In the generation that followed, of course, the achievements of contemporary women and minorities would be celebrated in every grade school and middle school. But in the 1970s, the choices were often very male and very white. Kelly was the first of the girls to rail against that.

Like Kelly, residents of Ames also struggled to define a new kind of hero. Few blacks lived there when the girls were growing up, yet some in town felt that the racial issues inflaming the outside world needed to be addressed in Ames, too. And so there was a movement, argued about for decades, to rename Iowa State's football stadium Jack Trice Stadium.

Trice, the son of a man born into slavery, was the school's first African-American student athlete. On October 6, 1923, he played in his second varsity football game, against the University of Minnesota. On one early play, Trice's collarbone was broken but he stayed in the game. On another play, he was thrown on his back and trampled by several Minnesota players. Trice died two days later of internal bleeding, and many in Ames believed he had been targeted because of his race. More than four thousand people attended his funeral. Just before Trice was buried, a note was found in his suit pocket. He'd written it in his hotel room the night before his last game, while his teammates were at a whites-only hotel elsewhere in Minneapolis. "The honor of my race, family and self are at stake," he wrote. "Everyone is expecting me to do big things. I will! My whole body and soul are to be thrown recklessly about on the field tomorrow. Every time the ball is snapped, I will be trying to do more than my part . . ."

For decades in Ames, Trice was celebrated in some circles as a courageous man who had given his life for the community. Still, plenty of people knew nothing about him. By adulthood, Trice's story certainly appealed to Kelly's civil rights instincts. Remember, she was the girl who couldn't stop thinking about the prospect of kissing her African-American cla.s.smate in that bas.e.m.e.nt make-out party.

The efforts to name the stadium after Trice began when the girls were ten years old, with some people arguing that he was too minor a figure to be honored so majestically. Others, including several of the girls' parents, said Trice's story needed to be told and retold to the children of Ames. Finally, in 1997, Cyclone Stadium was renamed Jack Trice Stadium, and a statue of Trice reading his famous note was placed at the entrance.

To Kelly, it's a victory of sorts that young people in Ames, girls and boys, are now taught the details of Trice's life, and that on football Sat.u.r.days, tens of thousands of people pa.s.s that fifteen-foot-tall statue bearing his likeness.

In that same spirit, Kelly would always tell the other girls how important she felt it was to find and celebrate feminist heroes. She does not hide the fact that she had an abortion when she was twenty years old. ("I'm not ashamed to talk about it," she says. "I feel grateful to live during a time when women have access to safe, legal abortions. I vote for candidates who defend a woman's right to have that access.") She had her abortion while attending the University of Iowa in Iowa City; the father was her boyfriend.

As Kelly and her boyfriend nervously drove up to the Emma Goldman Clinic on January 22, 1983, they saw a mob of protesters on the sidewalk out front, many of them waving angry signs and shouting anti-abortion chants to those entering the building. "Oh my G.o.d!" Kelly thought to herself. "Is this what women have to go through if we make the decision to have an abortion? We have to walk through a line of protesters? We have to be jeered and go through this gauntlet? Is this what women who get abortions have to endure?"

What she didn't know until after she arrived at the clinic was that this day in 1983 was the tenth anniversary of the Roe v. Wade Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision. Without realizing it, Kelly had picked a red-letter moment to terminate her pregnancy. And she had chosen a clinic that happened to be a historic site in the struggles over abortion. That's what had led the protesters to come there. Supreme Court decision. Without realizing it, Kelly had picked a red-letter moment to terminate her pregnancy. And she had chosen a clinic that happened to be a historic site in the struggles over abortion. That's what had led the protesters to come there.

The clinic was named after Emma Goldman, a nurse and self-described anarchist who lived from 1869 to 1940. In her nursing career, Goldman had witnessed the ways in which unplanned pregnancies devastated poor communities. As a lecturer, she challenged the social mores of her time by speaking bluntly about birth control methods. She advocated for family planning and for teaching parents how birth control could help them s.p.a.ce out their children's births. The Iowa clinic said it was named after Goldman "in recognition of her challenging spirit." It opened just eight months after the Roe v. Wade Roe v. Wade decision. It was Iowa's first outpatient abortion clinic, and it also billed itself as the first women-owned health center in the Midwest. decision. It was Iowa's first outpatient abortion clinic, and it also billed itself as the first women-owned health center in the Midwest.

Kelly would learn all of this later, and as a feminist, she would consider it fitting that she happened to choose that clinic on that day.

Her memories of that day are both vivid and hazy.

Once inside the clinic, she was surprised to see a familiar face-one of her college professors, also there for an abortion. The professor, a woman in her early thirties, told Kelly a story. She said that she and her husband had been trying to get pregnant and were successful. But she had recently gotten an immunization required of students and faculty at the university. She had just learned that the immunization could lead to birth defects. "It's a very tough decision," the professor said, "but I've opted to have an abortion." The woman was grateful that she had this choice available to her; a decade earlier, she'd have had to continue the risky pregnancy.

