Author and historian Tara Westover delivered a subdued, yet powerful, presentation to attendees of Fi360’s annual conference in Nashville on Wednesday afternoon, recalling her “unusual” upbringing by survivalist parents in Idaho who shunned formal education, medicine and many other amenities of modern life.
While a seemingly close-knit and loving family, long days working in her father’s junkyard were fraught with filth and danger.
Yet, a thirst for knowledge and “something more” led Westover to teach herself algebra, read whenever she could and eventually gain entrance to Brigham Young University, after noting on the application that she was “homeschooled to a high-level, something that wasn’t true, but they bought it.”
Her sheltered existence to that point led to awkward college classroom experiences, in which she admitted to never having heard of the Holocaust or the civil rights movement, something her classmates initially mistook for antisemitic denial and racism on her part.
“I thought when they said Rosa Parks was arrested for taking a seat on a bus, that she actually took the seat, as in she was arrested for stealing it,” Westover said. “The pictures of a young, pretty Rosa Parks juxtaposed with pictures of Emmett Till was something I couldn’t understand, or believe it took place in this country within my mother’s lifetime.”
Her outsized intelligence meant she eventually received a Pell Grant, which took academic advisors and BYU administrators three months to convince her to accept because it was “money from the government.”
Upon her graduation, she received a Gates Cambridge Scholarship and attended Trinity College, Cambridge where she eventually earned a Ph.D. in history and was also a visiting fellow at Harvard University.
Her academic awakening, however, was punctuated with family estrangement, reconciliation, understanding, and reflection, all recounted in her No. 1 New York Times bestseller Educated: A Memoir.
As it was a conference for financial and retirement advisors, Westover noted the investment advice she heard from her father growing up.
“If you have any money left over, spend it by buying more guns and burying them in the ground,” she said to laughter from the audience.
With more than 20 years serving financial markets, John Sullivan is the former editor-in-chief of Investment Advisor magazine and retirement editor of ThinkAdvisor.com. Sullivan is also the former editor of Boomer Market Advisor and Bank Advisor magazines, and has a background in the insurance and investment industries in addition to his journalism roots.
