Duke - Margie Fishman https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/author/margie-fishman en Joe Bates '73 and Mary Louise Bates '73 https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/joe-bates-73-and-mary-louise-bates-73 <div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-rss"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <table width="98%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2"><tbody><tr><td valign="top"><p class="articletitle">The perfect waltz for Joe and Mary Bates happens on autopilot, as they surrender to every rise and fall and sway while gliding across the floor in each other's arms. Ballroom dancing is the couple's discipline, their exercise, their marriage therapy, and their scheduled date rolled into one.</p><div class="media-header" style="width: 300; float: right;"><img src="/issues/050606/images/lg_minibatesFoxtrotKick.jpg" alt="Joe Bates '73 and Mary Louise Bates '73" width="300" height="363" /></div><p>Joe Bates, a civil engineer, and Mary Bates, an anesthetist, say they can get snippy on the car ride to the studio. But, in the intimacy of that moment on the dance floor, life's stressors evaporate. "After thirty-five minutes in each other's arms, swinging around the room, all that [goes] away," says Mary.</p><p>In 2004, the couple won the national championship for amateur ballroom dancers in the American Smooth division of their age category. American Smooth includes the waltz, Viennese waltz, tango, and foxtrot. This year, the Bateses are taking a working sabbatical in Hobart, Tasmania. They are training in International Standard, a highly formalized style of competitive dance used in the World Games, which is held for Olympic-recognized sports that do not yet qualify for medals. The couple recently placed fifth in the "age fifty and up" group in the Tasmanian South Coast Classic.</p><p>When they're not dancing, Joe and Mary chronicle their travels Down Under on their website, www.josephandmary.net. Joe is writing a book--he jokingly refers to as an "idiot's guide to the homebuilding industry"--that calls on his ten years of experience as a forensic engineer who investigates structural damage to homes. Mary works at a local hospital, and the couple enjoy ornamental wood turning in their spare time.</p><p>The Bateses started dating in high school in Richmond, Indiana. Joe played the French horn in the marching band, and Mary played the flute and piccolo.</p><p>"She always sat right behind me," Joe says. Back then, their best dance moves involved shifting their weight from one foot to the other, looking uncomfortable.</p><div class="media-header" style="width: 300; float: right;"><img src="/issues/050606/images/lg_minibatesChampions.jpg" alt="Joe Bates '73 and Mary Louise Bates '73" width="300" height="409" /></div><p>At Duke, Mary majored in zoology but studied modern dance and played in the North Carolina Symphony on the side. Joe joined her in the Duke Wind Symphony after transferring from Stanford University. The two were married in 1972, after their junior year. They have two children, Eleanor Bates Keeler '02 and Joseph Bates '05.</p><p>By 1991, Joe says, he grew tired of refusing Mary's overtures at dinner dances. On a whim, he bought the couple a ten-lesson package from Arthur Murray near Noblesville, Indiana, where they live. Both Bateses are fiercely competitive and have an ear for the downbeat. It didn't take them long to upstage the other students.</p><p>They began competing in the amateur ballroom-dancing circuit, where judges would bend over and scrutinize their feet for proper roll of the big toe. In their first few competitions, they either placed last or were disqualified. Work demands limited their practice time, so the couple learned to practice smarter. They switched instructors, and created computer logs of notes after rehearsing on their gym's aerobics floor. Joe, 6'1", imported his suit tails from London and helped design Mary's gowns.</p><p>Today, after having participated in nearly twenty competitions, the Bateses still acknowledge that dancing doesn't come naturally, even with their musical bents. Instead, they approach the sport like a science--a precise skill to be perfected.</p><p>Occasionally, they must dodge a bullet. A flying elbow once hit Mary in the head and nearly knocked her out. Grandstanding dancers have cut Joe off, causing him to stop cold. Now, he will add a measure or two or jump over a leg to keep tempo. "I don't stop for anyone anymore," he says.</p><p> </p><p class="byline"><span class="articletitle"> <em>Fishman is a freelance writer based in Atlanta</em></span></p></td></tr></tbody></table> </div></div></div> <h3 class="field-label"> Published </h3> <span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2006-06-01T00:00:00-04:00">Thursday, June 1, 2006</span><section class="field field-name-field-main-image field-type-image field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Main image:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><figure class="clearfix field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" class="image-style-none" src="https://alumni.duke.edu/sites/default/files/default_images/dukmag-horizontal-placeholder.jpg" width="238" height="140" alt="" /></figure></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-author field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Writer:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/author/margie-fishman" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Margie Fishman</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-field-issue field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Issue:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/issue/may-jun-2006" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">May - Jun 2006</a></li></ul></section> <h3 class="field-label"> Featured article </h3> No <h3 class="field-label"> Background color </h3> blue Thu, 01 