"When Bernie was elected he said 'Bet you never thought you'd be married to a congressman.' The other day I said 'Bet you never thought you'd be married to a provost.'"

Jane O'Meara Sanders is returning to Goddard College to lead the school after months of turmoil.

"Goddard is Goddard because it's in Vermont. ...The only things I hate about Washington are the humidity and the travel."

By Debbie Salomon - Free Press Staff Writer

Jane Sanders takes herself wherever she goes: from Brooklyn to Tennessee, from Burlington to Washington, from husband, Bernie Sanders', stately congressional suite to her musty oval-shaped office at Goddard College.

Her social consciousness was born watching how money - or lack of it - affected her father during a chronic illness; it still tops her agenda. Sanders, the newly appointed provost of the Plainfield college founded on social activism, announces: "This job is mine. This is good for me. This is Jane."

She studied here, she chaired the board. When, after the turbulent two-year administration of president Richard Greene ended this month with his resignation, Sanders skidded around another corner, full of the same enthusiasm that propelled Mary Jane O'Meara out of Brooklyn.

Well, tongues wag, what about Rep. Bernie Sanders? What about his re-election campaign? And, if he wins, what about her chief of staff position? What about attending White House soirees, where she met the famous names and shook the famous hands?

Sanders appreciated breathing the same air as the perfectly groomed Washington politicos that populate the evening news. As for social events, "We didn't participate in much of that, anyway," Jane admits, flicking her long, shaggy reddish-brown hair away from her face, where round lenses magnify those famous baby blues.

Sanders appears energetic and happy in her new Goddard position. Her clunky earrings,

Jane Sanders talks about her plans for the coming school year with Peter Murphy, dean of academic affairs at Goddard College. Sanders, a former student at Goddard, is returning as its provost.

black gauze skirt, knit pullover, loose jacket and sandals match the background. Students call her Jane. Dean of Academic Affairs Peter Murphy calls her "A player, not a figurehead. She's sensitive to boundaries."

Only other peoples'. A traditional Irish-Catholic upbringing, parochial school education and modest circumstances didn't keep Mary Jane O'Meara - youngest of five and the only daughter of Bernadette and Benedict O'Meara - from busting loose into full-blown '70s hippiedom.

Journey from Brooklyn

Up close and personal, she reads like a map of corners turned.

No Brooklyn inflection colors Jane Sanders' speech. "Can't say that for Bernie," she laughs. Bernie Sanders is nine years older and grew up 15 blocks away, but they share common memories. "Oh, Ebinger's - it's my favorite place in the world!" Jane gushes, recalling the bakery. With her father disabled, Jane's mother had to work. "She convinced the kindergarten to take me at 3 years old. By 4, I was the teacher's assistant. Those years instilled in us the feeling we could get through anything."

Jane won a scholarship to an excellent all-girls Catholic high school but rebelled against a similar college. She still practices Catholicism, "in my own way." For a year and a half she studied child development and sociology at University of Tennessee at Knoxville. Picture Goddard's new college provost tooling around the Tennessee foothills on a little red motorcycle.

"I was in love. My top priority was having a family," Sanders says.

She left school and, with new husband David Driscoll, moved back to Brooklyn and started that family. Stubbornly, she traveled hours by subway to a hospital offering natural childbirth. While caring for the babies, she worked as a supermarket cashier and bank teller. She actively protested the war in Vietnam.

Jane and David Driscoll sought a safer environment in Virginia, where David worked for International Business Machines. Color Jane green. "This was my plowing-fields-growing-everything-wok-cooking period." But she found "the sexist way of life in that part of the South" not conducive to raising daughters Heather and Canna. In 1975, the Driscolls transferred to the IBM facility in Essex Junction.

First years at Goddard

After the Driscolls separated in the late 1970s, Jane counseled youth through a grant-funded Burlington Police Department job. This career track led to a position in the Welfare Incentive Program. During the late '70s, she completed her degree in social work at a Goddard College weekend program for adults. Even then, classmate Aviva Vogel of Norwich remembers, Jane was concerned about the school's future.

Jane Sanders and Goddard - an organic attraction. In retrospect she says, "This is where I found myself. When I started I was wearing blacks and browns. I graduated wearing blues and reds."

Color her ready. "I found out about Bernie during the (1980 mayoral) election," Jane, then at King Street Youth Center, arranged a meeting between Mayor Gordon Paquette and low-income citizens, "I stood up to say I was a low-income person too, and somebody said, 'Now you sound just like that Bernie Sanders, who is running for mayor.'"

