By Ben Joravsky
She’s been a study in contrasts since her days as a tomboy growing up around 70th and Stony Island. “I was heavy into sports as a kid,” says Terry. “I loved basketball. I played all the time at the courts at 70th and Dante. I wouldn’t back down. Guys’d be talking their trash and I’d beat them.”
After her discharge in 1989, she returned to Chicago, where she had a variety of jobs repairing cars, selling car parts, and managing auto parts stores. She self-published a guide to auto repair and began teaching private auto classes to women. One year ago she took a part-time job with the city colleges. She keeps all her degrees and certificates–right down to her high school diploma–in plastic envelopes in a big spiral notebook. She even made up a degree of her own.
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Last fall she and Smith brought down the house when they won a freestyle dance contest. “Cranston and I are best known for doing the dog,” she says. “You know what the dog is. It’s where you get down on your knees and do it like a dog! I’ve been dancing the dog since the 60s. I learned it from watching the older people who did it. When my mother saw me doing it, she put her foot in my behind and said, ‘Don’t let me see you do that again.’ But I kept on doing it. I love just letting it go.
Her room there is in the auto-tech division, a low-lying prefab building on First Avenue just north of the Maywood Park harness racetrack. It’s a dreary brick room without windows. The walls are lined with auto parts, tools, and engines. She puts on a lab coat with “Ms. Terry” above the heart.
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