"Professionally, that is, as a partner at Butler and Corey, first female black lawyer they ever hired. Also the first black to ever make partner. Both of those events in my life without doubt have left deep imprints on me. I'm certainly not the same woman I was when I came east to Brown; not the same as the one who came out of Georgetown Law so long ago, needing a job where her husband was, which happened to be here in Springfield.

"Ray'd gone to work at Valley Bank right out of the Wharton School. And I was able to get a very good job here, not only because Ray'd made his share of contacts around town but also because I had one of my own. I knew Bob Pooler from Georgetown. He laid the groundwork for me at Butler, Corey. The firm didn't hire me because I'd known Bob in law school he was two years ahead of me but the fact that I knew Bob had a lot to do with how I got the first interview.

"So that's what I mean about nurture. Everything that's happened to me's made an impact on me, made me a different person from the one I used to be. I think at least I hope I've become a better one. One who got that way because she learns from experience. What I've learned and the people I've known are parts of what I am today, because of the way I grew up."

The interview had taken place in the dramatically modern soaring field stone-and-redwood home Foote shared with her second husband, the internationally known artist, Eric Hedges. It was set on a ledge off a private road off South Street near Tillotson Hill overlooking the Cobble Hill Reservoir in Blandford. "Eric and I first met at a solo show of his at the Ainsworth Gallery in Boston, seems like it must've been a hundred years ago. Ray'd gotten involved with a group of businessmen and banking people here and down in Boston who were trying to buy a dilapidated old racetrack out in Hancock. There'd been a big scandal. Word went around the New York Mafia was behind the original deal. Some people went to jail, and those who didn't, the people who'd originally built the track, ended up going into bankruptcy. No one could find a buyer, so it ended up the town took the property for unpaid taxes. And there it sat, weeds growing all over, buildings falling apart.