September 4, 2024 • 33 mins
This week’s guest holds an extra special place in Emily’s heart. Emily met Nancy Goldberg when she was nine years old at the Belvoir Terrace Summer Girls Performing Arts Camp. As Owner and Director Emeritus, Nancy has dedicated her life to enriching and educating young girls. In this Candid Convo, Nancy reflects on her love for teaching from a young age; her own experiences with summer camps growing up; and launching a renowned arts program for people with Williams Syndrome. She also offers a powerful message on morality and empathy that’s much needed in today’s busy world.
She Pivots was created by host Emily Tisch Sussman to highlight women, their stories, and how their pivot became their success. To learn more about Nancy, follow us on Instagram @ShePivotsThePodcast or visit shepivotsthepodcast.com.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're on Mike one. Yep, Okay, that's fine. Leap. That
looks good. We are we are recording. That's exciting for me.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Welcome back to she Pivots. I'm your host, Emily Tish Sussman.
Happy Wednesday, she Pivots listeners for today's candid Convo. I'm
excited to share my conversation with the woman who embodies
summer for me, the owner of Camp Belvoir Terras, Nancy Goldberg.
(00:39):
I remember when I met Nancy when I was just nine,
and I had those excited but gittery nerves that you
get before going to your first ever sleepaway camp. And
little did I know that I would end up spending
almost seventeen years there, both as a camper, then as
a part time counselor, and then eventually on senior staff
as a counselor. I was even a counselor when I
(00:59):
was in law school. When I look at the different
phases of my career now, I feel like I can
point back to different pieces of my experience as a
camper and my experience in the arts and how they
set me up for it. And I think about running
campaign teams, I learned leadership skills and coalition building a camp.
When I think about being on TV as a political commentator,
(01:19):
I can draw that back to being in.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Theater, even if I wasn't that good.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
And now that I'm trying to find this balance between
the personal and the professional, I feel like the last
time I really felt like that alignment was when I
was at camp. I could be quote professional when I
was in my classes, but I could also be really
silly and just have fun and let loose and not
worry about the way to the world. And Nancy was
the catalyst for all of it. Belvoir Terras opened in
(01:46):
nineteen fifty four by Nancy's mother as a way of
giving Nancy's sister a camp that wasn't centered around sports
or activities, but rather visual and performing arts. Nancy did
love the camp, but she always had her heart set
on English. I went to study education at Bridmore College
and later went on to receive her Masters of Education
from Harvard. From there, Nancy taught English in Newton, Massachusetts
(02:08):
public school system, allowing her to spend her summers at Belvoir.
In the nineteen eighties, she was the manager for the
children's dance program at Step Studio in New York City. Yes,
that famous step studio. Nancy is a true delight and
has been incredibly informative in my life. And I'm so
honored that I'm able to share her story when she
has been so impactful in mine. Nancy Goldberg, you are
(02:35):
one of the longest relationships in my life. I met
you when I was nine years old. You are the
owner of Camp Belvart Harris for girls. That's true, but
I want to hear about you. How old are you, Nancy,
I'm eighty seven years old. When I was in the
eighth grade at the Runkles School, small elementary school in Brookline,
(02:58):
not far from my home Lundin Road, I was told
by the English teacher that I would be an English
teacher when I grew up, and I thought that was
very unusual that a teacher would say what a student
who was I thought average would become in later years.
(03:19):
But in fact that's the truth. I went to Brinmarck College.
I went from uncle school to a small group of
very smart kids at Brooklyn High School. I had a
class of over a thousand, but we had a class
of thirty or so students who were put in a
special group. We traveled together from one teacher to another.
(03:42):
We were the top of the line academically according to
the elementary schools that we came from, and I found
that I had to work very hard to keep in
that group. And I wanted to stay in the group
because I knew we were getting the best teachers and
the most interesting assignments. And so I worked very hard
as a ninth grader through high school, and at the
(04:04):
end of high school, I had chosen a girl's private
college because I had been at a girls camp tap
a Wingo for ten years.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
So did you ever have visions of doing anything other
than being a teacher and working at the camp. Did
you pursue other interests or you were always working towards
that goal, the combined goal of teaching. I think that
I was always interested in being a teacher. I think
that eighth grade teacher was right that I liked to
(04:34):
be working with children, and I liked to be planning
a lesson and I like to see how the lesson
goes and what impact it has on kids. Can we
back up a little bit? Can you tell me about
your parents? My mother was a dancing teacher. She danced.
She's open to dancing school when she was sixteen years
(04:54):
old because she wanted to go to college, and she
knew if she wanted to go to college, she had
to pay the way. So she decided to become dancing
teacher as she was a strong ballet dancer, and she
opened his studio and immediately had a huge crowd, and
she ran that business through her four years at Bum's College.
(05:15):
It paid for her college, her teaching of dance, and
then she married my father who was a butcher and
he owned a supermarket that wasn't his family and he
loved it. She tried to get him out of the butcher,
but he loved what he did. He loved being in
(05:37):
the store. He liked cutting the meat, he liked talking
to the clients, he liked having special sales. And it
was during the Second World War. He helped people to eat,
even if I didn't have the right coupons he kept.
He really felt his work was important in feeding people
in the Dorchester community. And my mother never did audish,
(06:00):
cleaned or even cooked. She always had an Irish girl
who did the household job. So my mother continued to
teach dancing and she was also active in bringing us
up She took us to different schools, and she was
very active in the PTA. She was a girl Sprownie
leader and then she was a Girl Scout leader, very
(06:21):
involved in a family.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
She became a business owner, I mean apparently of the
dance school at sixteen, but she started the Camp Belvoir
Terrorists and bought this incredible property and incredible mansion at
a time when not very many women owned businesses and
founded businesses.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
At Tapa Wingo, the woman who ran the camp at
ms multiple sclerosis, and her husband was trying to run
the camp and he was crippled polio years ago. He
had high time getting around. It was he didn't really
know anything about tap So my mother came up and
helped at tap A Wingo. So she got her ants
(07:00):
in camping at Tampa Wingo just because of the health
of the woman who ran the camp. It was just
circumstantial that she pitched in when she was needed to
do it, and she enjoyed that. How old were you
were you a camper there? I was a camper from
the time I was eight to the time I was sixteen,
and we had horseback riding, which I did every day
(07:21):
for all the years I was at Tampa Wingo and
we had canoe trips, we had mountain climbing, We had
an art department, strong art department. In fact, the woman
who was running that art department was the first program
director at Belvoir Terrace when we opened it, and my
sister was also a camper there. My sister never did anything.
