Still smarting from her defeat two years ago in her second bid for Texas governor, the 49-year-old Farenthold has left her home state to become the first female president of Wells College. It is a small girls' school in Aurora, N.Y., founded in 1868 by Henry Wells (who was also a founder of Wells Fargo and American Express). Farenthold's plunge into education surprised many of her colleagues in the Texas Democratic party and in the National Women's Political Caucus, of which she was chairperson. "My father," Sissy recalls sadly, "said you could never depend on politics."
Born in Corpus Christi, the daughter of a prominent lawyer and a "Southern belle" mother, Sissy was a coddled child who did not learn to read until she was 9. ("I'll never forget wearing the dunce cap in the corner of the classroom," she says.) When her older brother—"a prodigy who campaigned in Spanish for Al Smith at the age of 3"—choked to death on a quarter, she became, in the words of her father, a "two-in-one child."
Sissy was expected to show intellectual prowess—and did. Graduating from Vassar at 19, she went on to the University of Texas Law School (one of three women in a student body of 800). A superb lawyer, she became Legal Aid director of Nueces County and at 42 was the only woman in the Texas House. At the 1972 Democratic convention, she achieved national prominence when she came in a strong second to Sen. Thomas Eagleton as nominee for Vice-President.
And now Sissy Farenthold, who seems as Texan as bluebonnets, has gone Yankee. "Instead of running for office all the time," she says, "I think it's important for people to cross over between the public and the private sectors." She adds, "We're celebrating the nation's Bicentennial, but women haven't even reached their centennial. I'm deeply concerned about young women having a chance. It was great enough to make me pull up stakes."
Sissy is just learning her new job, but she has already set the tone of her administration. "There will be no locks or guards for me at Wells," she tells students while standing with them in the cafeteria line. "You're always welcome in my office." Later, at a basketball awards ceremony, she comments, "I want to emphasize athletics, which makes women more competitive and tougher." She says she will stress the field of science.
Home for President Farenthold is a Federal-style mansion up the road from the campus. Her husband, George Farenthold, a former Belgian baron who is now in the steel business in Houston, will join her next month. They have four children: three sons are at Texas universities, and Emilie, 21, ready to graduate from Vassar, is helping her mother settle in. (A fifth child, one of twin boys, died at the age of 3, victim of a rare strain of hemophilia which afflicts not just the sons in the family but the daughter as well.)
"I don't want to be so presumptuous as to say I know what will happen," Sissy says of her objectives at Wells. "But I want young women to believe in new possibilities." Then, gazing at the frigid sky, she wondered aloud if the magnolias would ever bloom. Stopping by the campus greenhouse, she picked up some Spanish moss and added, almost in a whisper, "Oh, I'm so homesick."
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