Kelly had admired this professor as a very smart woman and thought about how she must have played out this decision in her head, weighing the pros and cons. Kelly never learned whether the woman went on to have children.

As they waited for their procedures, the professor asked Kelly if she also was there because of the immunization issue. Kelly told her no, that she and her boyfriend had decided they were too young to start a family, that they wanted to finish getting their education. In fact, Kelly recalls sitting at the clinic and being worried about the procedure, but also being concerned about missing cla.s.ses that day. What homework would she miss? In her head she was still a student-still a kid herself. Even though she loved babies, even though she just knew she'd be a good parent, motherhood needed to wait. And she was mature enough to know that as someone just out of her teens, she might not be mature enough to handle all the potential issues she'd face trying to raise a child.

Kelly talked to her parents about her decision. Having been very young parents themselves, they knew how hard it was. "Their feedback made a difference in how having the abortion affected me," Kelly says now. "I was OK with it, probably because it wasn't a dark secret. My parents said I shouldn't get married. They didn't want me having a child so young. They didn't want me caught in the same situation they'd found themselves in. They told me to finish college. They knew I wanted to be a career person." Kelly had weighed input from family and friends, and made a difficult decision that was right for her.

These days, when Kelly thinks about the abortion, she is not regretful. She says she focuses on the fact that she would not have her current three children if that child had been born. "I'd have been this young mother with a child. Maybe I would have had another child a few years later. I might have been overwhelmed by it all, and that would be it. And I love my three children so much. I am so pleased to have my children. So I focus on that. The abortion made it possible for me to have the three of them."

Kelly has always been able to place her life, and describe it well, in the context of her times. She recognizes that she and the other Ames girls, as the youngest of the baby boomers, reaped the benefits of huge changes that were already under way by the time they hit their formative years. "We are a generation who, through progressive legislation, had opportunities women before us didn't have," she wrote in one email to the girls. "We are the generation that had access to birth control. My parents didn't."

Researchers say that groups of friends such as the Ames girls-those born in the last sixty years or so-often have a greater appreciation of the possibilities of friendships than their mothers and grandmothers did, and a much more powerful bond than most men. The reason: They reached maturity in the era when feminism was blooming. So they naturally a.s.sumed that they could build sisterly bonds with friends that would feel vital and important, mirroring or contributing to the changes in society. Their mothers and grandmothers all had close, loving friends, of course, but those older women didn't have the revolution of feminism to give their connections purpose and worth.

Kelly is vocal in telling the other Ames girls that women a half generation or so ahead of them "paved the way for us." The least she can do, she says, is not be ashamed to talk about having an abortion. The other girls admire her willingness to speak out, even if they can't be as forthright themselves.

Here at this reunion, Kelly doesn't talk all that much about her decision to leave her husband, or the contentious battle that resulted in her ex's house being the primary residence of her sons, ages fifteen and fourteen, and her daughter, twelve. She was unable to convince her ex to agree to shared physical custody, and the person who conducted the child study took into account the children's input; they said they wanted to remain with their father. The kids later told Kelly they made that decision for two reasons. First, they were angry with her for breaking up the family and moving out of the house. Second, they didn't want to hurt or disappoint their already distraught father by not remaining with him. At the time, Karla had tried to help Kelly retain custody by writing a letter to add to the child study file, explaining Kelly's great strengths as a mother. Kelly appreciated the gesture, but it wasn't enough to sway the decision.

Kelly tries not to burden the other girls with details of her child-custody issues. She came close to declaring bankruptcy because of divorce expenses, and spent time feeling humiliated, depressed and ashamed that she was not spending more time with her kids than the custody study allowed.

At the previous reunion, at Diana's house, Kelly spent many hours talking about the end of her marriage and the issues that followed. The girls listened and weighed in. But this time, with the marriage finally legally finished, Kelly is quieter about it. Were she even to introduce the topic, she says, "everything will come out. They know me so well. They can pull stuff from inside me, and I might not want to go there. They go deep fast."

In one recent email to the girls, Kelly wrote that she was seeing a kind and caring man, only she didn't find certain things about him attractive. She made a joke about him, and a couple of the girls wrote back disapprovingly. "They said that joking like that showed that I had issues," Kelly says. "They were a.n.a.lyzing me, and maybe they were right. I was with him, but I knew I wouldn't fall in love with him because I wasn't physically attracted to him."

Kelly isn't always up for the psychoa.n.a.lyzing practiced by her fellow Ames girls. These days, she has been hanging out with a female friend she hasn't known very long. "She's a woman who was never married, has no kids, and doesn't ask a lot of questions. Right now, I like that," she says.

