BIOGRAPHY
Caroline Bird is the only child of Hobart Stanley Bird and Ida Brattrud. She was born 15 April 1915 in New York City. Hobart
Bird was a crusading journalist and civil rights activist in Cuba before establishing a law practice in New York City. One
of Hobart’s ancestors was the first mayor of Madison, Wisconsin, and Caroline’s great grandmother taught in Madison’s
first school. Caroline has had a lifelong interest in her pioneer ancestors and their photos have been prominently displayed
in her home.
As a child, Caroline frequently appeared in newspaper and magazine articles as an example of a child genius because of
her association with Winifred Sackville Stoner, founder of the Natural Education movement. Caroline learned to type at a very
early age and published Rhythms, a book of poems, at age 9.
Caroline spent her childhood in the Tuckahoe-Mohegan Heights area of New York and attended Public School #8. She graduated
from Roosevelt High School in Yonkers at the age of 15 and attended finishing schools in Switzerland and Paris.
At Vassar College, Caroline majored in economics but left in 1934, her junior year. On 8 June 1934, Caroline married Edward
A. Menuez and moved to Toledo, Ohio. Caroline earned a B.A. in American history from the University of Toledo in 1938 and
her M.A. in comparative literature from the University of Wisconsin in 1939. Caroline and Edward had one child, a daughter.
When WWII began, Edward Menuez was working as a civil engineer in Trinidad. He felt compelled to join the Marines and
shipped out leaving Caroline at home with Carol. While Edward was away, Caroline held several editorial positions . She and
many other women were laid off at the end of the war as male editors returned to their desks. Caroline and Edward were divorced
in December 1945.
Caroline had already moved from editorial positions to freelance writing. On 5 January 1957 Caroline married a fellow
writer, John Thomas Mahoney. John Mahoney wrote magazine articles but also took on many other kinds of writing projects
including co-writing or ghost writing a number of books. John was Caroline’s biggest fan and was responsible for her
inclusion in the Oxford English Dictionary by submitting her sexism speech to Vital Speeches .
In 1961, John and Caroline had a son.
In 1966, Caroline had her first adult book published under her own name by McKay. The Invisible Scar was a socioeconomic
study of the Great Depression. Ideas for Caroline’s books come from real life and her family, like many others, had
been adversely affected by the Depression. While doing research for The Invisible Scar at the FDR Library in Hyde
Park, New York, and at Vassar College Library, Caroline and her husband bought a house in Poughkeepsie to add a country home
to their Gramercy Park apartment.
Caroline’s next book, Born Female: the High Cost of Keeping Women Down, grew out of an article on discrimination
against women in business that was rejected by the Saturday Evening Post. Years later when Sofia Montenegro, a Sandinista
and probably the most prominent feminist activist in Latin America, was asked how she became a revolutionary, she said that
she was 16 years old when she read Born Female and that it was a turning point in her life.
In 1975, Caroline wrote The Case Against College, which continues to be used in debates and discussed on college
campuses today and is probably her most controversial book. She has always been a lively and provocative speaker and was often
asked to appear on college campuses, on TV and radio.
In 1979, Caroline was honored as #26 in a set of 72 Supersisters trading cards. Lois Rich and Barbara Egerman developed
these cards to give little girls a set of trading cards, similar to baseball cards, with photos of “contemporary women
of outstanding achievement.”
John Mahoney died in 1981 and Caroline eventually sold their Gramercy Park apartment and moved to Poughkeepsie full time.
In the 1980’s, Caroline wrote two more books and many magazine articles on topics increasingly addressing the problems
faced by aging women. A survey that was published in Modern Maturity magazine generated thousands of responses that
Caroline spent several years computerizing and analyzing. The results of the survey were reported in the Dec./Jan 1988/89
issue of Modern Maturity but material gathered for the survey spawned a number of follow-up articles and Caroline’s
next two books, Second Careers: New Ways to Work After Fifty and then, because so many of the respondents were female,
Lives of Our Own: Secrets of Salty Old Women.
In 1996 Caroline sold her house in Poughkeepsie after moving to an apartment in Arlington, Virginia. Her papers went to
Vassar College Library. Caroline’s interests continued to follow people that she met along the way and, when she moved,
she was working on her next book, Lost Women, about the Baby Boomer women who should have been the first generation
of women to benefit from the victories of Caroline’s contemporaries.
Caroline is currently living in Tennessee.
