Jim told me it was bad to go last.
But he didn't have to follow Ms. Kathy.
So-- my name's Liz Magill, and when
I was born in Fargo, North Dakota in 1965,
my parents gave me a different, but beautiful name,
Mary Elizabeth Magill.
I was known as little Mary until I was about seven,
when I started to try to change my name.
I was known as Little Mary because my mother, big Mary,
was Mary Magill.
This is the story she told me about my attempt
to change my name to Liz.
Apparently, in second grade, in Mrs. Grips class,
when I was learning cursive writing,
I just started to write Liz on my papers.
I dropped the M, I dropped the Elizabeth,
and I just went with three letters, L-I-Z.
When my own children were learning
to write in cursive, gripping their pencils
with their little hands, I thought about that little Mary
and what was going through her head.
Why did I pick Liz?
Other than the fact that it's just
three letters, which is a lot shorter than Mary Elizabeth.
What did my mother think when her namesake, Mary, decided
to call herself something different?
I was obviously declaring some kind of independence,
but independence from what?
Separation from what?
I'm going to talk about that.
But first, I want to tell you that it
took about six years to stick.
It wasn't until I was in eighth grade
that the adults in my life conceded that my name was Liz.
One reason was that I was the fourth of six Magill children
to go to Nativity Catholic Elementary School that
was six blocks from our house.
Mrs. Grip, my second grade teacher,
had taught Meg, Frank, and Dan.
And she fully expected to teach little Mary, Rob, and JR.
My family was regulars at the school, of course,
and regulars at the attached Catholic church,
where we went-- the eight of us-- went every Sunday.
We went to Christmas concerts, Easter vigils,
we carried gifts up at Mass.
In fact, everyone in that community
know me as little Mary since I was born.
They knew me before I was born because they
saw my mother pregnant with her fourth child
and waited with anticipation to hear of my birth.
This Catholic community, both the social part of it
and the religious part of it, was the most important thread
of the fabric of my childhood.
So, of course, it took a long time for it to stick.
Mrs. Grip, Mr. Lynch, Mr. C, Father Macaulay, Father Dave,
Sister Mary, Sister Anne--
they'd known me since I was born.
It was hard for them to switch to Liz.
I think another reason was-- and this
is what they would have thought-- what
a lovely name, Mary.
Named for my mother, who was a warm, generous, fun
woman, who would be 94 next month, if she were still alive.
She was a woman who brought light to every room she was in.
And Mary-- and isn't this a blessing--
named after the mother of God, the human mother of God's
only Son, Jesus Christ.
The mother of God, the Virgin Mary, the blessed Virgin Mary,
the greatest saint.
So by changing my name to Liz, I was rebelling or declaring
some independence, but independence from what?
I had literally nothing to rebel against.
I had what can only be called a charmed and magical childhood.
My parents had an extraordinary marriage.
They spent all of their time showing
their love for us and their admiration
for us, the six of us.
I have nothing but happy memories of that childhood.
They gave me the greatest gift I think
parents can give, a feeling in me that they loved me,
and they believed in me, and they had confidence in me.
But somehow, second grade little Mary
thought she wanted to be a little different.
Maybe I thought I was supposed to replicate the lives
that my parents had created.
My parents were eminently practical people.
They were Republicans, and they were Catholic.
And they always put a smile to the outside world.
"Put a nice face on it," my mother used to always say.
And that's not who I would become.
For one, from the moment I entered college,
the heroes of my college life were professors,
as my dad affectionately called them eggheads.
Three historians-- one a historian of slavery in the new
world, one a historian of women's history,
and the other a historian of the Western United States--
changed what I wanted to do with my life.
They mined our past, they looked in archives, they
found and determined and understood
hard-to-read records.
They brought to bear knowledge that we didn't have.
And they reshaped our understanding of our past.
I loved every aspect of that.
I still remember the physical thrill
I felt when I sat in the rare book library,
finding and holding novels that were read between 1800
and about 1812, widely read about women who dressed as men
and had enormously fun adventures.
Not only the thrill of that archival work,
but the idea that each generation of historians
would reinterpret our past, seemed to me to be liberating.
Endless possibilities of how we understood
who we were and, I thought, who we were today,
and who we could be in the future.
The second thing that was very different from the Mary
Elizabeth Magill I thought it was supposed to be
is that I, from an early age--
I don't know exactly when--
didn't agree with my parents, and particularly my father's
politics.
I went from a completely insufferable teenager,
explaining to my very experienced and wise father,
that he knew nothing about the world,
to a much more nuanced and mature child, who
understood and respected my father and his goodwill.
We actually agreed on the facts about the world.
We just didn't agree about what to do about it.
And then the third thing was that faith, that key fabric,
that key thread in the fabric of my childhood life.
I struggled mightily with canonical teachings
of the church, with the role of women
and gay people in the church, and with the role that,
what seemed to me to be, shame played
in that religion about basic facts of the human condition--
sexuality, foibles, mental health.
So maybe that's why I shed the Mary.
But today, as you might have noticed on the program,
I've got the M in there.
M. Elizabeth Magill.
You could ask my husband, I'm extremely
irritating on the subject.
I've used Mary Elizabeth Magill, I've used M. Elizabeth Magill,
I've used M. Liz Magill, I've used Elizabeth, I've used Liz,
on every form you can imagine.
So why am I keeping the M?
It's partly to honor that past, to honor that family that I
was given, that group of people embedded
in a broader community, trying together
to make their way through the world.
It's also to honor the craziness of being from North Dakota.
In North Dakota, when it's 45 below,
you have to leave the car running when you go in
to get a gallon of milk, because otherwise your engine block
will freeze.
But the M is not just about my past,
it's also about who I am today.
When I'm at my very best, I feel like there's
some of my mother in me--
a deep interest in others, a desire
to learn about them, a warmth and a joy in everyday living.
When I'm at my best, I'm not talking
like I am today about myself.
I don't believe the universe revolves around me.
And I got that from my childhood.
When I'm at my best and happiest and I feel the most loved,
I'm with my family.
And although I am a very proud egghead,
I have practical common sense that I
know I got from my father.
So it's nice to meet you.
I'm the daughter of Mary and Frank.
I'm the sister of Meg, Frank, Dan, Rob, and John.
I'm the husband-- the wife--
of Leon.
I'm the mother of Alex and Claire.
I'm the aunt of a baker's dozen, 13.
I'm a friend, I hope, to many.
I'm a colleague.
I'm a boss.
I'm an employee of President Ryan.
I'm a provost.
And I'm an egghead.
I'm Mary Elizabeth Magill, but I go by Liz.
[APPLAUSE]