She quickly put a face to this new name and helped arranged a debate.

Jane blushes, before continuing in a breathless voice: "I said hello to him at the debate. Bernie embodied everything I had ever believed in. He blew me away. I just fell in love ... (she pauses) with his ideas."

Jane's first real encounter with her future husband was at his mayoral victory party, in 1981. Soon after, she volunteered for a "task force on youth".

"We clicked," she smiles.

Six months later, they were an item.

On to politics

From 1981 to 1990, Jane headed up the Mayor's Youth Office. In May 1988, after a long courtship/friendship, Jane and Bernie married at North Beach.

Jane has been active in all her husband's campaigns. When he was elected to Congress in 1990, she became his policy adviser an unpaid position because she is his spouse.

"This was extrememly hard. I stepped into a completely different world in Washington, where people wear Chanel suits. I fit in better with the congressmen than their spouses."

Still, she was a congressional spouse. As such, in July, The Hill (a Capitol newspaper) quoted her as saying, "There are two choices: Live in your home state and have a weekend marriage or move to D.C. and possibly give up your job and uproot your children. When your spouse becomes a congressperson, you have to adjust your entire life if you want to stay married."

She eventually became her husband's chief of staff, also at no salary. Their Washington address is a modest semi-basement apartment within walking distance of

"Criticism still stings, but I'm more upset when people criticize Bernie." - JANE SANDERS, provost Goddard College

The Capitol. Jane Sanders describes life there: "We work together; we're in love; we're a couple." In order to make time for her three high-school-age children and Bernie's son, they curtailed frills like cooking and television. Sunday mornings in Burlington were devoted to bagels, newspapers and kids. The travel was brutal. Separation was new. "We had hardly been apart for a night. To have Bernie gone three nights at a time was really hard."

Jane Sanders made her own reputation in Washington. The ex-hippie spouse/chief of staff of Congress's only independent representative helped write more than 50 pieces of legislation. She couldn't help being noticed and becoming involved in women's organizations. But she avoided the Beltline mold, even after Bernie Sanders succumbed to button-down shirts and striped ties. "There are people who always look well put-together. That's not me; I always look busy," she admits.

Lifetime opportunity

Last week, the provost breezed into her Goddard office carrying files and papers in a bulging black fabric tote bag, calling everyone by name.

"Right now, Goddard needs leadership and they seem to think I'm the kind of leadership they need. The school means a lot to me - it changed my life. I've spent the last five years as a volunteer, moving it forward, and I'm not about to let that fail now." She accepted the position of interim provost to oversee college operations; the school does not have a schedule for rehiring a replacement for Greene, whose resignation becomes effective Jan. 1.

Before occupying an office where the Grateful Dead's dancing bear marches across the computer screen, Jane Sanders thrashed out details with her husband. For a while, they had discussed making time for her to finish a Ph.D. at Union Institute in Cincinnati. Per the campaign, "That's for 10 weeks; Goddard's the next hundred years. I'm needed here now; I'll be available to Bernie by phone and fax."

Aviva Vogel feels her longtime friend will meet the challenge. "Jane will always have time for Bernie. She'll just have to keep being Jane for a couple more hours a day."

Congressman Sanders sounds happy about his wife's new position, in an official sort of way. They celebrated with dinner at India House, her favorite Burlington restaurant, then talked and talked before falling asleep. "Obviously Jane has played an important role in the congressional office. Yes, she is a soulmate, a sounding board. What will be lost is that day-to-day input. Of course there will be a hole when she leaves, but she hasn't gone off the face of the planet."

Political pillow talk will continue, of course. This is not a couple who debate new drapes. Sanders anticipates a gap at the personal level, too, but knows "Jane believes passionately in the importance of education. She has good instincts about what young people are feeling. For her, this is the opportunity of a lifetime."

For him, it already means spending some weekends at the Cottage, the provost's oncampus residence. Here, Jane plans her own soirees, featuring buffet dinners with Vermont thinkers. After the academic year is under way, Jane hopes to join Bernie at campaign functions and, if he is reelected, she will, for the first time, buy a new dress for the Inaugural Ball.

Maybe with a gauze skirt?

As for Washington, Provost Sanders won't miss traveling there, just being there. "But I'm here. It's a different electricity but just as exhilarating. This will provide balance in my life."