Jun 2006 08:00:00 +0000 Joseph Sorensen, JOSEPH E. 18501701 at https://alumni.duke.edu Betsy Gamble Hansen '56 https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/betsy-gamble-hansen-56 <div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-rss"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <table width="98%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2"><tbody><tr><td valign="top"><table width="197" border="0" cellspacing="10" cellpadding="2" align="center"><tbody><tr><td align="center" width="177"><img src="/issues/030406/images/lg_minihansen.jpg" alt="Betsy Gamble Hansen ’56" width="580" height="264" border="1" /></td></tr></tbody></table><p class="articletitle">As a twenty-six-year-old cub reporter assigned to the "women's pages" at the High Point Enterprise, Betsy Gamble Hansen attempted to knock out the glass ceiling by applying for the police beat. Her editor's response: "We treat our women better than that."</p><p>Hansen didn't dare argue at the time, but she now has a strong rebuttal for men who dismiss women's potential in the workplace. In 2000, she founded the Oglethorpe University Women's Network, in Atlanta; its mission includes endowing a chair in the women's-studies department, spotlighting local women of distinction, and sponsoring discussions intended to rouse women, young and old, from their comfort zones.</p><p>Hansen patterned the network after Duke's Council on Women's Studies, an advisory group of influential women to which she belonged for three years. (The council disbanded two years ago, after Duke administrators assumed its responsibilities.) Council founder Jean Fox O'Barr, Distinguished University Service professor in Duke's women's-studies department, advised Hansen on developing the program at Oglethorpe, where her husband, Harald Hansen '55, serves on the board of trustees.</p><p>"I'm seventy-two-years old, and I see women whose lives are becoming more narrow, when instead they ought to be getting bigger," Betsy Hansen says.</p><p>She majored in English at Duke, where male writers dominated her contemporary literature classes. Back then, she says, the extent of her involvement in women's issues was serving as rush chairman for her Pi Beta Phi sorority.</p><p>After writing and directing puppet plays in Durham and starting a cottage industry that sold T-shirts for corporate events, Hansen became involved, in 1989, in raising money for her local chapter of UNICEF. She rose to the national board, participating in a fact-finding mission in the Dominican Republic, where, historically, male children are valued more highly than females: "The male children are seen as the future of the family, so the girls are denied a fair portion of food," she says. On her fact-finding mission, she says she observed that, since the fall of Rafael Trujillo, women were starting to overcome that bias and emerge as leaders.</p><p>Back on her home turf at Oglethorpe, women have also increasingly assumed leadership roles: Five more female professors have received tenure since the university's women's network was created, bringing the total to seven; four women's-studies majors have graduated from the small liberal-arts university; and the library has devoted a section to women's studies.</p><p>Hansen has made other contributions to Oglethorpe, including raising more than $100,000 for a two-day seminar on unsung heroines of the U.S. Civil Rights Movement. The seminar, "Hear My Story" (conceived by Lee Davidson Wilder '73), examined the journeys of eighteen women, black and white, many of whom had to enter the movement through the back door because they weren't taken seriously by their male counterparts. Videotapes of the women's stories were subsequently distributed to colleges, libraries, and museums across the country.</p><p>"Betsy has a leadership position in the Atlanta community, so when she said, 'This is what I want to do,' a lot of people hopped on that train and said, 'Okay, we're with you,' " says Wilder, one of five former Duke Council members now serving on the Oglethorpe Women's Network. "She is a true Southern lady with an iron will."</p><hr align="center" noshade="noshade" size="1" width="85%" /><p class="byline"><span class="articletitle">— <em>Fishman is a freelance writer based in Atlanta</em></span></p></td></tr></tbody></table><!-- #EndEditable --> </div></div></div> <h3 class="field-label"> Published </h3> <span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2006-03-31T00:00:00-05:00">Friday, March 31, 2006</span><section class="field field-name-field-main-image field-type-image field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Main image:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><figure class="clearfix field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" class="image-style-none" src="https://alumni.duke.edu/sites/default/files/default_images/dukmag-horizontal-placeholder.jpg" width="238" height="140" alt="" /></figure></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-author field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Writer:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/author/margie-fishman" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Margie Fishman</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-field-issue field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Issue:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/issue/mar-apr-2006" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Mar - Apr 2006</a></li></ul></section> <h3 class="field-label"> Featured article </h3> No <h3 class="field-label"> Background color </h3> blue<section class="field field-name-field-sub-header field-type-text-long field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Sub-header:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Strong rebuttal</div></div></section> Fri, 31 Mar 2006 10:00:00 +0000 Joseph Sorensen, JOSEPH E. 18501950 at https://alumni.duke.edu