An interview with Jeffrey Zaslow, author of "The Girls from Ames: A Story of Women and a Forty-Year Friendship."
Jeffrey Zaslow, a Wall Street Journal columnist, took a year off to write about eleven childhood friends from Ames, Iowa who formed a special bond that continues to this day and celebrates women's friendships everywhere.
Jeffrey Zaslow, a Wall Street Journal columnist, talked with Commitmentnow.com about The Girls From Ames, a book that follows the friendship of 11 girls growing up in the 1970s and 1980s in Ames, Iowa. The book celebrates friendship and how it can sustain and strengthen during life's darkest moments. Zaslow, a father of three girls, explained that he became interested in the dynamics of women's friendships because "because I often can’t figure out what’s going on in my daughters’ lives, or what their emotional needs are. I know that they are going to need female companionship by their side as they go through life, and I think that’s what drew me to the story of the Ames girls. Maybe I could learn something that would be of help to my daughters."
Commitment: For our Commitment readers who have not yet read The Girls from Ames, can you tell us a little about the book, and the story of the women you wrote about?
Jeffrey Zaslow: I’m a columnist for the Wall Street Journal, and this book grew out of a piece I wrote in 2003 about the transitions in women’s friendships. In response to that column, I was swamped with emails from women telling me about their longtime friends. Reading through hundreds of comments – including an email from Jenny, one of the Ames girls – I knew there could be a meaningful book in a meticulously reported look at one group of friends.
And so I took a year off of work to write this “biography of a friendship.” It is the true story about 11 girls who grew up together in Ames, Iowa, and remained friends for the rest of their lives. They’ve had great sorrows and joys that they’ve shared together. The book chronicles four decades of their lives. Eleven girls and the 10 women they became.
Commitment: Why did this particular group of women interest you enough to write a book about them? What was it about their childhoods and teenage years in Ames, Iowa in the 1970s and early 1980s that caught your attention and compelled you to write about them?
Jeff: I found the Ames girls’ story to be very moving. In some ways, their experiences are universal, and so I thought a book about them would resonate with any woman who has ever had a friend. In other ways, their story is completely one of a kind – haunting and touching and thrilling. Born at the end of the baby boom, their memories are evocative of their time. Born in the middle of the country, they now live everywhere else but carry Ames with them.
Commitment: Why did you, as a man, want to explore the story of friendship that continues to this day between eleven girls growing up in Ames, Iowa in the 1970s and 1980s?
Jeff: I have a wife and three daughters (ages 20, 18 and 14). I’m surrounded by a lot of female energy. I often can’t figure out what’s going on in my daughters’ lives, or what their emotional needs are. I know that they are going to need female companionship by their side as they go through life, and I think that’s what drew me to the story of the Ames girls. Maybe I could learn something that would be of help to my daughters.
Commitment: What did you learn about women's friendships through writing this book? What most surprised you, and what did you find most fascinating about their friendships?
Jeff: I learned so much about how a close group of friends can keep women healthier and happier. All the research shows this, and I write about some of it in the book. Men’s friendships are side by side. We do things together. Women’s friendships are face to face. They’re sharing emotions. Studies show women are even better than men at making eye contact.
Commitment: Why do you think these women have been able to sustain and continue their friendship all these years, despite distance and various circumstances that could have easily torn them apart?
Jeff: Some of it has to do with Midwestern values. Family is important, and friends are an extension of family in certain respects. Also, these particular women saw early how the bonds of friendship could help them through life’s struggles. Especially when Karla’s daughter Christie got sick about six years ago, they knew that they would be there for each other – because they always had been.
Commitment: Some of these women grew up to be quite different from one another politically, socially, religiously, and philosophically. Yet, they have stayed friends. Why do you think they have been able to do this despite some vast differences?
Jeff: Though the Ames girls don’t always get along, they do try to focus on how they are alike – their bonds to Ames, their common ground as mothers, their commitment to one another. When they’re together, they don’t talk about politics or religion. They talk about the women they are. And they can see the little girls inside of them, too – the girls they remember.
Commitment: What lesson do you think the friendship between these women has for other women, who want to enjoy better, longer-lasting female friendships?
Jeff: One lesson is to make the extra effort to be there for your friend – to show up for the wedding, the funeral, the time when your friend is at a low point and needs you. As the book shows, these women did that for each other again and again in over the decades. And when they didn’t, they regretted it.
They also have tried hard to forgive each other when necessary.
Commitment: Tell us a little about the place, Ames, Iowa, where these women grew up and the time frame, (the 1970s and early 1980s) when the girls grew up, and how this backdrop impacted who they were and their relationship with one another?
Jeff: It’s been wonderful because women all over the country have read about Ames and the Ames girls, but they find themselves thinking about their own friends, their own memories, their own cultural touchstones – and the towns they grew up in. Ames was a college town of about 50,000, surrounded by cornfields. It’s a high IQ town – several of the girls’ parents were professors at Iowa State – and these girls feel blessed to have grown up there. Of course, Ames wasn’t cut off from the outside world.
The girls had crushes on Rod Stewart, stood in line to see Bruce Springsteen, watched the Partridge Family and Love American Style on TV. Ames in the 1970s was like America in the 1970s.
Commitment: Can you tell us a little about some of the women you featured in this book that you found interesting and you felt had important stories that needed to be told?
Jeff: I invite people to visit www.girlsfromames.com where there are biographies of each of the girls, and a video showing them growing up. I was taken by each one of their stories.
Sheila, who died mysteriously in her early twenties, seemed like a very special young lady. Her death continues to impact the other girls.
I was moved by the bonds between Marilyn and Jane – how they were their own two-person friendship orbiting within the 11-person Ames girls friendship. Now Jane is also close to Karla – their friendship blossomed in adulthood.