As for the Ames girls, they've come to a realization about Kelly. At one point, when she's not around, they talk about it. "It's an interesting thing about Kelly," says Karen. "She's always been the rebel. First she was a rebel against her parents. And she still talks like she's a rebel now, acting like a young single person with wild dating stories.

"But here's the thing. Years ago, we would have expected Kelly to be the one who took off for California. We figured she'd end up working in Hollywood or writing for some big magazine. But truth is, she chose a traditional life, didn't she? She got married young. She had kids right away. She's teaching school in a small town in Minnesota. Except for Sally, she's the one, out of all of us, who remains closest to Ames. Look how close she's living to the Iowa border. Think about that."

The girls find it interesting that when they were young, Kelly was the one always battling with her parents. If the girls had to name who had the most tumultuous relationship with her parents in high school, it likely would be Kelly. But as an adult, she has become extremely close to them, especially since divorcing her husband.

"Actions speak louder than words," says Cathy. "In my case, I had to go outside my comfort zone and move far away to find myself. I don't think Kelly has taken the hard look at who she is and who she can be. She has so much to offer-and she has to realize that."

Everything Cathy is saying she has already told Kelly directly, and she confides in the others that the result has led to some cooled interactions with Kelly. They're a bit more formal around each other, more guarded. "But I'm really acting out of love for her," Cathy says. "I'd like to see her meet a man who challenges her on every level-emotionally, physically, s.e.xually. Someone who can step up to the plate for her. But before she can meet a guy like that, she has to step up to the plate herself."

6.The Things They Remember

Sheila's death, of course The role cornfields played in their young lives Their mothers' lifelong friendships The Elks Club Jenny's Southern accent Karla's getting her own "teen line" phone The day Jane was shot Their sc.r.a.pbook tributes after John Lennon's murder The "intervention" in Cathy's bas.e.m.e.nt The antipathy of other girls, culminating in the graduation-cake incident Ames itself The list could go on for pages. As the girls reminisce at the reunion, rattling off all the experiences and embarra.s.sments that bonded them when they were young, they casually articulate what researchers can now prove scientifically: that women who nurture long-term friendships can find profound comfort recounting shared moments, good and bad. It's OK if some of those moments make them wince or leave them saddened. Whatever the memory, it's a gift to have other people who were there with them. No one needs to say it, but they all feel it: "On the entire planet, only the rest of you can remember certain things I remember."Marilyn, Angela, Karla, Jenny, Karen and Cat hy at Ames High graduation, 1981 Among the memories: There was the boy at St. Cecilia who had the G.o.d-given dexterity to be able to pick his nose and suck his thumb at the same time. For Sally and Cathy, it wasn't always easy to pay attention to the teacher, because they were so fascinated by his one-handed performances. (Years later, when Sally was visiting her parents, she came upon an Ames Tribune Ames Tribune story about an unnamed employee being fired from a Mexican restaurant because he picked his nose. There was no mention of thumb-sucking, but Sally and Cathy felt certain they could identify the perpetrator in a police lineup.) story about an unnamed employee being fired from a Mexican restaurant because he picked his nose. There was no mention of thumb-sucking, but Sally and Cathy felt certain they could identify the perpetrator in a police lineup.) There was the day in second grade when Cathy got sent home from St. Cecilia's for wearing culottes. All the female students were required to wear dresses, and Cathy's split skirt broke the rules. The school couldn't reach her mom, so Cathy had to walk home alone to get into an appropriate outfit. On her return, she joined Sheila and Sally at recess, where they discussed, with all their second-grade worldliness, how they interpreted the definitions of "dress," "skirt" and "culottes."

There was that evening in seventh grade when several of the girls were at Happy Joe's, an ice cream and pizza parlor. Between them, they had enough money to buy a small pizza. They needed ten more cents to buy a large pizza. Five cute college boys sat at a nearby table, and so the girls, led by Cathy and Kelly, started repeating, loudly and dramatically: "Oh, if we only had a dime . . ." "If we had just another dime, we'd be so happy. . . ." A few minutes later, the college boys finished eating, and before they headed out of the restaurant, each of them stopped at the girls' table and put a dime on it. The boys smiled and didn't say a word. Once they were gone, the girls couldn't stop giggling. There they were, seventh-graders, flirting with college boys! Plus, they could now order that large pizza.

There was the b.l.o.o.d.y pep rally at Ames High when a football player bit off the head of a live carp to get the crowd into a school-spirited frenzy. Some of the Ames girls recall turning their heads, repulsed, as blood splattered everywhere. Later, the captain of the football team swallowed a live goldfish. It got stuck in his throat and kept moving around. The boy was choking until teachers sent him to the water fountain to wash the fish into his stomach. (Kelly, taking photos for the school paper, followed the boy out of the gym and into the hallway. "It's still moving," he said as he tried to wash it down his throat. Kelly felt sorry for him and stopped snapping photos.) There was that lunch period in the Ames High cafeteria when an all-you-can-eat, do-it-yourself salad bar opened for business, with great fanfare. The cost was 75 cents, and back then, the whole concept was exotic for a Midwestern high school. The Ames girls ate it up.

