ITAA Proceedings 2000 President's Address

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© 2000, International Textile and Apparel Association, Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
ITAA Proceedings, #57 – www.itaaonline.org
2000 Proceedings Cincinnati, OH USA
PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS
THINGS TO DO IN THE NEXT FIVE YEARS
Sally Francis
Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 97331
It is an honor to serve as President of our Association and to have the opportunity to stand before
you today to share my thoughts on the future of ITAA. And it has special meaning for me to be
in this position today here in my home state of Ohio.
I grew up in Dayton, Ohio, about 50 miles north of Cincinnati. And, so, I am compelled to do as
our program theme suggests—"reflect on the past." Actually, what I will share is more "past
visions" than "past reflections"—as the years go by I am certain that my remembrance of the past
blurs into an idealized (vision) notion of reality that is not dissimilar to the way in which I
conceptualize the future—as a vision.
My working class family lived in what seems (in my "past vision") to have been a HUGE Queen
Anne turn-of-the-century duplex—here in Ohio called a "double"—on Wyoming Street in
Dayton. I walked to Patterson Elementary School and home for lunch every day. A few more
blocks up Wyoming Street is Woodland Cemetery, where the Wright Brothers are buried. My
grandmother lived on the other side of our "double." I remember hearing her stories about
watching the Wrights' experiment with aircraft in the farmland outside of Dayton where she
grew up. On Saturday mornings my brother and sister and I would walk to the auditorium of the
National Cash Register Company (NCR) where neighborhood kids got to watch free movies and
were given a full-sized candy bar as we left the movie! Thankfully, in those days fun-size candy
bars did not exist. Kids who were lucky enough to have a family member or close friend who
actually worked at NCR got to go to Old River, a company-owned recreational facility that had,
in my vision of the past, the world’s largest and most awesome swimming pool.
Years later, when I was teaching at Miami University in Oxford, not far from Cincinnati, I was
invited, along with other home economists from this region, to this hotel for a spectacular
reception at which a new product, "Bounce," was introduced. I recall being unable to believe that
I was among an audience that a major company would want to inform about a new product—I
had never envisioned such a reality in my future. Growing up in Dayton, I never imagined that
someday I would be standing in this place as President of an international professional
association. I never had such a vision of my future.
It is often said that, if you can’t imagine a reality, you won’t achieve it. During the recent Sydney
Olympics, for example, many athletes talked about their confidence in their athletic feats. They
said that they knew they would win—they were able to envision victory. For sure, if you don’t
think you can do it, you surely can not. During the closing ceremonies, Stacy Dragila, who won