She didn't go in the water there because she said
(07:42):
there were leeches in the shallow end, which is where
she would have to start swimming. She didn't play any
of the games that they had. She wouldn't get anywhere
near a horse. But they didn't have, you know, the
theater stuff was really my mother thought it was really
too when she was there. She didn't see anything that
she really liked, and she saw that my sister was
there and she wasn't getting anything out of it. I
was getting canoe trips and mountain trips and horseback riding,
(08:05):
and I was doing fine there. But my sister didn't
do anything. And she said, there have to be girls
like Eleanor who need another place. And she started looking
for camps in Maine and she looked at a lot
of different places. I was in Sweden, Maine, which was
an hour from anything, and I mean anything. It was
three hours to the hospital. I had my appendix out
(08:27):
in Maine, and I rode for three hours in a
car and I thought it was going to die. It
was in such pain. But she didn't find anything that
she liked in Maine at all. She must have looked
at ten different sites that were already camps, and she
decided there wasn't enough things happening there, and there wasn't
a decent hospital near any of those places. And she
(08:47):
looked Lenox and Stockbridge and Great Barrington. She looked at
all these towns to see if there was something that
could accommodate what she wanted. What she wanted was housing, swimming,
possibly tennis, and she wanted to have at least two
dancing studios. And she needed someplace that she could have theater,
and she needed a building that we could have music,
(09:09):
because you can't have dancing without music, and we can't
have you can't have one eye without the other one, really,
and so she decided to have all the outside dance
music in theater and she just needed a place that
would accommodate that and would appeal to her. And she
said she looked at one dump after another. This is
an incredible historic property and historic building. How did she
(09:29):
poppen upon? What she did is she didn't find anything
made in the Hampshire of a monk that she liked. Anyway,
there wasn't anything that struck her fancy. Then somebody showed
her this building and that showed her the They said
there was flowers, fancy flowers under the cover that was
on the small pool. So she didn't know there was
any water here. But she could see right away that
(09:52):
that in the adjacent buildings to the to the gatehouse
there were two dancing studios because there was a bar
that had carriages in it still in it, and then
one barn that had stalls for horses. So she saw
that right away, and she said, all I have to
do is stoop those take those that stuff out of
(10:12):
there and put in a dance floor, and I'm set
to go to big dancing studios. But anyway, yeah, a
minute she saw this, she knew this was right for her.
She liked the way the house looked, and she felt
that there was room in the bedrooms to house the campers,
and the dining room looked big enough. It wasn't, but
she thought It did looked big enough, and the kitchen
(10:33):
was fine. It was a real commercial kitchen already. But
it was the dancing studios that the two's places adjacent
to the gatehouse. There were horse equipment to the lower
studio and stalls, and the upper studio had carriages. How
did she so we're talking about if this is the
seventieth anniversary of the camp, we're talking about nineteen fifty
(10:56):
three fifty four setting it up. It was very difficul
for women to start businesses at that time. Access capital,
file paper were The biggest problem was buying the property.
They wouldn't let my mother buy it or finance it.
But my father signed for it, and he never had
anything to do with the camp. It was my mother's camp.
He bought the camp for my mother, but he paid
(11:17):
cash for the mostly cash for the buildings, and we
bought them from a company that had never had owned
it for three years but never been here. They were
a company that were planning to store papers in the
basement of this house because it was a safe location
during what was after the second word ward was the
potential war? Was there? I feel like that was very
(11:41):
forward culturally for both your mother to be envisioning herself
as the business owner and operator at the time when
many women were not. Oh. Yes, and of your father
to be supporting her in it was that a dynamic
that you felt as a child. Yes, I felt that
my mother was the brains of the outfit, and my
father did the work. And my father was very generous
(12:03):
and very supportive of the three of us and three
women in the family, and he always wanted what was
the best for us. And my mother really wanted to
do this, and my sister was going to be benefiting
from it greatly, and I was excited about it too.
She asked me if I would come and work, and
because I was a person who knew about camp, and
(12:25):
I said, of course. It was really interested me going
along with my career of teaching. My idea was that
I would be teaching like in a Newton of Brookline
public school, and then I would come for the summers
to the camp and I would do the paperwork and
stuff or that was necessary for the camp, in addition
to my being an English teacher. And that's factly what happened.
(12:45):
But I knew when she brought the camp. I was
a sophomore at brynmar and she asked me would I
come and be be there full time and be really
involved with the camp, And she said she was taking
a chance, but she would get a director from Tampoline.
We had decided on that and that I would work
and be a counselor and be a teacher and do
(13:06):
whatever has to be done. But anyhow, yeah, my mother
and I were going to run the camp, and my
father just signed the sheep for the bank. So you
graduated Bryn Martin. I graduated Brym MAARM. By that time,
I was already committed to Harvard. When I was a
junior at college, I applied to graduate school and at
Harvard to a summer program that they run in Newton
(13:27):
public schools. And I was in a hurry to get
a teaching certificate because I had a boyfriend that I
thought was going to marry me. It didn't happen, but anyway,
and he was moving to Harvard Medical School, and I thought,
you know, I better get on the stick and see
if I can get a teaching job to help this guy.
So I applied to Harvard when I was a junior,
and they rejected me because he had to be a
(13:47):
college graduate to go to this program. So I talked
to my advisor of bryn Maher and she said, go
and see the president. They'll fix this view. So I
went to see the president of bryn Mars, Katherine McBride
at the time. I said to her, I really want
to go to Harvard this year because I want to
be certified to teach the following year. So the president
(14:08):
called up the president of Harvard and she said, this
is Sally McBride calling from Bryn Marr. You made a mistake.