There was that cloudy, chilly October day in 1979 when the charismatic Pope John Paul II came to Iowa to celebrate a Ma.s.s. It was the largest gathering ever in Iowa; more than 300,000 people, including six of the Ames girls, spread across the acreage at a large farm. Just as the pope descended in his helicopter, Angel One, the sun came out. Hundreds of thousands of people remember the pope's visit, but only the Ames girls recall it for the story of Marilyn's blanket. Like several of the girls, Marilyn took CPR cla.s.ses, and she volunteered that day at the Red Cross tent. Marilyn met a boy and sat with him, romantically, on one of the medical blankets. She saved that blanket for many years. For some reason, she couldn't part with it.

The Ames girls also recall the day in late spring of 1980 when Jane, sunbathing in her backyard, heard a loud popping sound, saw a flash of light and then felt a stabbing pain in her thigh. She screamed as blood poured from her leg. She was able to limp to her house before collapsing. Turned out that neighborhood boys, shooting their BB guns at birds in a nearby yard, had shot her accidentally. Jane was rushed to Marilyn's dad for treatment. The pellet was embedded so deeply that Dr. McCormack realized he couldn't remove it without major surgery. (He suggested leaving it be, and the pellet remains in her leg today.) That day, the other Ames girls all signed a card that said simply, "Sorry you got shot." Jane taped it in her sc.r.a.pbook. A few weeks earlier, the famous "Who Shot J.R.?" episode of the TV show Dallas Dallas had aired. And so the Ames girls had fun inviting other kids at school to answer the question "Who Shot Jane G.?" Was it the mafia? Out-of-town enemies? had aired. And so the Ames girls had fun inviting other kids at school to answer the question "Who Shot Jane G.?" Was it the mafia? Out-of-town enemies?

In the girls' adult lives after Ames, they've each found newer friends. But these more recent friendships are built mostly around their kids, their jobs or their current neighborhoods. The bonds are limited to the here and now, and memory hardly exists.

Because the Ames girls carry this lengthy index of the long ago, they are often forced to be more genuine in their present interactions with each other. They can't put on airs or accents. Especially accents. One afternoon at the reunion, the girls laugh at the memory of Jenny coming home from the University of South Carolina for Christmas in her freshman year. She'd been gone from Ames just four months and already had a full-blown Southern accent. "Y'all want to go to Karla's house, or y'all want to just hang out at my house?" she asked.

"Hey, Jenny, y'all want to tell us why y'all are talking like that?" Cathy replied. In Ames, Jenny wore jeans and looked good in flannel shirts. She came back from South Carolina and wore taffeta to a formal dinner party at her house. And so the other girls were relentless in their eye-rolling over this alien Southern belle. That Christmas, they met up with some boys who'd known Jenny in high school and joked that maybe she'd had an accident and hit her head: "Did something happen to Jenny? Her voice sounds kind of odd."

Jenny's defense was that a Southern accent can inhabit any human being who ventures down South for even a few months. The girls didn't buy it. As Cathy sums it up: "She was so busted!"

Here at the reunion, the girls joke that if one of them tries to describe herself for this book as somebody she's not, they will offer up a friendly chorus of "Bulls.h.i.t!" under their breath until the offender reverts back to who she really is.

Turns out, they never have to gang up on anybody, because when they're together, the girls almost have to be their most authentic selves. After all, the other nine girls know exactly who they started as (and the child inside them), which, in certain ways, is who they really are.

Cathy thinks that's the crux of their friendship. Or at least that link to girlhood is what she finds most appealing about their relationships. "You can tell people where you're from and who you were, which is who you are. But no one really knows you unless they were there. With the other girls, there's an understanding you don't have to explain."

Cathy is now living a life unlike any of the others. For one, she's long been in Los Angeles, where her career as a makeup artist has flourished, and she is friendly with well-known people such as actress Joan Allen. Second, she never married and never had children. So when the Ames girls trade waves of emails about their kids' attention-deficit issues or the monotony of a long marriage, it doesn't resonate for her.

At the reunion, the others often relate to each other mother to mother. They talk about being their husbands' wives. Sure, Cathy wants to know about their families, but after a while, she wants more. As she explains it: "When Karen shows up, to me she's Karen, not Katie's mom. I want to know what's going on with her, not necessarily how her family is doing. I know she's a mother and a wife, but I also know who she is as a person besides that."

Who the girls are, of course, always goes back to Ames.

Cathy's mom was a Mary Kay and Avon rep in town, a fact Cathy dropped right into the first paragraph of her online bio. For seventeen years, she was represented by the Cloutier Agency, and has now moved to Aim Artists. Both are prestigious agencies that handle many of the most sought-after hairstylists and makeup artists in the entertainment and fashion industries. Some of the bios on agency Web sites can be a bit pretentious, hammering home career highlights and celebrity endors.e.m.e.nts. But Cathy's bio begins simply: "As a kid growing up in Iowa, I loved playing with my mom's makeup stash. . . ."