I was taken with Karla’s story. When her daughter Christie got leukemia, the other girls rallied to her side. This is one of the centerpieces of the book.
Commitment: You wrote, "Being in each other's company, they feel like they are every age they ever were, because they see themselves through thousands of shared memories." How are friendships that began in childhood and during the teenage years different than friendships that begin in adulthood? Can you explain, as one of the women put it, the importance of having friends who know "the original me"? How do you think having lifelong friends impacts a women's sense of self and her identity?
Jeff: There’s a saying; “You can make a new friend. You can’t make an old friend.”
I think that says it all. When we’re with people who knew us long ago, they know us in ways that our newer friends never will. They know the core of who we are.
Commitment: What was the most challenging aspect of writing this book, and how did telling this story impact you personally?
Jeff: It was hard to write this book because some of the Ames girls got nervous about sharing too much of their lives, and I had to tell the story in a way that they could accept. The book almost fell apart last summer, but I am grateful that we found ways to compromise, and that the Ames girls saw this through to a finished book.
Commitment: In Chapter 7 titled "The Intervention" you wrote that these women don't feel they ever had to deal with the 'mean girl syndrome' and female bullying their own daughters deal with today. Do you think this is true? Do you think there was less 'mean girl syndrome' when these women were growing up? Were they ever the victims of mean girls or the mean girls themselves? Or do you think the friendships between young girls today have a different tone than these women experienced in their adolescent years?
Jeff: Chapter Seven details how some of the Ames girls were mean to Sally. It’s pretty clear that “mean girl” syndrome might be exacerbated today in some settings, but it has always existed.
Commitment: You wrote about Sally, a member of the group, who didn't exactly fit in at first and was treated a bit cruelly by the other members. How do you think that experience changed her, and why did she end up back in
this group eventually despite being an outcast at first?
Jeff: Sally’s story is really one of grace and forgiveness. She forgave the girls and they are all stronger and better off for it. Sally said she doesn’t think about “the intervention” anymore. “It was a long time ago,” she says. “It was thirty years, six months, five weeks and six hours ago….” That’s her sense of humor!
Commitment: How did 'the girls from Ames' react to reading the book once you were finished?
Jeff: They were nervous before it came out, but the response from readers has really been so supportive and wonderful. I think the Ames girls are happy with how it turned out. It’s a celebration of their friendship. And now it may even be a movie on Lifetime TV.
Commitment: Finally, who in this group of women surprised everyone, took a turn no one expected, and seemed to change the most, and who seemed to have ended up exactly as the others would have predicted for her back in high school?
Jeff: Perhaps Sally is a surprise. Some of the girls dismissed her as a wallflower and a bit of a nerd in high school. Now they have such great respect for her. She’s very funny. And they turn to her for advice. She’s the wise and respected one.
I would say Kelly is still the free spirit she was in high school. SO she hasn’t exactly surprised anyone, though there have been unexpected twists and turns. I admire her, too.
In the end, a lot of us are exactly who we were when we were kids. The stories in “The Girls from Ames” often prove that.
To Purchase The Girls From Ames click here.
Jeffrey Zaslow is a columnist for The Wall Street Journal. His latest book, The Girls From Ames, has spent more than a dozen weeks on the New York Times bestseller list.
Prior to writing the Ames book, Zaslow coauthored the international bestseller The Last Lecture. He is currently coauthoring Highest Duty, the memoir of US Airways Capt. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, set for release in fall 2009.
Zaslow's Wall Street Journal column focuses on life transitions and often attracts wide media interest. That was certainly the case in September 2007, after Zaslow attended the final lecture of Carnegie Mellon Professor Randy Pausch. Zaslow's column about the talk sparked a worldwide phenomenon. Tens of millions of people have since viewed footage of the lecture on the Internet and on TV.
The book by Pausch and Zaslow, translated into 46 languages, has been a #1 New York Times best-seller and has topped best-seller lists worldwide. There are more than 4.5 million copies in print in the U.S. alone. Intense media coverage included The Oprah Winfrey Show and an ABC special hosted by Diane Sawyer.
Zaslow was drawn to the story of Randy Pausch - and to the Ames girls - because he has created a beat unlike almost any other in journalism.
While The Wall Street Journal covers the heart of the financial world, Zaslow tends to the hearts of its readers. There are a thousand emotionally charged transitions that people face in their lives, and most come without a roadmap. That's the territory of his column - from finding a spouse to losing a job, from a child's first crush to an old person's last wishes. The Girls from Ames grew out of a column Zaslow wrote about the power of lifelong friendships.
Zaslow's column was twice named the best general-interest column in a newspaper with over 100,000 circulation by the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. In 2008, he received the Distinguished Column Writing Award from the New York Newspaper Publishers Association.
Zaslow's many TV appearances have included The Tonight Show, Oprah, Larry King Live, 60 Minutes, The Today Show and Good Morning America.
Zaslow first worked at the Journal from 1983 to 1987, when he wrote a front-page feature about a competition to replace Ann Landers at the Chicago Sun-Times. He entered to get an angle for his story, and won the job over 12,000 other applicants. He worked as a columnist at the Sun-Times from 1987 to 2001. He also spent eight years as a columnist for USA Weekend, the Sunday supplement in more than 500 newspapers.
In 2000, Zaslow received the Will Rogers Humanitarian Award. He was honored for using his column to run programs that benefited 47,000 disadvantaged Chicago children. His annual singles party for charity, Zazz Bash, drew 7,000 readers a year and resulted in 78 marriages.
A Philadelphia native, Zaslow is a 1980 graduate of Carnegie Mellon, where he majored in creative writing. His wife, Sherry Margolis, is a TV news anchor with Fox 2 in Detroit. They have three daughters: Jordan, Alex and Eden.
Visit www.girlsfromames.com
