Virginia

Virginia claims her whole life has been disjointed, chaotic and yet fabulous. Read on and see what you think.
Her father Tom was a graduate Electrical Engineer, from Queens University who met and married Jean Dunlop. He was employed by The Aluminium Company of Canada and moved to Arvida, Quebec to work at the Alcan facility there. Here is where Virginia, the younger sister to Jean-Ellen, was born. When she was twelve years of age the Carter family moved to St. Lambert taking up residence on St. Lawrence Ave.

Virginia attended CCHS from grades 7 thru 11, and was very involved in many school activities including, Badminton, Basketball, Track & Field, Swimming, and Volleyball. Virginia also sang in the school choir, was Girls' Sports Editor for the School Annual and “Coming Events” Editor of the 'Whisper' school newspaper. She excelled in school athletics as well as schoolwork:


*Virginia was Captain of the Basketball team, and was the senior team's top scorer.*	*In Track & Field, she was the senior top aggregate point winner, and represented CCHS at the MIAAA Championships, and won her "Wings" – the highest award presented in Girls Athletics.*

Virginia’s parents individually had a strong influence on her education. Her mother held an Honors Degree in Biology and Psychology from Queens University, and father had an engineering degree from the same university. So Virginia followed the Arts-Latin route until grade 11, when she switched to Science-Math courses.

Academically, she was an exceptional Math student (which she says must have been inherited from and instilled by her father – “he taught me both Physics and Trigonometry in two weekends, at home”) and won the CCHS Math Prize for highest marks in the Grade 11 Provincial high school leaving examinations.

An extract from the 1954 High School Annual: "Virginia's ability to mix sports and schoolwork in proper proportions so that neither suffers has the best effect on report cards and scoring sheets. Her high hopes for the future include furthering her education at McGill and at the University of Southern California."

Following high school graduation in 1954, Virginia entered McGill University. Although her parents wanted her to go to medical school, Virginia developed an aversion to biology classes. "I think it was biology that drove me into physics," she jokes. "I hated it, but I had a natural aptitude for physics, so that's what I did."

There was no other female physics grad. in McGill's Science Class of '58, but Carter was nonetheless surprised by the difficulty she encountered finding a job. Her degree in math and physics apparently didn't equip her for much more than clerical work, and her Air Force service while at McGill, although one of the "greatest experiences" of her life, would be useful only much later. Watching her male classmates move into jobs with vast opportunities ahead of them, Virginia opted for graduate-school and moved to California to pursue graduate studies in physics.

With a master's degree from the U.S.C., she got a job in 1962 with the Douglas Aircraft Corporation. As an "alien," getting a security clearance took a year. Tucked away in a trailer, once again on the periphery of the action, she worked on a book summarizing what was known about Mars. She smiles now and says that two-thirds of the data in the book has since been proven inaccurate

. After a year at Douglas, Virginia went to work for the Aerospace Corporation, a "gathering of top physicists and engineers whose expertise in various areas was needed by the Air Force."

Carter, one of only 300 female physicists in the United States, conducted satellite research in the high atmosphere and earthbound vacuum ultraviolet spectroscopy in her lab. While the job provided an opportunity to work with the best of her male counterparts, it was also clear that her chances for promotion were slender, and she began to suspect that there was no future for her at the Aerospace Corporation.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 had outlawed discrimination on the basis of, among other things, race and gender. But many employers flouted the Act, believing that women belonged in the home -- or in a subordinate position to a male boss. Carter looked for a support group and found a fledgling chapter of the National Organization for Women in Los Angeles. A year later, in 1970, Virginia became the president of the chapter, and the group set about tackling some of the hottest topics of the day: abortion, access to education, child care, admission of women into male-dominated sports, and “equal pay for equal work.”

She stepped down from the presidency a couple of years later when she was diagnosed with breast cancer -- but her involvement in NOW continued, In 1973 two significant events occurred: one would affect all women of childbearing age, and the other would spin Carter's career in a surprising new direction.

A landmark court ruling (Roe vs. Wade) gave women in all 50 states the right to abortion on demand. Less public, but no less significant for Carter, was her meeting with Frances Lear, wife of Norman Lear, creator of some of television's greatest hit shows. Frances Lear was herself involved in feminist causes, and during a conversation about efforts to help women to find jobs to help women find jobs commensurate with their talent, she suggested that Carter meet her husband.

"I had no idea who he was," Carter laughs, "and I didn't see why I should spend my precious time meeting someone just because his wife thought it would be a good idea." Norman Lear happened to be the Time magazine cover story that week, making Carter even less inclined to meet him. What could this Hollywood big shot possibly have to say to a physicist? Eventually Carter agreed to a meeting as a courtesy to her new friend, and the two got along famously. "Norman didn't know anything about physics and I didn't know anything about Hollywood, so we talked about ideas, about my breast cancer, about pacifism and some of the other issues that had been occupying much of my time."

Three weeks later, Lear called from New York and suggested another meeting. "I thought this was a bit much," Carter recalls, smiling at the memory of her indignation. "After all, I'd fulfilled my social obligation and I couldn't figure out why he wanted to get together again. I was due to take a six-week holiday in Japan and I was looking forward to a change of pace and a change of scenery."

She did, however, agree to meet Lear again, deciding that if he tried to offer her a job, she'd cite her trip as an excuse, and then ask for an outrageous salary that would far surpass her $18,000 Aerospace income. "I figured I'd ask him for some huge sum -- like $25,000," Carter chuckles. "I was sure he'd choke on it!"