The bio serves as an introduction to new clients, and it reveals this about Cathy: Seven words into introducing herself, she wants people to know she's from Iowa.

Cathy's L.A. friends are fascinated that she has friends from Ames. They'll say to her: "It's amazing you choose to spend so much time with people you knew when you were young. What do you still have in common with them?"

When Cathy considers the question, the answer she has for herself is this: "What keeps me going back to them? What is it I don't want to sever? I think it's this: We root each other to the core of who we are, rather than what defines us as adults-by careers or spouses or kids. There's a young girl in each of us who is still full of life. When we're together, I try to remember that."

The Ames girls haven't tracked all the scientific studies about friendship, the ones showing that having a close group of friends helps people sleep better, improve their immune systems, boost their self-esteem, stave off dementia, and actually live longer. The Ames girls just feel the benefits in their guts.

The research, though, is clear about the positive implications of friendships in women's lives. There was, for instance, a fourteen-year project at Flinders University in Australia that tracked fifteen hundred women as they aged. The study found that close friendships-even more than close family ties-help prolong women's lives. Many women in the study had meaningful relationships with children or other relatives; that didn't appear to improve their survival rates. But those with the most friends outlived those with the least friends by 22 percent. In fact, researchers say a woman who wants to be healthier and more psychologically fit in her old age is better off having one close friend than half-a-dozen grandchildren.

All sorts of studies make similar points.

Duke University researchers looked at hundreds of unmarried patients with coronary heart disease and found that, of those with close friends, 85 percent lived at least five years. That was double the survival rate of those lacking in friends. A Stanford University psychiatric study found patients with advanced stages of breast cancer were more likely to survive if they had a network of people with whom they could share their feelings.

Friends such as the Ames girls, who've traveled the timeline together, tend to have more empathy for each other's ailments. They knew one another when they were younger and stronger, and they've watched their bodies change. Gerontologists say longtime friends are often more understanding about health issues than family members are. Friends are more apt to acknowledge each other's ailments without dwelling on them the way a parent or spouse might. A friend might offer a litany of health issues, especially as she ages, but then she might say: "Let's forget about the pain we're feeling today and have fun." The Ames girls do their share of talking about aches, pains and the aging process-and, especially, about issues related to how their parents are aging-but then they move onward to the next conversation. And given how much they laugh, and how laughter is good for anyone's health, they figure their time together is completely therapeutic.

"There's this comfort zone," says Marilyn. "It's good for my mental health to know there's a group of people I can turn to at any moment in my life, and they'll be my safety net."

The friendship between the Ames girls fits a common profile on other fronts, too.

Now that the girls have reached their forties together, they're almost certain to remain enmeshed for the rest of their lives. By the time women are middle-aged, most have picked the people and built the friendships that will sustain them. That was the conclusion of a study that began in 1978 at Virginia Tech, when 110 women over age fifty were first asked to name their closest friends. Fourteen years later, when these women were ages sixty-five to eighty-nine, they were asked the same question, and 75 percent of them listed the exact same names. For almost all of them, their major friendships remained precisely in place. Similarly, a Harris Interactive survey conducted in 2004 found that a healthy 39 percent of women between ages twenty-five and fifty-five said they met their current best friends in childhood or high school. Women-and the Ames girls are proof of this-are likely to connect early and then hold tight to each other. This is despite our transient society or, in some cases, even because of it.

Jane thinks that the distance between all of the Ames girls actually serves to make them closer in certain ways. "Because we live in our own communities and have our own separate lives," she says, "we become very safe and understanding ears for one another. We don't have to worry about baring our souls-concerning ourselves or the lives of our family members-and then running into each other's kids or husbands on the soccer fields or at school. And we have a pretty decent sample size for opinions and advice: nine other women weighing in about adult issues, with more than twenty kids' worth of experience when it comes to children's issues."

Jane thinks the fact that they are all so different is helpful. "It's not like we're competing," she says. "It's not like I'm a makeup artist in L.A. and I have more famous clients than Cathy does. We're all doing our own thing."

As Kelly explains it, it doesn't matter that the others aren't plugged into her day-to-day life: "Because I have no actual sisters, it is my friends from Ames who've exposed me to every facet of womanhood. I feel I'm defined by our decades-long friendship. Despite being separated by miles, despite being married, despite having children, there is a compartment in my life reserved for them. These women are the only people who truly know me."

Male relationships follow a different pattern. Men tend to build friendships until about age thirty, but there's often a steady falloff after that. Among the reasons: Male friendships are more likely to be hurt by geographical moves, lifestyle changes or differences in career trajectories. And many men turn to wives, girlfriends, sisters or platonic female friends to share emotional issues, a.s.suming male friends will be of little help.