This girl needs to go to Britain to Harvard this summer,
and I guarantee that she can do the work and
will be a plus. She's got a lot of years
of camping experience working with children. She's going to be
more skilled at working with children than the other people
(14:29):
who come just out of college from Vasser and bryn
Maher and Radcliffe and Smith. That's who's there. The women
that were there were all from the IVY schools and
the men the same. It was a co ed program,
but whoever they were, and they were all year older
than me, and nobody had as much experience with kids
as me. But Habrid was very interesting to me because
(14:54):
the president of bryn maher had called the head of
the School of Education. When he met me. He was very,
very observant, and he made a lot of positive work
with me. I was sort of special because I was
a year ahead, and I think it was worked out
(15:14):
very well for me at Harvard. I thought that the
program at Harvard and the School of Education was solid,
but I went to I got a job right away
based on the summer program. When I graduated from Vermont,
Newton and Brookline were both fighting over me. The people
at Harvard wanted me to stay in the Harvard Newton
program and to stay in Newton, and the Newton High
School hired me immediately. They were fighting over me. I
(15:35):
don't believe it. I was worried that I wouldn't get
a job, and both towns that had good public schools
were interested in me as a teacher, and I took
the first year job and many jobs thereafter. In the
Newton public system, you always stayed in Newton. I always
stayed in Newton, and I went to Bethesda for a
(15:56):
few years. In between, I went to DC. My husband
was and then I aged the Research Institute, and then
he was at Georgetown, so I lived in Bethesda and
I lived in Georgetown. Both of my daughters were born
in DC. So, okay, so you were just in DC
for a couple of years, and then did you go
back to Boston to Newton. Yes, we went back, and
(16:17):
this time we went to Newton, not Procline, and we
purchased a house. My mother helped us. We purchased a
house on West Newton Hill, which turned out to be
very close to Newton North, and the head of the
English department hired me right away. Harvard sent me there
and they hired me right away. And the first year
(16:39):
I was teaching was a really successful year for me.
There were four of us on the top of building,
one the top floor of fourth floor of building, one
very old building, and I had the old art room.
It had skylights, it was a gorgeous room. And I
had four classes, and there were three other English teachers
on the floor, but they had all finished the degree
(17:00):
except for me. I had only done two summers. I
hadn't done a year at all. But then I took
a year off eventually and finished the degree. So I
think that, yeah, I think teaching you can either teach
people or you can't teach people. I think that I
was good at planning lessons and I was good at
(17:21):
letting the lessons fly if something came up that seemed
more pertinent at the moment. And I think that all
my experience at camping really made a difference to my
career as a teacher. When we first were at Harvard
Newton the first summer I was there, the other people
didn't know anything about planning ahead and letting the plant go,
(17:43):
And that seemed to me what camping is about. You
have to know what you're doing when the kids are
coming there, but when the kids get there, it may
not be what you do. You may have to go
with something else that they introduce.
Speaker 2 (17:59):
So when we come back, Nancy talks about her two
daughters and the difficulties behind her marriage to her ex husband. Plus,
Nancy talks about how she was instrumental in starting Steps
dance studio. Yes, that Step studio stay tuned.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
So when you married and had kids, did your husband
and kids come with you to Belvoar when you were
working here the first few summers, I had a babysitter.
I lived in a cottage, and my husband went to
his job, which was in bust and at the time
came up occasionally, but my girls were with me and
I had a babysitter, and I'm still in touch with
(18:39):
that babysitter. She's from the Midwest and her husband just
died this past year, but she has three children and
they're all doing well, and she's doing well. She and
I are still in touch. So she came for two summers, Donna,
and she loved it here, and she just took care
of the kids and took them around a different names activities,
(19:01):
took them to finger painting and painting, and she let
them watch the dancing. And one was born in April,
the other one was born in June, and they were
both here for some of their lives. Their whole lives,
they've been coming here. He was never happy with what
he had for a job. And I think if men
are unhappy, if men or women are unhappy with their work,
(19:23):
that makes life very difficult for their spouse and their family.
And I think that was the situation in our family,
that he was never happy with his work. As long
as I've known you and and your mother, you always
came across as both very satisfied with your job, but
also very secure well I've been very lucky because I've
(19:45):
always had some sort of interesting career. I did a
few other interesting careers when I first moved to New York.
So somehow I got involved with Step Studio. The way
I got involved is Michelle. She was teaching here in
the summer, needed work, and I got her into LaGuardia
High School. I called the woman there and I talked
(20:08):
her into Michelle. And then Michelle needed an apartment and
I lied on the form that how much money she
was making. She was making three thousand, and I wrote
down thirty thousand. So she got the apartment that she wanted,
and eventually she sold the house that she bought an
apartment at a Brownstone. Eventually she sold the brownstone, made
a fortune. So Michelle is still very friendly with me.
(20:32):
But anyway, somebody told me that they wanted a dancing
school at the Hebrew Art School, and I went to
see the woman there. It was one of the staff
I worked here, had actually taught guitar here. She told
me to go and see this woman. So I went
to see this woman. The woman said she liked to
have a dancing school, and she has these two spaces
that have mirrors and dressing rooms and pianos, and somebody
(20:53):
told her that could be a dancing school. I said,
all right, I'll think about it. If I run a
dancing school, I have to run it. And then Nancy
Pierce went home and she called me and she said, listen,
I have a whole slew of dance students here, and
if you want to open up at the Hebrew d School,
I'm going to bring everybody with me. Michelle and I
are coming and we're bringing all the school kids with us. Yeah,
(21:16):
you're going to have a big business the day you open.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
And Steps was born and has become the most famous
dance studio in New York. When we come back, Nancy
talks about how she started a renowned musical program for
those with a rare genetic condition called William syndrome, and
how not only did she change their lives, but they
changed hers. So tell us a little bit about william
(21:47):
syndrome and how you became acquainted with them.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
There was a man who had a very exceptional Williams child, Gloria,
and he grew up in Pittsfield and he had a
friend who delivered meets here wholesale meat dealer and the
meat dealer told this guy, his friend from high school,
(22:11):
that there was a music camp in Lenox that he served,
and they should come and see whether we would do
something for Gloria because she was playing the piano, the accordion,
and singing opera in a million different languages a musical
theater as well, and she was forty years old, but
she was not able to add six and four and
(22:32):
not able to cross the street by herself because she
couldn't see where the sidewalk ended in the street began.
Gloria's father called me and said, would I consider doing
a program for these Williams people? If he got thirty people,
would I take thirty people like this and give them
music in camp and let them get together and try music,
(22:54):
because he said, they're all musical, but their parents don't
know that and don't believe it, but I can prove it.
So he brought Gloria here to the gatehouse and she
sat down. You know, he sat down, He said, Gloria,
sit down. Gloria sat down. She stayed sill, and then
he said to her, now, Gloria, you stand up and
sing some opera. And she stood up and she's sang
(23:14):
Italian perfectly, and then she said French perfectly, and then
she said English perfectly, and then she did a music
theater number. And then she said to me, is that okay, Nancy?
I said, it's better than okay, Gloria. It's fantastic. It's
absolutely wonderful that you can do all those things, and
(23:37):
you should keep doing them, and you should do them
for people to hear you, and you should do it
for people to know that William syndrome people can do
this kind of thing. And if I run a camp,
we'll collect a lot of William's people and will show
them that they can do what you do if they
work hard. Tell me about how you learned all that.
