Nobody was rooting harder than I was for the Kansas City Chiefs to beat the Green Bay Packers on January 15, 1967. It was the first world championship football game between the American and National Football Leagues in the country’s history. I just wanted it over.

I’d moved from college into an apartment on Kansas City’s Country Club Plaza, and I set out looking for work with the optimism of the Chiefs on their way to that historic first Super Bowl.
My first job interview was with Hallmark Cards, where I was told that despite my portfolio of pen and ink drawings, I did not fit their criteria for a card artist. I was somewhat mollified, though, when the interviewer said what they were really seeking for the entry level position was someone who could happily spend all day copying the “real” artists’ designs, filling in the colors and fine tuning. Besides, I had three more interviews set up in early January.

I hadn’t anticipated that Kansas City would be caught up in Super Bowl fever, though, and many personnel directors could talk of nothing but football. The Chiefs’ quarterback Len Dawson, the top-rated passer in the AFL, would make Green Bay’s Bart Starr look “ … more like a piker than a Packer, haw, haw, haw!” Despite my father’s love of football, I’d never heard of either man and had nothing to add to the conversation. So I smiled and agreed with anything said. I was too much of a rube to even name drop. Fred “The Hammer” Williamson lived in my building, and he had actually smiled and spoken to me in the front lobby several times. But, I didn’t know who he was either, until I saw his photo flashed on the TV screen when he limped off the field with a broken arm, as the Chiefs were on their way to a 35-10 defeat.

My newly found connection to pro ball celebrity did me no good during interviews after the loss. The Kansas City Star ran Fred’s photo on the front page with the caption: “Williamson, Hammered.” And for a short time, he was considered a culprit in the loss because of pre-game trash talking.

My job search appeared about as successful as the Chiefs’ Super Bowl efforts. Nobody seemed to need an illustrator whose strength was black and white and whose job experience was limited to life guarding at the hometown pool a few summers during high school.

I perked up when I read that Plaza Magazine, the publication I found every month at various area restaurants, was in need of an illustrator. I was a Plaza resident, a natural for the position! Surely I would be at the top of the list! And so it was with renewed confidence that I made an appointment with the art director at the magazine’s suburban offices. I dressed carefully, costumed in new Plaza-purchased apparel to disguise the small town girl that I really was. The trip took almost an hour and several bus changes. By the time I arrived, I felt slightly bedraggled in my Plaza Girl guise.

As I sat waiting, I imagined myself exuding confidence, disguising a creeping fear that I would never be employable. I pictured myself selling them on my talent, my pen and inks, and my ability to be a team player, problem solver, up-and-comer — whatever they wanted. Then the receptionist took a call, hung up the phone and looked up apologetically.

“I’m so sorry. Someone should have gotten back to you. We hired an artist yesterday. It’s a feature writer they’re hiring today.”

I thought I might throw up if I spoke, so I nodded and thought of the long ride back and all the cold bus stops along the way.

Maybe it was fear, maybe desperation. But an insane thought crossed my mind. I’d been writing since I was a child. My ability to put words together had carried me through innumerable essay tests for which I was woefully unprepared, even during my college years.

I recalled that when I was a high school senior, my English teacher, Ethel Orth, called me in after class and suggested I think about writing as a career. “Writing?” I thought.

“As in Steinbeck and Hemingway?” I didn’t see it happening, and explained why.

“Not all writers are Ernest Hemingway,” she said with an amused smile. “Many companies need writers. And you are a writer.”

And so, much like a lineman who seized the unexpected opportunity to intercept a pass, I announced to the receptionist, “I am a writer.”
The receptionist looked at me with cool suspicion, then once again picked up the telephone. “Someone’s here about the writing job,” she said. Then she held her hand out. “Maybe you’d like to leave the portfolio with me.”

As it turned out, the editor was of the opinion that most people’s writing was heavily edited, so she hired by giving applicants a handful of notes and news articles and sending them in a back room to compose. With cheat sheets in hand, the article came together easily. I’d had harder assignments in college.

I got the job. It wasn’t the answer to my job hunt, though. It was a freelance gig and paid very little. But it changed the way I saw my future. I took a job at a folk art gallery and wrote a monthly piece for a year. I regret that I never interviewed any of the Chiefs, not even my neighbor, Fred Williamson. That was the sportswriter’s territory. I left Kansas City in ’68 to return to college for my Master’s, but I knew by then what I did best. I was a writer.

In the decades since that game changing day, I have written everything from public relations and marketing copy to books. I edited two magazines, where my background in art paid off, as well. And yes, as editor, once in awhile I hired myself as an illustrator.