Small Miracles and New Beginnings
If Baylor alumni Amanda Howton had taken a stress quiz last year, her numbers would have entered the red zone.
In 2002 she lost a job, went hunting for a job, started a new job and gave birth to a daughter. The events didn't occur exactly in that order, but order doesn't matter all that much when they're happening at about the same time.
Howton's husband John, who worked at the now-unraveled Enron, was also getting used to a new position.
How are the Howtons, both 1997 Baylor graduates, handling the changes? Pretty well, thank you.
"It's kind of one of those things in life that neither of us would trade the lessons we learned," said Amanda Howton, who started her new job at PricewaterhouseCoopers in September 2002.
While alumni Brett Treadwell, BBA 1991, might use different words to describe the events of his life, they took a strikingly similar turn.
Treadwell, who had worked at Andersen's Houston office since 1991, left there the end of May 2002, as dismayed as other Andersen employees about the scandal. He began his new job at PWC the first of June 2002, and his wife, Julie, gave birth to Katelyn July 3. She is their first child.
Both Treadwell and Howton say the births of their children were stressors. But having children has given their families a perspective on the Andersen disaster that they might not have had otherwise.
Howton's final days at Andersen read like this: Get notice that May 28 is last day at work. Apply for job at PricewaterhouseCoopers. Give birth to Jacqueline Howton May 31.
"God worked everything out," said Howton some months after Jacqueline arrived. "I still had insurance from Andersen. She is our little miracle." Howton started working at PWC Sept. 9. She is a manager in a middle market advisory services group. Her husband John landed as a partner in a private investment banking business, Rockbrook Capital.
Howton said to get her through the final chaotic days at Andersen, in which she and her colleagues were determined to serve their clients professionally, she remembered two Bible verses: "Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? And one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father." (Matthew 10: 29) and "No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper. (Isaiah 54:17)"
She and John, meanwhile, have learned not to fall prisoner to what they term "golden handcuffs," or working only for a bigger house or better lifestyle.
"Kingdoms fall," she said. "We continually remember what matters."
Ask Treadwell what helped him through the tough times and he offers a similar assessment. "The values that were enforced at Baylor, which were kind of an extension of the values I had been brought up with, and having faith -- those clearly were the things that got me through it."
Having Katlyn added stress, he said, "but it's nothing you can't get over if you have the support of family and have faith. A situation like that will very quickly reprioritize for you. It gave us additional stress but it took stress away because it gave me something else to focus on."