And she proceeded to tell me that she had all
(24:00):
these lessons and that she practiced every day with a machine.
And you know she's she worked hard to get where
she was getting, but she loved it made her very
very happy. And I said, you made me very happy,
and you make your father made everybody who hears you
happy because it's so beautifully done. Music is a language
(24:21):
that speaks to everybody. So I said to them right
then and there, if they could get twenty five kids,
we were in business, and he said he's sure that
he can get more than twenty five. How many will
I take? How many campers did you have the first
year over thirty between thirty and forty, and the ages
were twelve to forty, with most of them in the middle.
(24:47):
I came as a counselor for that week for probably
five or six years, and one of the things that
struck me is they were so friendly and so loving
and open.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
You know.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
I think these people when they came together for the
first time, some of them had never seen another kid
that looked like them, so they found a population of
people like themselves, so right then and there, that made
a difference to them. And then they did music mostly
all day, and when they walked from place to place.
I don't know if you remember, they always sang and
(25:20):
they always harmonize. A lot of them harmonized. You've got
to put some people on the melody or they don't
do the melody. But they have exceptional gifts, these particular people.
And I think what's really grown out of the Williams
camp that we ran in the college that they're running
now is that they have adjusted to who they are
(25:42):
and they are happy and successful, and most of them
are doing music as a livelihood. It's unbelievable. It's amazing.
So let's get to the college. So you ran the camp.
Sixty minutes ran a piece about the camp, right, Yeah,
sixty minutes ran a piece about the camp, and the
guy at eleven thirty news also ranted. And this was
(26:04):
wonderful because nobody, even the doctors, didn't know what it was.
The local doctors up here never heard of it. And
when I told them I was having it, they said,
who know what? We don't know. So because of the public,
we got The New York Times wrote anauticle. The Boston
Globe wrote anautical. We got recognition for these people, and
(26:26):
subsequently we got the college. Yeah, so tell us about
the college. So during the Williams camp, we could see
a huge difference in the kids. Being together was very important.
Being in a structured environment with classes that contain music
was really important. As long as you had music going,
they could do anything you asked them to do. But
(26:49):
they did so well at the camp, and they wanted
to stay together, and they didn't have anywhere to go.
So the same guy who started the camp was for
a college, and so we talked when we had the
parents here about how we could do that, and one
of the women actually John Lebar's mother, and said she's
(27:12):
going to find a place in Massachusetts, and she did.
She found that Mount Holyio College had a building that
they wanted to get rid of. It has a big
estate and somebody wanted to make it into condos and
Mount Holyoke didn't want to have condos across the street
from their campus. So this seemed like a possible place
(27:34):
for them to get a school building that they would
be much more interested in helping this group of people
to live in South Hadley and they're still living there.
All of them are graduated from the college and they're
all living in South Hamley independently. So it's worked out
for Mount Holyio College to have them there, and it
(27:56):
worked out for them. The premise of this show is
that for decades we've had these narratives that we make
career choices just based on career factors, like taking a
(28:20):
job because it makes more money or has more prestige
or works out, but that in reality, we've always made
career decisions based on a combination of personal and professional factors.
Do you think you've done that in your life, Yes,
I do. I think that I've never been worried about money,
and it's never been part of the choice. I think
(28:42):
that I've taken many different jobs and I would still
do that. That seem to be important to me in
terms of helping others, but also important to me in
terms of challenging me to do something interesting. I mean,
the reason I was running the dancing schools was not
to make money. I didn't make any money at all,
(29:03):
but I was challenged to see if I could do it.
Could I run a big dancing school in New York
City like steps. I think that people have to make
choices that are going to enrich their lives and the
lives of others. And I think it's good to change careers.
I think every time you do something a little different,
you're learning something. And I think learning is what keeps
(29:26):
you alive. When you stop learning, what is there you
have to keep growing? And I think this thing you're
doing about changing careers is really important because I think
every time you change, you learn something, and every time
you learn something, you're more alive than you were before.
So I think that I've changed a lot of jobs
(29:50):
just by accident. Some by interest, some by people asking me.
But whatever it was, I think it was worthwhile.
Speaker 2 (29:59):
I know you think about it, it's like what do
you want to pass on? Like what do you want
future generations to know? What do you want kids today
to know? What do you want adults today to know?
Speaker 1 (30:10):
I want people to know that every person can develop
themselves to be the best that they can be, as
long as they accept who they are and get on
with it. And I want to encourage people to be moral,
to be Christian, Jewish, whatever religion, but to have some
(30:31):
center that has some soul and some power right from wrong.
I think that that's very important. And the world is
so busy today and there's so much noise out there.
I think it's more important than ever for people to
have a strong center that's moral, that's educational, that's empathetic,
(30:54):
that has value, that is historically important, and I think
in this very busy, very noisy world, it's more important
than ever. I think that Belvoir is a good place
to get that type of grounding. Do you think there's
something that happened to you where you went through in
(31:15):
your life where at the time you saw it as
a real negative, like a real low and in retrospect,
put you on the path that you are on now.
I had a really terrible marriage, but I survived it,
and I think lar's the girl's decision to go to
the Juilliard School and my move to New York was
(31:36):
a really big change. I think situations have changed my path.
But I want to be free to make choices with
my time. If I want to go to the theater
with somebody, if I want to do something with Pedro,
if I want to do something with one of my daughters,
I don't want to have a commitment that I made
(31:57):
that's going to screw that up. I want to be
available from my children and my business, you know, to
help Diane. I want to be available, but I am
interested in doing new things. What do you want your
legacy to be? Well, I think my legacy to be
is that I've been trying to help people for years
as a teacher and as an example of working hard
(32:20):
and trying to do the right thing. And I think
that you can't be sure where your legacy is going
to be. And I don't worry about it. I worry
about day to day. What am I doing today that's
useful and helpful is what I think about. I can't
worry about my legacy. I think my legacy will just happen. Nancy,
(32:42):
thank you so much. It's my pleasure.
Speaker 2 (32:49):
Nancy and her daughter Diane continue to run Belvoir Terrasts,
and I'm lucky enough to go back to visit every
year for family camp at the end of the season
with my kids. When we're there, my kids get to
learn from these unbelievable instructors in the arts and dance,
and also in sports and tennis and archery, which they love.
They tried guitar for the first time. Part of what
(33:10):
I love but bringing my kids there and what I
hope to one day send my daughters there new experience
is that yes, it's about the arts, but it's really
about confident young women learning through the arts. If you
are someone you know would like to send their daughters
to belvar I cannot recommend it enough.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
You can visit their website.
