Inspiring Women February 2023

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This is My “Golden Age”
Claudia Tessier, a member of AWC Berlin, grew up in the Flower Child
years. Today, as she approaches her 80s, she embraces her maturity
and doesn’t let it stop her from trying new things.
I
grew up in a small Massachusetts town
characterized by traditional American
culture. I thought my life was typical and
normal, but I didn’t find it satisfactory.
I wanted more. My mother encouraged
me, nurturing a love for books, music, and
animals, as well as a desire to travel.
The Flower Child Years
Moving to Boston for college and work exposed
me to greater diversity, but moving to San
Francisco in 1966 was the defining point in
my adult life. It was at the height of the Flower
Child years, with political movements, protests,
and more. I worked, socialized, and made
friends with people of all ages, ethnicities,
religions; professionals, mainstream workers,
unemployed; gays, straights, hippies, sexists,
feminists; intellectuals, non-intellectuals,
anti-intellectuals. I was stimulated by such
authors as Betty Friedan, James Baldwin, and
Gloria Steinem; by such activists as Angela
Davis, Tom Hayden, and Malcolm X; by such
performers as Janis Joplin, Joan Baez, and
Aretha Franklin. I marched, protested, sang,
danced, loved, laughed, cried, changed,
and grew.
Claudia Tessier
An enduring impact
I left San Francisco in 1975, but its impact
persists. Decades later, when I traveled to
Berlin, first for conferences, then for pleasure,
I was reminded of San Francisco in the 60s
and 70s. Berlin’s diversity especially appealed
to me. Its population: diverse in age, ethnicity,
experience. Its multiple concert venues, opera
houses, museums. Its varied architecture,
cuisines, activities, neighborhoods. Its ease of
travel, locally and widely.
Claudia and
her husband
enjoying Egypt.
58 INSPIRING WOMEN INSPIRING WOMEN 59