The glass ceiling for women in the business world has been cracked, if not completely broken through. Today there are female CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. Some female dot-com executives have become very rich. Thanks for these opportunities should be given to the female pioneers, including my wife, Bonny.

            Bonny graduated from college in 1962 and came out to Los Angeles to teach school. In those days, a woman could be a teacher, nurse or secretary, but other options were limited. We met and got married in 1964 (the smartest thing I ever did). She taught for four years and then quit because of a back injury and non-supportive principals.

            I was working for IBM at the time. Bonny told me she wanted to be a programmer. I gave her a programming manual, which she read, and then some computer programs to write, which she debugged at the IBM customer center next to the Ambassador Hotel on Wilshire Boulevard.

            Then she asked me to help her get a job. Of course, she had no experience as a programmer. My boss at IBM (one of the first female technical managers) helped get started at a customer in Long Beach where she worked free for two weeks. Then they hired her and she continued to work there for five years.

            After a short stint at another company, Bonny went to work for Xerox where she stayed for 30 years, retiring in 2003. When her boss first asked her to take a management job she declined because our son was still young, but once she became a manager she was rapidly given more and more responsibility, including a 50 million dollar budget. It helped that she had a boss who believed in her.

            Bonny’s management style was unique, and included hugs for her employees from time to time, even in an age of political correctness. She supported them when they had problems, but she had no patience with slackers. She also had to bash the noses of a few higher-ups who tried to use their position to take advantage of her.

            Bonny became a vice president with global responsibility and offices in El Segundo, Rochester, NY and Stamford, CT. Her office in El Segundo was on the fifteenth of the Xerox Centre Building on El Segundo Boulevard, in the southeast corner where she had a great view of Los Angeles and Palos Verdes. She commuted to the East Coast almost every other week.

She also traveled for business extensively in Europe and Asia. After she had flown through London’s Heathrow Airport 50 times she stopped counting. She once gave a talk in Warsaw, Poland where her slides had to be remade and then resorted before she could start. This after practicing in the dark basement of a museum and speaking to dummies representing workers in a coal mine.

            In 1995 Bonny was one of a few Xerox employees who won the president’s award. We stayed at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York and went to the dinner for the honorees. At first, people congratulated me instead of her. We put a stop to that, and now honorees wear distinctive name tags.

            On her 25^th anniversary with Xerox, Bonny received a certificate that could be redeemed for items men typically like. Put off by this, she used the money to buy underwear for me.

            Xerox has had two consecutive female CEOs who Bonny used to drink wine with. As I said at the beginning of this piece, young women rising in the business world have other women like her to thank for the opportunities they find today.