Speaker 2 (33:26):
At Belvoir Terras dot com to learn more. Thanks for listening.
Special thanks to the she Pivots team. Executive producer Emily
eda Flosk, Associate producer and social media connoisseur Hannah Cousins,
Research director Christine Dickinson, Events and Logistics coordinator Madeline Snovak,
(33:46):
and audio editor and mixer Nina pollock I endorse Che
Pivots
You're on Mike one. Yep, Okay, that's fine. Leap. That
looks good. We are we are recording. That's exciting for me.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Welcome back to she Pivots. I'm your host, Emily Tish Sussman.
Happy Wednesday, she Pivots listeners for today's candid Convo. I'm
excited to share my conversation with the woman who embodies
summer for me, the owner of Camp Belvoir Terras, Nancy Goldberg.
(00:39):
I remember when I met Nancy when I was just nine,
and I had those excited but gittery nerves that you
get before going to your first ever sleepaway camp. And
little did I know that I would end up spending
almost seventeen years there, both as a camper, then as
a part time counselor, and then eventually on senior staff
as a counselor. I was even a counselor when I
(00:59):
was in law school. When I look at the different
phases of my career now, I feel like I can
point back to different pieces of my experience as a
camper and my experience in the arts and how they
set me up for it. And I think about running
campaign teams, I learned leadership skills and coalition building a camp.
When I think about being on TV as a political commentator,
(01:19):
I can draw that back to being in.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Theater, even if I wasn't that good.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
And now that I'm trying to find this balance between
the personal and the professional, I feel like the last
time I really felt like that alignment was when I
was at camp. I could be quote professional when I
was in my classes, but I could also be really
silly and just have fun and let loose and not
worry about the way to the world. And Nancy was
the catalyst for all of it. Belvoir Terras opened in
(01:46):
nineteen fifty four by Nancy's mother as a way of
giving Nancy's sister a camp that wasn't centered around sports
or activities, but rather visual and performing arts. Nancy did
love the camp, but she always had her heart set
on English. I went to study education at Bridmore College
and later went on to receive her Masters of Education
from Harvard. From there, Nancy taught English in Newton, Massachusetts
(02:08):
public school system, allowing her to spend her summers at Belvoir.
In the nineteen eighties, she was the manager for the
children's dance program at Step Studio in New York City. Yes,
that famous step studio. Nancy is a true delight and
has been incredibly informative in my life. And I'm so
honored that I'm able to share her story when she
has been so impactful in mine. Nancy Goldberg, you are
(02:35):
one of the longest relationships in my life. I met
you when I was nine years old. You are the
owner of Camp Belvart Harris for girls. That's true, but
I want to hear about you. How old are you, Nancy,
I'm eighty seven years old. When I was in the
eighth grade at the Runkles School, small elementary school in Brookline,
(02:58):
not far from my home Lundin Road, I was told
by the English teacher that I would be an English
teacher when I grew up, and I thought that was
very unusual that a teacher would say what a student
who was I thought average would become in later years.
(03:19):
But in fact that's the truth. I went to Brinmarck College.
I went from uncle school to a small group of
very smart kids at Brooklyn High School. I had a
class of over a thousand, but we had a class
of thirty or so students who were put in a
special group. We traveled together from one teacher to another.
(03:42):
We were the top of the line academically according to
the elementary schools that we came from, and I found
that I had to work very hard to keep in
that group. And I wanted to stay in the group
because I knew we were getting the best teachers and
the most interesting assignments. And so I worked very hard
as a ninth grader through high school, and at the
(04:04):
end of high school, I had chosen a girl's private
college because I had been at a girls camp tap
a Wingo for ten years.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
So did you ever have visions of doing anything other
than being a teacher and working at the camp. Did
you pursue other interests or you were always working towards
that goal, the combined goal of teaching. I think that
I was always interested in being a teacher. I think
that eighth grade teacher was right that I liked to
(04:34):
be working with children, and I liked to be planning
a lesson and I like to see how the lesson
goes and what impact it has on kids. Can we
back up a little bit? Can you tell me about
your parents? My mother was a dancing teacher. She danced.
She's open to dancing school when she was sixteen years
(04:54):
old because she wanted to go to college, and she
knew if she wanted to go to college, she had
to pay the way. So she decided to become dancing
teacher as she was a strong ballet dancer, and she
opened his studio and immediately had a huge crowd, and
she ran that business through her four years at Bum's College.
(05:15):
It paid for her college, her teaching of dance, and
then she married my father who was a butcher and
he owned a supermarket that wasn't his family and he
loved it. She tried to get him out of the butcher,
but he loved what he did. He loved being in
(05:37):
the store. He liked cutting the meat, he liked talking
to the clients, he liked having special sales. And it
was during the Second World War. He helped people to eat,
even if I didn't have the right coupons he kept.
He really felt his work was important in feeding people
in the Dorchester community. And my mother never did audish,
(06:00):
cleaned or even cooked. She always had an Irish girl
who did the household job. So my mother continued to
teach dancing and she was also active in bringing us
up She took us to different schools, and she was
very active in the PTA. She was a girl Sprownie
leader and then she was a Girl Scout leader, very
(06:21):
involved in a family.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
She became a business owner, I mean apparently of the
dance school at sixteen, but she started the Camp Belvoir
Terrorists and bought this incredible property and incredible mansion at
a time when not very many women owned businesses and
founded businesses.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
At Tapa Wingo, the woman who ran the camp at
ms multiple sclerosis, and her husband was trying to run
the camp and he was crippled polio years ago. He
had high time getting around. It was he didn't really
know anything about tap So my mother came up and
helped at tap A Wingo. So she got her ants
(07:00):
in camping at Tampa Wingo just because of the health
of the woman who ran the camp. It was just
circumstantial that she pitched in when she was needed to
do it, and she enjoyed that. How old were you
were you a camper there? I was a camper from
the time I was eight to the time I was sixteen,
and we had horseback riding, which I did every day
(07:21):
for all the years I was at Tampa Wingo and
we had canoe trips, we had mountain climbing, We had
an art department, strong art department. In fact, the woman
who was running that art department was the first program
director at Belvoir Terrace when we opened it, and my
sister was also a camper there. My sister never did anything.