Lear did indeed offer her a job and responded with a breezy "No problem" to both obstacles she presented. Asked what made him want to hire Carter, Lear concedes that, from a "cursory viewpoint, the possibility of someone from the world of physics fitting into the world of entertainment seems unlikely. But I was interested in what she could teach me and my company about the fledgling women's movement, and, in fact, about being a decent human being." Lear now calls Carter "one of my five favourite people in the whole world." Carter was installed in the office next to Lear's as Director of Creative Affairs. That was in 1973. It wasn't long before she discovered that her seat "at God's right hand" afforded her the kind of decision-making power and respect she had been denied in her scientific work.

Jean Stapleton, the beloved Edith of All in the Family, knows Carter's transition from physics to entertainment wasn't easy, "but she was very receptive. She understood that there was a lot to learn and that things might be difficult. She took a lot of lip and she handled it well." Adds Stapleton, "She came in as a complete amateur but the outcome was so good that I'm sure Norman knew exactly what he was doing when he hired her."

The logic and orderly thinking acquired at McGill and the understanding of how to exert authority learned in the Canadian Air Force were assets in the rarefied and often unpredictable Hollywood environment. Carter's special interest in adding social content to Lear's shows combined beautifully with what Carter acknowledges as Lear's "genius" for creating characters whose views of the world and of each other challenged viewer complacency. "We understood that we had to offer real entertainment," says Carter. "Once we got people watching, we could add the kind of content that would give substance to the plots."

After a year on the air, Archie Bunker was North America's best-known bigot, and All In The Family was a Saturday night prime time fixture. Episodes of All In The Family, Maude and The Jeffersons featured a cluster of feisty personalities who were foils for the conformist characters in The Brady Bunch and The Waltons, and offered gritty relief from the still-popular variety shows featuring the likes of Julie Andrews and Sonny and Cher.

Lear's shows forced taboo issues -- depression, racism, alcoholism, mid-life pregnancy, rape -- onto the TV screens of middle America. Behind every issue was serious intent: to raise the public consciousness and, where possible, to initiate change. "We put a tag line at the end of the show on manic depression, telling people where to get help," says Carter. "And after we did the show in which Edith Bunker was raped, some people at the Rape Crisis Centre in LA wrote a manual which they distributed to police stations all over the country. We didn't merely want to entertain -- we wanted to make things happen!" For their efforts, Carter and Lear joined thousands of others on Richard Nixon's "Enemies List" as they sought to bring the most important issues of the day to the attention of the thinking public.

In 1976, Carter earned her first promotion ever -- to VP Creative Affairs at Embassy Television, a tribute, Lear says, "to her abilities and her hard work." In 1983 she formed a movie division at the company, to make films specifically for a television audience. She was executive producer of The Wave, based on a true story about a classroom experiment that went wrong. The film follows the creation of a student organization (The Wave) by a California history teacher in order to explain how the Holocaust could have happened. But students begin to follow his constructed rules of "strength through discipline, community and action" too literally, and they turned into little Nazies. The movie won both a Peabody and an Emmy Award in 1981. Another Carter production, Eleanor, First Lady of the World, starring Jean Stapleton as Eleanor Roosevelt, was voted one of the year's top 10 Movies for TV and was nominated for an Emmy and a Golden Globe Award in 1982.

During her Hollywood years, Virignia met David Poindexter, "a Methodist minister without a church, who didn't wear a clerical collar." Like Carter, Poindexter recognized the importance of television in bringing about social change. He saw how in Mexico popular TV "novellas" added content to shift values and attitudes. Poindexter formed a group focused on the problems of population growth in developing countries. "That all fed into one of my main values, which is the status of women in the world, because if you educate women and give them access to health care and empower them, the birthrate drops like a rock," says Carter. She used her television expertise and her influence to become an effective part of the group, which today operates under the name Population Media Center.

The 1980s brought another drastic career change for Virginia: Coca-Cola bought Lear's company and the shift in ideology was so unsettling, she says, that there was "nothing else for it" but to move on to a new venture. Her partner, Judith Osmer, a scientist she'd met at The Aerospace Corporation, had developed a process for making synthetic rubies, which were virtually identical to natural rubies. Her company, J.O. Crystal Co. Inc., needed managing, so Carter became president to Osmer' s CEO.

After the stresses of Hollywood, ruby production had its charms. Being "knee deep in these wonderful stones" is one of the pleasures Carter still derives from the business. The crowning moment for the company was when the Smithsonian Institution approached Osmer and asked for some of her Ramaura™ Cultured Rubies for display. Today the rubies can be seen in the same exhibition hall room as the Hope Diamond. Ramaura.com

Two activities for which she has an enduring passion are fishing and her work with the Population Media Center. Carter has travelled to Ethiopia and many other third world countries, helping to train writers to create radio dramas that will assist in the fight for pro-social issues. “Their success rate is stunning.” For example, radio listeners were monitored in selected regions of Tanzania to see if the soap operas were changing people's understanding of the risks associated with HIV/AIDS. The radio audience was so affected by the outcome of some of the dramas that their views and behaviours underwent an evolution that can only be described as remarkable. One almost immediate change was a 150% increase in the use of condoms in the area surveyed. Positive results directly attributable to the broadcasts have also been noted in Mexico, India and China, to name just a few.

The work of PMC touches many issues dear to Carter, primarily the enduring conviction that the education and empowerment of women has a fundamental place in effecting change. PopulationMedia.org

Each stop on the route to Virginia's current comfortable place in life has had its own particular challenges, as well as joys. She is quick to acknowledge her good fortune.

In June 2002 Virginia Carter returned to Montreal to attend the June Convocation at McGill University where she was presented an Honorary Doctorate of Science. Often awarded for purely scholarly achievements, this time it was recognizing a woman whose scientific training, fervent feminist beliefs and love of a challenge have taken her career from high-altitude physics to Hollywood, and from precious gems to life-saving soap operas.