The Ames girls see this in their husbands. Few of their husbands have long-standing groups of close friends, with decades of history together, whom they confide in and turn to week after week. Sure, their husbands have pals, former fraternity brothers, friendly colleagues. But men's friendships tend to be based more on activities than emotions. They connect through sports, work, poker, politics. (In a study conducted by the Australian government, 57 percent of men said they are bonded to friends through "recreational activities." That compared to just 26 percent of women who defined their friendships in those terms.) The Ames girls insist that they can and will remain friends right up until the end of their lives, in part because they won't need much physical energy to maintain their bonds. All they'll have to do is talk about their feelings, their memories, their current lives. They won't have to play racquetball or walk eighteen holes on a golf course.

"It's not like we're couch potatoes," says Marilyn, "but we could sit for hours talking, and we'd be totally happy doing that. If there was a recreational activity, we might be too busy talking to even pay attention."

Bottom line: Women talk. Men do things together. Researchers explain it this way: Women's friendships are face to face, while men's friendships are side by side. In research labs, women have even proven themselves better than men at maintaining eye contact. Women's bonds are explicit. Men's feelings for each other might be strong, but their feelings are more implicit.

The Ames girls declare their love for each other effortlessly and all the time. Some of their husbands, like a lot of men, don't ever talk about loving feelings for their male friends. (Some researchers say Freud is partially to blame because he delved into undertones of h.o.m.os.e.xuality in close male relationships. Ever since Freud raised the issue more than a century ago, many heteros.e.xual men have resisted expressing affection for each other or getting too deeply involved in each other's personal lives.) Men find it easier to dump unwanted or marginal friends, while women are far more apt to obsess about troubles with friends. "Men place less emphasis on friendship, and so friends are easier for them to discard," says Rebecca Adams, a sociologist who does friendship research at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

Meanwhile, like millions of other women, the Ames girls learned early on, even in grade school, that the way to keep female friendships alive was to listen and talk, in that order. This formula remained in place through every decade of their relationship, though some decades have been easier than others.

The Ames girls found that the early adult years-their twenties and thirties-required them to work harder to stay connected. That's a familiar story for women everywhere, because those are the years when women are starting their careers, getting married, having babies. They're busy.

Again, the research is consistent on this. More than two hundred girls and women were interviewed by Sandy Sheehy for a five-year study that culminated in her book Connecting: The Enduring Power of Female Friendship Connecting: The Enduring Power of Female Friendship. Of the women, 85 percent said they had trouble maintaining friendships between ages twenty-five and forty. "Then all of a sudden, around age forty, an equal percentage reported an uptick in friendship activity," Ms. Sheehy explains. "It's like all of a sudden a light goes on and they say, 'I need women in my life.'"

In studies before the 1990s, researchers attributed this uptick to women's lockstep march through the life cycle. After a couple of decades spent finding a mate, building a marriage and raising kids, women finally had time for themselves because their kids were more self-sufficient. In previous generations, at age forty, the average woman already had sent her oldest child off to college or into the workforce, while her youngest child likely was in high school.

These days, at age forty, a woman might be busy having her first child or starting her second marriage. (Indeed, when the Ames girls. .h.i.t forty, none of them had children older than age thirteen. Angela's daughter was three years old, and Jenny still hadn't had her first child.) Yet in this new century, even women busy with careers and child-rearing duties become more friendship-focused entering their forties. "We've begun to understand that it has to do with a life stage," says Ms. Sheehy. She identifies patterns that the Ames girls fit very neatly. In their early forties, she says, "Women are asking, 'Where do I want to go with my life?' Female friends show us a mirror of ourselves. Even lesbians say they see a need for non-s.e.xual relationships with women at about age forty."

For middle-aged women, trying to figure out who they are, one path to self-reflection comes from getting in touch with who they were. That's part of the thrill at Ames girls' gatherings. Karen says the friends she has made in adulthood-the other mothers in her neighborhood in suburban Philadelphia-"know me and like me for who I am now." But that's all they know; it's not a complete picture. "My friends from Ames knew me before I became a mom and a wife," Karen says. "They really know the original me-and that's the person they like." When she's with them, she thinks about the "original me." Who was that girl? How was she different or similar to the woman she has become?

Money tends to be less of a stumbling block for friendships as women get older. Middle-aged women often have more discretionary income to travel to see friends from their past. These days, the cost of a plane ticket or tank of gas is rarely an issue when the Ames girls make plans to reunite. That's in contrast to the financial decisions that kept half of them from Sheila's funeral when they were in their early twenties.

Why, in middle age, do so many women decide that good friendships are worth this price of admission? Partly because they sense that, no matter what it costs to keep these bonds intact, there are positive ramifications in other areas of their lives, including their relationships with their husbands.