She didn't go in the water there because she said
(07:42):
there were leeches in the shallow end, which is where
she would have to start swimming. She didn't play any
of the games that they had. She wouldn't get anywhere
near a horse. But they didn't have, you know, the
theater stuff was really my mother thought it was really
too when she was there. She didn't see anything that
she really liked, and she saw that my sister was
there and she wasn't getting anything out of it. I
was getting canoe trips and mountain trips and horseback riding,
(08:05):
and I was doing fine there. But my sister didn't
do anything. And she said, there have to be girls
like Eleanor who need another place. And she started looking
for camps in Maine and she looked at a lot
of different places. I was in Sweden, Maine, which was
an hour from anything, and I mean anything. It was
three hours to the hospital. I had my appendix out
(08:27):
in Maine, and I rode for three hours in a
car and I thought it was going to die. It
was in such pain. But she didn't find anything that
she liked in Maine at all. She must have looked
at ten different sites that were already camps, and she
decided there wasn't enough things happening there, and there wasn't
a decent hospital near any of those places. And she
(08:47):
looked Lenox and Stockbridge and Great Barrington. She looked at
all these towns to see if there was something that
could accommodate what she wanted. What she wanted was housing, swimming,
possibly tennis, and she wanted to have at least two
dancing studios. And she needed someplace that she could have theater,
and she needed a building that we could have music,
(09:09):
because you can't have dancing without music, and we can't
have you can't have one eye without the other one, really,
and so she decided to have all the outside dance
music in theater and she just needed a place that
would accommodate that and would appeal to her. And she
said she looked at one dump after another. This is
an incredible historic property and historic building. How did she
(09:29):
poppen upon? What she did is she didn't find anything
made in the Hampshire of a monk that she liked. Anyway,
there wasn't anything that struck her fancy. Then somebody showed
her this building and that showed her the They said
there was flowers, fancy flowers under the cover that was
on the small pool. So she didn't know there was
any water here. But she could see right away that
(09:52):
that in the adjacent buildings to the to the gatehouse
there were two dancing studios because there was a bar
that had carriages in it still in it, and then
one barn that had stalls for horses. So she saw
that right away, and she said, all I have to
do is stoop those take those that stuff out of
(10:12):
there and put in a dance floor, and I'm set
to go to big dancing studios. But anyway, yeah, a
minute she saw this, she knew this was right for her.
She liked the way the house looked, and she felt
that there was room in the bedrooms to house the campers,
and the dining room looked big enough. It wasn't, but
she thought It did looked big enough, and the kitchen
(10:33):
was fine. It was a real commercial kitchen already. But
it was the dancing studios that the two's places adjacent
to the gatehouse. There were horse equipment to the lower
studio and stalls, and the upper studio had carriages. How
did she so we're talking about if this is the
seventieth anniversary of the camp, we're talking about nineteen fifty
(10:56):
three fifty four setting it up. It was very difficul
for women to start businesses at that time. Access capital,
file paper were The biggest problem was buying the property.
They wouldn't let my mother buy it or finance it.
But my father signed for it, and he never had
anything to do with the camp. It was my mother's camp.
He bought the camp for my mother, but he paid
(11:17):
cash for the mostly cash for the buildings, and we
bought them from a company that had never had owned
it for three years but never been here. They were
a company that were planning to store papers in the
basement of this house because it was a safe location
during what was after the second word ward was the
potential war? Was there? I feel like that was very
(11:41):
forward culturally for both your mother to be envisioning herself
as the business owner and operator at the time when
many women were not. Oh. Yes, and of your father
to be supporting her in it was that a dynamic
that you felt as a child. Yes, I felt that
my mother was the brains of the outfit, and my
father did the work. And my father was very generous
(12:03):
and very supportive of the three of us and three
women in the family, and he always wanted what was
the best for us. And my mother really wanted to
do this, and my sister was going to be benefiting
from it greatly, and I was excited about it too.
She asked me if I would come and work, and
because I was a person who knew about camp, and
(12:25):
I said, of course. It was really interested me going
along with my career of teaching. My idea was that
I would be teaching like in a Newton of Brookline
public school, and then I would come for the summers
to the camp and I would do the paperwork and
stuff or that was necessary for the camp, in addition
to my being an English teacher. And that's factly what happened.
(12:45):
But I knew when she brought the camp. I was
a sophomore at brynmar and she asked me would I
come and be be there full time and be really
involved with the camp, And she said she was taking
a chance, but she would get a director from Tampoline.
We had decided on that and that I would work
and be a counselor and be a teacher and do
(13:06):
whatever has to be done. But anyhow, yeah, my mother
and I were going to run the camp, and my
father just signed the sheep for the bank. So you
graduated Bryn Martin. I graduated Brym MAARM. By that time,
I was already committed to Harvard. When I was a
junior at college, I applied to graduate school and at
Harvard to a summer program that they run in Newton
(13:27):
public schools. And I was in a hurry to get
a teaching certificate because I had a boyfriend that I
thought was going to marry me. It didn't happen, but anyway,
and he was moving to Harvard Medical School, and I thought,
you know, I better get on the stick and see
if I can get a teaching job to help this guy.
So I applied to Harvard when I was a junior,
and they rejected me because he had to be a
(13:47):
college graduate to go to this program. So I talked
to my advisor of bryn Maher and she said, go
and see the president. They'll fix this view. So I
went to see the president of bryn Mars, Katherine McBride
at the time. I said to her, I really want
to go to Harvard this year because I want to
be certified to teach the following year. So the president
(14:08):
called up the president of Harvard and she said, this
is Sally McBride calling from Bryn Marr. You made a mistake.
This girl needs to go to Britain to Harvard this summer,
and I guarantee that she can do the work and
will be a plus. She's got a lot of years
of camping experience working with children. She's going to be
more skilled at working with children than the other people
(14:29):
who come just out of college from Vasser and bryn
Maher and Radcliffe and Smith. That's who's there. The women
that were there were all from the IVY schools and
the men the same. It was a co ed program,
but whoever they were, and they were all year older
than me, and nobody had as much experience with kids
as me. But Habrid was very interesting to me because
(14:54):
the president of bryn maher had called the head of
the School of Education. When he met me. He was very,
very observant, and he made a lot of positive work
with me. I was sort of special because I was
a year ahead, and I think it was worked out
(15:14):
very well for me at Harvard. I thought that the
program at Harvard and the School of Education was solid,
but I went to I got a job right away
based on the summer program. When I graduated from Vermont,
Newton and Brookline were both fighting over me. The people
at Harvard wanted me to stay in the Harvard Newton
program and to stay in Newton, and the Newton High
School hired me immediately. They were fighting over me. I
(15:35):
don't believe it. I was worried that I wouldn't get
a job, and both towns that had good public schools
were interested in me as a teacher, and I took
the first year job and many jobs thereafter. In the
Newton public system, you always stayed in Newton. I always
stayed in Newton, and I went to Bethesda for a
(15:56):
few years. In between, I went to DC. My husband
was and then I aged the Research Institute, and then
he was at Georgetown, so I lived in Bethesda and
I lived in Georgetown. Both of my daughters were born
in DC. So, okay, so you were just in DC
for a couple of years, and then did you go
back to Boston to Newton. Yes, we went back, and
(16:17):
this time we went to Newton, not Procline, and we
purchased a house. My mother helped us. We purchased a
house on West Newton Hill, which turned out to be
very close to Newton North, and the head of the
English department hired me right away. Harvard sent me there
and they hired me right away. And the first year
(16:39):
I was teaching was a really successful year for me.
