THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 19, 1994 TAG: 9406160732
SECTION: HAMPTON ROADS WOMAN PAGE: 03 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MATTHEW BOWERS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: 940619 LENGTH: Long
Private things. Secret things. The things Momma never told you about.
{REST} Personal finances.
Why, it must be taboo, Leban argues. Our parents tell us more about sex than they do about how much they earn, or what they do with their money.
This might go double for women, who traditionally have been on the outside when it came to family finances, with their fathers and, later, their husbands calling all the spending-and-saving shots.
That could prove disastrous for women if - when - they never marry, Leban says.
Or they become divorced or widowed and have to fend for themselves and their children.
Or they marry someone who himself doesn't know how to handle money.
Or even if they marry someone who does know - insurance and retirement-fund decisions affect them, too.
That, Leban says, covers just about every woman. And she wants to reach them all. But she insists she's not on a mission. She just wants to help women learn what she had to find out for herself after her divorce.
Of course, Leban's best friend says she is on a mission. So does the director of the Old Dominion University Women's Center, where Leban teaches two courses on personal finances for women and is adding a third.
``Really, from the very beginning, it has been one of our most popular,'' said Julie L. Dodd, Women's Center director who also took one of Leban's courses. ``She's vivacious, that's one thing. But she has this great sense of humor. She has the ability to make what can be dull . . . very interesting.
``She really has a deep commitment in teaching this stuff.''
Best friend Ruth Ann Dunn, a Virginia Beach writer, met Leban when she took a seminar and a class of hers. She described Leban's teaching style as a combination of ``expertise and Jewish mother.''
Leban is taking her nonmission mission on the road in September. She starts a national tour of her class on basic personal finances for women, sponsored by a women's education organization.
The title she chose for it? ``Bag Lady Prevention.''
``My motto has always been: `I've been trying to change the world 20 women at a time,' '' Leban said. ``But I have always said it's going too slowly. Now, I can change it 200 at a time.''
Changing the world by freeing women through financial knowledge seems to fit someone born on the Fourth of July - Independence Day - almost 47 years ago in the Queens borough of New York City.
Recently she sat in her Central Fidelity Bank office on the fourth floor of the World Trade Center, her desk pointedly facing away from her tempting view of Town Point Park and the Elizabeth River. She makes do with two prints of sailboats on her otherwise bare walls.
On the desk is her cut-glass YWCA Winners Award as one of the Outstanding Women of Hampton Roads she was given in March. The awards are for helping eliminate racism and sexism and contributing to the betterment of women. Leban was honored for doing so by teaching such things as basic budgets and how to choose life insurance.
``Our mothers have not passed this information down to us because they haven't been taught,'' Leban said. ``Every woman needs to handle her own personal finances. Every woman.''
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She didn't, at least not at first. She studied sociology in college, switching from psychology because she got tired of studying rats. After graduation in 1968, she worked for a year on Wall Street as a research assistant in a brokerage. She married the same year.
While her husband attended law school at Duke University in Durham, N.C., she ran a cake-decorating business from her kitchen. It was also when she began her practice of setting a goal and then not letting herself out of it.
A few days after obtaining her business license, she sent out 250 advertisements to students' parents promising them Valentine's Day cakes. Only then did she buy a pastry bag, call an instructor at the local YWCA and start learning how to decorate cakes.
She sold 13 cakes that Valentine's Day, 45 cakes two years later.
``I had already sent out the advertisements, so I had no choice,'' Leban said. ``I had to learn.
``The key was, my mother told me I could do anything, and I believed her.''
The Navy brought her husband, her and their two sons to Virginia Beach, where she owned and operated The Custom Cake Shoppe from 1982 to 1987. Lifelike candy-clay orchid and lily decorations were her specialty.
The shop helped sustain her when her marriage ended in 1985 and she began looking around for a better way to support herself and her sons.
Given her Wall Street and private-business background, working in finance made sense, so she earned a stockbroker's license. After a couple of years working in financial planning and investment-portfolio design, she came to Central Fidelity in 1988 to manage the assets and estates of customers.
Her training showed her how little she really knew about financial planning and management, even with her background. It made her think about how little other women in her situation - newly single - must know. About eight years ago, she pitched to ODU the idea of a financial class for women and started, as her friend said, ``empowering women.''
Leban has her own toll-free number at home so her often-traveling sons - Drew, 20, a sophomore at Radford University, and Scott, 24, a high-school math teacher in Boston - can keep in touch. She calls them her proudest accomplishment.
Things have worked out for her, she says, because she's positive and doesn't dwell in the past, and she's surrounded by supportive family and friends. In fact, her license plate reads ``SO 42N8'' - ``So Fortunate.''
``If you set goals and stay aware, then opportunities present themselves and you can succeed,'' she said.
Two hours around a skating rink each week don't hurt, either. She and best friend Dunn meet to roller skate and talk about ``men and money and kids.''
``She was never bitter,'' Dunn said. ``But she would have some sort of vision: `Well, this is the way it is. So we cope.' ''
Leban also finds time to play tennis and participate in a writers' group. She and some friends bought a boat together and taught themselves to sail.
And she still bakes a little. She usually brings the dessert for dinner parties. And at Christmas, she, Dunn and Dunn's husband crank out 400 wrapped sugar, peanut butter and chocolate chip cookies for the area's homeless. by CNB