Women with strong friendships often have closer marriages, according to research at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. One explanation is that women who are good at intimacy with friends are good at intimacy with husbands. But researchers also say that women with close friends don't burden their husbands with all of their emotional needs. That 2004 Harris survey found that 64 percent of women between ages twenty-five and fifty-five confess things to their friends that they wouldn't tell their husbands.

The Ames girls' husbands want the best for them, of course, but like a lot of men, they tend to show their love and concern by being solution-oriented. They want to be fixers. When a woman tells her husband that she's having issues with her mother, the husband is apt to recommend strategies: "Here's what you ought to do. . . ." She'll mention it again, and he'll say, "I already gave you my advice. As I told you, here's what you ought to do. . . ."

But a female friend is more apt to say, "I have troubles with my mother, too. And no matter what your mother says, I think you're terrific." Or a female friend might say: "Maybe your mom is thinking about what you were like in high school, when your judgment wasn't always perfect. But I think you have excellent judgment now."

The Ames girls strive to be careful in how they advise each other. "They all know my history, every twist and turn I have taken," says Kelly. "They also have a sense of where I am going. They don't pa.s.s harsh judgments. They simply accept." Like Marilyn, Kelly uses the word "safe." "Gathering with them involves landing in a safe place," she says.

The Ames girls say they let each other vent, then strive to tell each other that they are competent. They aim to "fix" problems by validating each other's feelings, by encouraging. It's a process their husbands might find frustrating, but it's a typically female way of handling things. Because the girls can talk to each other, their husbands don't feel as much of a burden or responsibility to listen to their issues or complaints for the umpteenth time.

Marilyn says she discusses everything of major importance with her husband. However, because he's busy at work all day, "he's not always available to have lengthy discussions right away," she says. "But I can easily get on the Internet and send a message to the other girls to get their ideas about an issue." She calls herself a fact-gatherer, who then refines all the input from the others so her husband "doesn't have to hear my stream-of-consciousness thoughts. By the time I talk to him, he can just get a summary of how I'm thinking. Or sometimes, what may seem like an issue resolves itself before I even get a chance to discuss it with him."

This talking, hashing out and confiding between women actually leads to physical reactions, according to Penn State University researchers. They found that there's a chemical called oxytocin released in women's bodies when they are doing what researchers call "tending or befriending." Oxytocin helps ease women's stress. It calms them. When men are stressed, they produce testosterone, which tends to reduce the effect of oxytocin. (Meanwhile, a Harvard Medical School study found that for women without close friends to talk to, the sense of isolation can be as damaging as smoking, overeating or drinking too much alcohol.) In the end, though, even if you set aside all the health studies, the research into emotional well-being and the observations about men versus women, there's a simple way to understand what connects women such as the Ames girls.

The Roper Organization has conducted a poll asking people what in their lives says the most about who they are. About a quarter of respondents said "my home." Others cited their jobs, their clothes, their hobbies, their favorite music, their automobiles. But the most frequent top answer, given by a full 39 percent of respondents, was not a tangible "thing." When people really want to define themselves, they look beyond how they decorate their houses or what they do for a living or what songs are on their iPods. In the poll, the number one answer was "I am most defined by my friendships."

For the Ames girls, of course, their friendships encompa.s.s who they are, who they were, how they viewed themselves long ago and how they see themselves now. And on all of these fronts, so much reveals itself through the prism of Ames, Iowa.

Ames was actually a town that, early on, formally recognized the value of friendship, especially among girls. During World War I, Ames High chartered an afterschool chapter of the YWCA's Girl Reserves, dedicated in part to improving relationships between female students. Annual dues were 35 cents then, and members recited a pledge: As a Girl Reserve I will try to face life squarely. I will try to be . . . Gracious in manner . . . Impartial in judgment . . . Ready for service . . . Loyal to friends . . . Earnest in purpose . . . Seeing the beautiful . . . Eager for knowledge . . . Reverent to G.o.d . . . Victorious over self . . . Ever dependable . . . Sincere at all times . . . .

The group hosted lectures on topics such as "Popularity vs. Success," "What Are You Laughing About?" and "Gossip vs. Conversation." Evidently, even then, there was an awareness of mean-girl tendencies.

By the 1970s, Girl Reserves at Ames High had morphed into a Big Sister/Little Sister program, without the sober pledge and pointed lectures. As incoming students, the Ames girls appreciated being a.s.signed to an older girl whose job it was to look after them and care about them. They also got a kick out of the ceremonial aspects of the program. The Big Sister's ident.i.ty remained secret for months; she'd send the Little Sister small presents and encouraging notes. It was a special moment when everyone gathered for "Discovery Night," and the younger girls learned who their big sister was.