There were four of us on the top of building,
one the top floor of fourth floor of building, one
very old building, and I had the old art room.
It had skylights, it was a gorgeous room. And I
had four classes, and there were three other English teachers
on the floor, but they had all finished the degree
(17:00):
except for me. I had only done two summers. I
hadn't done a year at all. But then I took
a year off eventually and finished the degree. So I
think that, yeah, I think teaching you can either teach
people or you can't teach people. I think that I
was good at planning lessons and I was good at
(17:21):
letting the lessons fly if something came up that seemed
more pertinent at the moment. And I think that all
my experience at camping really made a difference to my
career as a teacher. When we first were at Harvard
Newton the first summer I was there, the other people
didn't know anything about planning ahead and letting the plant go,
(17:43):
And that seemed to me what camping is about. You
have to know what you're doing when the kids are
coming there, but when the kids get there, it may
not be what you do. You may have to go
with something else that they introduce.
Speaker 2 (17:59):
So when we come back, Nancy talks about her two
daughters and the difficulties behind her marriage to her ex husband. Plus,
Nancy talks about how she was instrumental in starting Steps
dance studio. Yes, that Step studio stay tuned.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
So when you married and had kids, did your husband
and kids come with you to Belvoar when you were
working here the first few summers, I had a babysitter.
I lived in a cottage, and my husband went to
his job, which was in bust and at the time
came up occasionally, but my girls were with me and
I had a babysitter, and I'm still in touch with
(18:39):
that babysitter. She's from the Midwest and her husband just
died this past year, but she has three children and
they're all doing well, and she's doing well. She and
I are still in touch. So she came for two summers, Donna,
and she loved it here, and she just took care
of the kids and took them around a different names activities,
(19:01):
took them to finger painting and painting, and she let
them watch the dancing. And one was born in April,
the other one was born in June, and they were
both here for some of their lives. Their whole lives,
they've been coming here. He was never happy with what
he had for a job. And I think if men
are unhappy, if men or women are unhappy with their work,
(19:23):
that makes life very difficult for their spouse and their family.
And I think that was the situation in our family,
that he was never happy with his work. As long
as I've known you and and your mother, you always
came across as both very satisfied with your job, but
also very secure well I've been very lucky because I've
(19:45):
always had some sort of interesting career. I did a
few other interesting careers when I first moved to New York.
So somehow I got involved with Step Studio. The way
I got involved is Michelle. She was teaching here in
the summer, needed work, and I got her into LaGuardia
High School. I called the woman there and I talked
(20:08):
her into Michelle. And then Michelle needed an apartment and
I lied on the form that how much money she
was making. She was making three thousand, and I wrote
down thirty thousand. So she got the apartment that she wanted,
and eventually she sold the house that she bought an
apartment at a Brownstone. Eventually she sold the brownstone, made
a fortune. So Michelle is still very friendly with me.
(20:32):
But anyway, somebody told me that they wanted a dancing
school at the Hebrew Art School, and I went to
see the woman there. It was one of the staff
I worked here, had actually taught guitar here. She told
me to go and see this woman. So I went
to see this woman. The woman said she liked to
have a dancing school, and she has these two spaces
that have mirrors and dressing rooms and pianos, and somebody
(20:53):
told her that could be a dancing school. I said,
all right, I'll think about it. If I run a
dancing school, I have to run it. And then Nancy
Pierce went home and she called me and she said, listen,
I have a whole slew of dance students here, and
if you want to open up at the Hebrew d School,
I'm going to bring everybody with me. Michelle and I
are coming and we're bringing all the school kids with us. Yeah,
(21:16):
you're going to have a big business the day you open.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
And Steps was born and has become the most famous
dance studio in New York. When we come back, Nancy
talks about how she started a renowned musical program for
those with a rare genetic condition called William syndrome, and
how not only did she change their lives, but they
changed hers. So tell us a little bit about william
(21:47):
syndrome and how you became acquainted with them.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
There was a man who had a very exceptional Williams child, Gloria,
and he grew up in Pittsfield and he had a
friend who delivered meets here wholesale meat dealer and the
meat dealer told this guy, his friend from high school,
(22:11):
that there was a music camp in Lenox that he served,
and they should come and see whether we would do
something for Gloria because she was playing the piano, the accordion,
and singing opera in a million different languages a musical
theater as well, and she was forty years old, but
she was not able to add six and four and
(22:32):
not able to cross the street by herself because she
couldn't see where the sidewalk ended in the street began.
Gloria's father called me and said, would I consider doing
a program for these Williams people? If he got thirty people,
would I take thirty people like this and give them
music in camp and let them get together and try music,
(22:54):
because he said, they're all musical, but their parents don't
know that and don't believe it, but I can prove it.
So he brought Gloria here to the gatehouse and she
sat down. You know, he sat down, He said, Gloria,
sit down. Gloria sat down. She stayed sill, and then
he said to her, now, Gloria, you stand up and
sing some opera. And she stood up and she's sang
(23:14):
Italian perfectly, and then she said French perfectly, and then
she said English perfectly, and then she did a music
theater number. And then she said to me, is that okay, Nancy?
I said, it's better than okay, Gloria. It's fantastic. It's
absolutely wonderful that you can do all those things, and
(23:37):
you should keep doing them, and you should do them
for people to hear you, and you should do it
for people to know that William syndrome people can do
this kind of thing. And if I run a camp,
we'll collect a lot of William's people and will show
them that they can do what you do if they
work hard. Tell me about how you learned all that.
And she proceeded to tell me that she had all
(24:00):
these lessons and that she practiced every day with a machine.
And you know she's she worked hard to get where
she was getting, but she loved it made her very
very happy. And I said, you made me very happy,
and you make your father made everybody who hears you
happy because it's so beautifully done. Music is a language
(24:21):
that speaks to everybody. So I said to them right
then and there, if they could get twenty five kids,
we were in business, and he said he's sure that
he can get more than twenty five. How many will
I take? How many campers did you have the first
year over thirty between thirty and forty, and the ages
were twelve to forty, with most of them in the middle.
