Ian and Carol: Labor of love Who: Ian McCullough ’94, biology research assistant at Vanderbilt University, moonlights as a used-book dealer Carol Edwards McCullough ’96, community organizer for Nashville’s Neighborhoods Resource Center Where: Interviewed by telephone from their home in Nashville, Tennessee. They took turns on the phone so that one of them could bathe their two-year-old son, Max, upstairs.
Carol Edwards ’96 (left) and Ian McCullough ’94 (center) at a labor action in 1998.

Ian and Carol were acquainted at Reed, but not much more. “I knew who Ian was,” says Carol. “I saw him hitting on my dormmates. He also dated my best friend, Alexis.”

In 1998, several years after graduating, they both found themselves working at Powell’s Books on Burnside—Ian as a used-book buyer, Carol in the shipping department. In September of that year, Powell’s management announced that it would cap raises at three percent and restructure the workforce. A solidarity meeting was held at Ringlers, a nearby bar, to form a union, and both Ian and Carol ended up on the store’s organizing committee. “Carol quickly became the driving force behind the union drive,” says Ian.

After a couple of months, Ian asked her out, but, he says, “She stoned me, she just said ‘no,’ flat-out. I had a quite undeserved reputation as a ladies’ man at Reed.” Then there was “the sleaze factor”—after all, he’d once dated Carol’s best friend.

What was on Carol’s mind, meanwhile, was labor relations. “I didn’t want the union drive to be perceived as a dating club.” But as it turns out, “there was lots of labor love,” she says—just not for her and Ian.

Then, about a week later, they were sitting in her car, and Carol (who had gotten the go-ahead from her friend, Alexis) said, “I want to talk about that ‘no.’”

“You know what she said then?” Ian interjects, laughing. “She said, ‘It’s not that I find you repellent.’ I figured that was better than ‘no.’ We went to the Bear Paw Inn, had a few beers and a kiss and talked.”

	Ian McCullough and his son, Max

“There was fairly instant chemistry,” Carol says. “Getting to know Ian had everything to do with the Powell’s process—we supported each other throughout the union drive. The whole experience changed me at the cellular level. It changed the way I look at life. I had no conception when I was at Reed that there even was such a job as organizer.”

Which is how Carol makes her living, now that they’ve moved to a “fabulous 1920s house” in her hometown of Nashville, Tennessee. “We could never afford a house like this in Portland,” she says. Ian, though, is plotting their eventual return to Portland. “Nashville has many charms,” he says, “none of which I appreciate.”

And did either of them imagine that they would marry another Reedie? Carol didn’t anticipate it, but she’s not surprised. “Having such a lengthy shared history has definitely helped our relationship.”

“When I was at Reed,” says Ian, “I couldn’t imagine marrying anybody. Or being happy. Never mind being happily married. Frankly, one of the sweeter aspects of the college is how many weird people find their weird partner.”

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