From the earliest days, Ames High educators stressed the value in nurturing friendships. About sixty years before the girls got there, the princ.i.p.al was Albert Caldwell, a man who had survived the sinking of the t.i.tanic t.i.tanic along with his wife and infant son. In speeches, he talked of how he and other survivors were bonded by their shared experiences that night. The take-away message was that the strongest friendships are often forged from adversity. along with his wife and infant son. In speeches, he talked of how he and other survivors were bonded by their shared experiences that night. The take-away message was that the strongest friendships are often forged from adversity.

After being rescued, Caldwell's wife, Sylvia, had told reporters that when she boarded the t.i.tanic, t.i.tanic, she asked a deckhand if the ship was really unsinkable. "Yes, lady," she quoted him as saying. "G.o.d himself could not sink this ship!" It became a famous line, though some people suspected that Mrs. Caldwell was a publicity-seeker who'd made it up. She later published a book, she asked a deckhand if the ship was really unsinkable. "Yes, lady," she quoted him as saying. "G.o.d himself could not sink this ship!" It became a famous line, though some people suspected that Mrs. Caldwell was a publicity-seeker who'd made it up. She later published a book, The Women of the t.i.tanic, The Women of the t.i.tanic, about the "fort.i.tude and bravery" of this band of women who had heard the dying screams of their sons, husbands and brothers-and soldiered on without them. Surviving the about the "fort.i.tude and bravery" of this band of women who had heard the dying screams of their sons, husbands and brothers-and soldiered on without them. Surviving the t.i.tanic t.i.tanic created lifelong relationships among some of the women. And though they found solace in their friendships with each other, their marriages didn't always survive. The Caldwells got divorced in 1930. created lifelong relationships among some of the women. And though they found solace in their friendships with each other, their marriages didn't always survive. The Caldwells got divorced in 1930.

Ames was known as a "high-IQ town," and for good reason. Many of the Ames girls' cla.s.smates were the offspring of professors at Iowa State or engineers at the Iowa Highway Commission or scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory. The parents who worked at Ames Lab could seem like the most mysterious people in town; everyone knew they had quietly helped develop the atom bomb by producing high-purity uranium for the Manhattan Project.

Given the brainpower all over town, some adult friendships revolved around highbrow c.o.c.ktail parties with visiting scholars. Marilyn's parents, Dr. and Mrs. McCormack, were benefactors of the Central Iowa Symphony, so their friends were cla.s.sical music lovers. Jenny's mom, always active in politics and volunteer work, traveled in the civic-minded crowd. Because Sheila's dad was a dentist, he and Sheila's mom socialized with other young professionals.

But the adult friendships in town mostly took shape in the same frameworks found elsewhere in Middle America. For some of the Ames girls' grandparents and parents, friendships were born and nurtured through eating, dancing and Friday night happy hour at the Elks Club.

Several of the Ames girls' mothers kept in close touch with longtime friends. Jenny's mom, who graduated from Iowa State in 1959, would get together regularly with the nineteen other girls from her sorority pledge cla.s.s. (The reunions continue today, with seventeen of the women still alive and attending.) And every Tuesday afternoon, for decades, Cathy's mom would gather with three other women for what they called the Tuesday Club.

The Tuesday Club was so crucial to Cathy's mom that family vacations would be scheduled so she wouldn't miss a Tuesday in Ames. Cathy liked when the club gathered at her house, because that meant Tuesday night dinners would end with the cakes and pies her mom had baked that the club members didn't finish.

The club also offered Cathy a window into womanhood and motherhood. When she was young, she'd sit outside the kitchen, listening to the women of the Tuesday Club discuss their husbands and their kids, their resentments and their dreams. Sometimes, they'd actually take a moment and pray for their children. It was the purest form of group therapy. "Stay close to your girlfriends," Cathy's mom would tell her. "Men come and go, but you can have girlfriends forever."

Across America in the 1970s, women's coffee klatches such as the ones hosted by Cathy's mom were in transition. Without even realizing it, these women were involved in a change in the culture. In talking about their own issues as mothers, wives and members of the community, they were tiptoeing into the still-being-defined women's consciousness movement. They could see that their concerns were similar to the concerns discussed by women elsewhere. Women in Ames (and beyond) were all connected to the same fabric.

Meanwhile, as the parents and the kids in Ames socialized in separate spheres-the young and old each not really knowing exactly what the other was up to-there were always efforts under way to build a better sense of community between them. By the 1970s, the city had inst.i.tuted its Blue Star child-safety program. Families would volunteer to place a blue star in their windows, letting children know it was a safe haven if they were ever in trouble.

Sally, Jenny, Jane and Cathy all grew up in homes with blue stars in their windows. When Sally sold Girl Scout cookies, she went only to homes of people she knew-and strangers' homes if they had blue stars. It was fine as a precaution. But Ames was actually a pretty safe town-years would go by without a murder-so there weren't many frantic kids banging on the doors of blue-star homes saying bad guys were chasing them. Jane's mother never had any blue-star traffic at all, except for a boy who'd routinely knock on the door because he was locked out of his house when his mother was cleaning.