(24:47):
I came as a counselor for that week for probably
five or six years, and one of the things that
struck me is they were so friendly and so loving
and open.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
You know.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
I think these people when they came together for the
first time, some of them had never seen another kid
that looked like them, so they found a population of
people like themselves, so right then and there, that made
a difference to them. And then they did music mostly
all day, and when they walked from place to place.
I don't know if you remember, they always sang and
(25:20):
they always harmonize. A lot of them harmonized. You've got
to put some people on the melody or they don't
do the melody. But they have exceptional gifts, these particular people.
And I think what's really grown out of the Williams
camp that we ran in the college that they're running
now is that they have adjusted to who they are
(25:42):
and they are happy and successful, and most of them
are doing music as a livelihood. It's unbelievable. It's amazing.
So let's get to the college. So you ran the camp.
Sixty minutes ran a piece about the camp, right, Yeah,
sixty minutes ran a piece about the camp, and the
guy at eleven thirty news also ranted. And this was
(26:04):
wonderful because nobody, even the doctors, didn't know what it was.
The local doctors up here never heard of it. And
when I told them I was having it, they said,
who know what? We don't know. So because of the public,
we got The New York Times wrote anauticle. The Boston
Globe wrote anautical. We got recognition for these people, and
(26:26):
subsequently we got the college. Yeah, so tell us about
the college. So during the Williams camp, we could see
a huge difference in the kids. Being together was very important.
Being in a structured environment with classes that contain music
was really important. As long as you had music going,
they could do anything you asked them to do. But
(26:49):
they did so well at the camp, and they wanted
to stay together, and they didn't have anywhere to go.
So the same guy who started the camp was for
a college, and so we talked when we had the
parents here about how we could do that, and one
of the women actually John Lebar's mother, and said she's
(27:12):
going to find a place in Massachusetts, and she did.
She found that Mount Holyio College had a building that
they wanted to get rid of. It has a big
estate and somebody wanted to make it into condos and
Mount Holyoke didn't want to have condos across the street
from their campus. So this seemed like a possible place
(27:34):
for them to get a school building that they would
be much more interested in helping this group of people
to live in South Hadley and they're still living there.
All of them are graduated from the college and they're
all living in South Hamley independently. So it's worked out
for Mount Holyio College to have them there, and it
(27:56):
worked out for them. The premise of this show is
that for decades we've had these narratives that we make
career choices just based on career factors, like taking a
(28:20):
job because it makes more money or has more prestige
or works out, but that in reality, we've always made
career decisions based on a combination of personal and professional factors.
Do you think you've done that in your life, Yes,
I do. I think that I've never been worried about money,
and it's never been part of the choice. I think
(28:42):
that I've taken many different jobs and I would still
do that. That seem to be important to me in
terms of helping others, but also important to me in
terms of challenging me to do something interesting. I mean,
the reason I was running the dancing schools was not
to make money. I didn't make any money at all,
(29:03):
but I was challenged to see if I could do it.
Could I run a big dancing school in New York
City like steps. I think that people have to make
choices that are going to enrich their lives and the
lives of others. And I think it's good to change careers.
I think every time you do something a little different,
you're learning something. And I think learning is what keeps
(29:26):
you alive. When you stop learning, what is there you
have to keep growing? And I think this thing you're
doing about changing careers is really important because I think
every time you change, you learn something, and every time
you learn something, you're more alive than you were before.
So I think that I've changed a lot of jobs
(29:50):
just by accident. Some by interest, some by people asking me.
But whatever it was, I think it was worthwhile.
Speaker 2 (29:59):
I know you think about it, it's like what do
you want to pass on? Like what do you want
future generations to know? What do you want kids today
to know? What do you want adults today to know?
Speaker 1 (30:10):
I want people to know that every person can develop
themselves to be the best that they can be, as
long as they accept who they are and get on
with it. And I want to encourage people to be moral,
to be Christian, Jewish, whatever religion, but to have some
(30:31):
center that has some soul and some power right from wrong.
I think that that's very important. And the world is
so busy today and there's so much noise out there.
I think it's more important than ever for people to
have a strong center that's moral, that's educational, that's empathetic,
(30:54):
that has value, that is historically important, and I think
in this very busy, very noisy world, it's more important
than ever. I think that Belvoir is a good place
to get that type of grounding. Do you think there's
something that happened to you where you went through in
(31:15):
your life where at the time you saw it as
a real negative, like a real low and in retrospect,
put you on the path that you are on now.
I had a really terrible marriage, but I survived it,
and I think lar's the girl's decision to go to
the Juilliard School and my move to New York was
(31:36):
a really big change. I think situations have changed my path.
But I want to be free to make choices with
my time. If I want to go to the theater
with somebody, if I want to do something with Pedro,
if I want to do something with one of my daughters,
I don't want to have a commitment that I made
(31:57):
that's going to screw that up. I want to be
available from my children and my business, you know, to
help Diane. I want to be available, but I am
interested in doing new things. What do you want your
legacy to be? Well, I think my legacy to be
is that I've been trying to help people for years
as a teacher and as an example of working hard
(32:20):
and trying to do the right thing. And I think
that you can't be sure where your legacy is going
to be. And I don't worry about it. I worry
about day to day. What am I doing today that's
useful and helpful is what I think about. I can't
worry about my legacy. I think my legacy will just happen. Nancy,
(32:42):
thank you so much. It's my pleasure.
Speaker 2 (32:49):
Nancy and her daughter Diane continue to run Belvoir Terrasts,
and I'm lucky enough to go back to visit every
year for family camp at the end of the season
with my kids. When we're there, my kids get to
learn from these unbelievable instructors in the arts and dance,
and also in sports and tennis and archery, which they love.
They tried guitar for the first time. Part of what
(33:10):
I love but bringing my kids there and what I
hope to one day send my daughters there new experience
is that yes, it's about the arts, but it's really
about confident young women learning through the arts. If you
are someone you know would like to send their daughters
to belvar I cannot recommend it enough.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
You can visit their website.
Speaker 2 (33:26):
At Belvoir Terras dot com to learn more. Thanks for listening.
Special thanks to the she Pivots team. Executive producer Emily
eda Flosk, Associate producer and social media connoisseur Hannah Cousins,
Research director Christine Dickinson, Events and Logistics coordinator Madeline Snovak,
(33:46):
and audio editor and mixer Nina pollock I endorse Che
Pivots
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