'Day one and she already knows how much nonsense she's gonna have to deal with'

[bigtree]

cta @cta · Feb 3
Mary Wallace on her first day as CTA's first female bus driver.
1974 #FromTheArchives #BHM





Franklin Leonard @franklinleonard 22h
Day one and she already knows how much nonsense she’s gonna have to deal with.

[Nittersing]

1. That really is the perfect caption. nt

[vanlassie]

2. "Fuck around and find out." 😂

[bigtree]

3. .

...

[Emile]

4. I remember back in 1975 we got our first female

in our department. Lot of the older guys didn't think she could do a mans job, boy did she prove them wrong. She was the hardest worker in the whole department.

[DEbluedude]

5. It was 1976 for us. Likewise, she proved those good ol' boys wrong.

She retired with 30+ years of service. A considerable feat, considering the workplace environment of those early years.

[patphil]

7. Men are very uneasy about women doing "man's jobs" because they fear they'll do it better.

[OnlinePoker]

10. Probably because she had to be.

Anything less than the hardest would have been perceived as not pulling her weight.

[Emile]

12. Actually she was a young farm girl and

no stranger to hard work. She always had worked hard.

[Gilbert Moore]

6. CTA is

Chicago Transit Authority for those who never had deep dish, beef sammies and loaded hot dogs...

[BobTheSubgenius]

8. Or knew the band before they became just "Chicago."

[pnloyd]

9. Wow!

What a terrific picture!

[GoneOffShore]

11. Fantastic picture - captures her perfectly.

[LAS14]

13. Who is Mary Wallace? I assume she's not a current or former official in Ireland?

Or a teacher in Florida?

[bigtree]

14. a native of Englewood

https://www.vintag.es/2019/05/mary-wallace.html



“I used to work for the Planning & Placement Center when I was going to college, and we had job orders for CTA bus drivers. So I decided I wanted to check this out for myself, and I did. I went for three years, and they kept saying no...”

People kept the wisecracks about female drivers to them-selves, but Mary Wallace remembers the mixed reactions she used to get from CTA riders on her bus routes when they noticed a woman behind the wheel.

“I would get cheers from the ladies and stares from the guys,” Wallace said in an interview with Chicago Sun-Times in 2007, recalling the start of her career with the CTA in 1974.



Wallace first applied to become a bus driver when she was 19 “because the CTA didn’t have any women and somebody needed to break that ice.” Plus, driving a bus seemed like a great may to meet new people, Wallace said. She had to badger the CTA for three years, though, before the agency hired her.

“They said, ‘We just can’t hire you as a bus operator because we don’t have the facilities. We could hire you as something else,’” Wallace said. “But I kept going down there and calling every week.”

[LAS14]

15. Thanks! Glad to get to know about her! nt

[Hortensis]

16. I hadn't heard about her before. She thought she'd enjoy meeting people

doing that job, but she saw it first as a job with a decent income that should be open to women. How special of her to have such a goal right up front at that age.

Took three years of applying. The male drivers weren't a problem. The CTA'd have hired her for other positions, but they didn't have bathrooms for women drivers. Plus, the night shift went to newbies without seniority, and it really was more dangerous than days, which almost caused her to quit. But she stuck with it, and ultimately many women were able to earn a living wage at a decent, pleasant job after 15 days' training.

“I would get cheers from the ladies and stares from the guys. When I opened this door, it opened up a whole lot of opportunities."

Thanks, Bigtree ?