Kathy Ashe oral history interview, April 24, 2007

Interviewed by Mary Riddle. Kathy Ashe begins by talking about her parents and grandparents who were from Illinois. Her parents moved to Tallahassee, Florida which is where she grew up. Her father worked in higher education, and helped to establish the junior college system in Florida. Ashe was friends with the daughter of Florida Governor C. Ferris Bryant, and she mentions talking with him about public policy as a youth. She describes growing up in Tallahassee in the 1950s and 1960s. Ashe enrolled at Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Georgia in the mid-1960s and received a degree in 1968. She talks about Agnes Scott being an all-girls institution and speaks about same sex education in general. She pursued a career in teaching after graduating from college. She discusses her early experiences in the classroom. Ashe talks about the many problems facing education, and the difficulties of developing education policy. Kathy met her future husband, Lawrence Ashe, and she tells a story about their rocky start. After they were married they had two children. After their second child, Sally was born; Kathy left teaching and began to concentrate on volunteer projects. She was very active with the League of Women Voters which she cites as one of the most influential organizations upon her life. She was also involved with the Junior League, and both she and Lawrence did volunteer work for the Urban League. Ashe speaks about how she came to run for office in the Georgia General Assembly and some of the issues that have been important to her in her political career. She discusses her concern over environmental issues, and the need for open records and transparency in government. She talks about the problems facing the state, and feels that there are particularly acute difficulties with education funding and early childhood development. She changed political parties; shifting from the Republicans to the Democrats, and she describes the differences she encountered after the switch. Ashe assesses the general difficulties and intractability of government, but maintains a hopeful outlook. She ends the interview by referencing the poem “Warning” by Jenny Joseph, which talks about going against convention and breaking out of prescribed behaviors.