I'm often torn in terms of how much time I spend at work, but I've become a lot more efficient and worked on my time management skills to try to get as much done as I can while I'm here. Sometimes I take things home to do when the kids are in bed."

What does she do to relax?

Reading is a favorite pastime, she says, although she has scant time these days. She enjoys trying out recipes by the Barefoot Contessa and watching TV celebrity cook Rachael Ray. And she loves all things Irish that keep her connected to her family's roots. That's why, she says, she went along with an old boomer trend that has fallen somewhat out of vogue: Mary Murphy has kept her maiden name.

Most significant historic event within your lifetime Sept. 11 attacks

Favorite music / artist Irish fiddler Eileen Ivers

Favorite authors and / or book Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom

Favorite movie Charlotte's Web

Most recent birthday celebration Outing with her family to see

Charlotte's Web, followed by dinner at Nordstrom's cafe

Dream trip Traveling around Europe

Favorite current TV show Grey's Anatomy

Favorite old TV show The Waltons

linell.smith@baltsun.com

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