I couldn’t cook, I couldn’t clean but I could dazzle my co-workers. I was the can do person. I could do that because work was where I was treated like an adult and with respect.

One of my responsibilities was to organize and manage to company conferences. In the insurance industry conferences are the way of bringing together the company’s top producers in one location to both reward and educate them.

Part of managing a conference was to prepare and ship all the conference materials to the conference location so they are received prior to the start date of the conference. It was not unusual to ship at least 3 airline containers of materials to the location.

One year I had determined a certain date that the materials for the conference needed to be shipped to the conference location. The only problem the day before the materials were to be shipped there was a major NYC blackout. Yep the entire Wall Street area was without electricity.

But that did not stop me. I had the entire staff that needed to be in the office in the office to be sure the shipment was sent out that day. The airline was sending the truck at 1 p.m. sharp and the boxes had to be on the loading dock at that time.

My office and the materials were on the 8^th floor of the building so this was not an easy task. We purchased lanterns to light the stairwells and every able person carried boxes down eight flights of stairs and then walked back up to take more boxes down.

The bottom line is we made it and the materials were delivered on time. If I had to carry to boxes down to the loading dock myself I would have done it. My attitude at work was “Get on the wagon or get out of my way.”

Yes there were 2 Nancy’s the can do person who could make things happen and the behind closed doors abused wife. I loved going to work and that was the only thing I loved doing during my married life, unlike others who could not wait for the weekend, I dreaded them.