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Susan Williams, who was more familiar with the world of politics than construction, came on board as executive director of the Indiana State Building Commission when the proposed new Indianapolis State Museum was still in the planning stages.hgged race. "Those little girls practiced for weeks, going up

She ended up scrapping the plans, scrapping the architect, literally starting over. But she directed to completion an incredible testament to the past and present of the 19th state, earning the respect and admiration of those whose talents and skills helped design and construct the monumental edifice in White River State Park.

Despite never managing a building project, she was handpicked by Gov. Frank O'Bannon's administration. The governor wanted someone who knew how to manage a project, stay on budget and complete it on time.

Betty Cockrum, who headed the Administration Commission when she hired Williams, told her she wanted strong leadership skills. So Williams asked lots of questions before she began the $105 million project (a blend of $65 million in public and $40 million in private funds).

From any observer of the museum, she's a quick learner. Overseeing the building's financing, design and construction, she gave the governor what he wanted.

"The museum has been the biggest challenge of my career, and I've had lots of challenges in my work world and political world," admits Williams.

And she's done it all, from working for former U.S. Sen. Birch Bayh to raising two teen-age sons. The Sagamore of the Wabash recipient sat on the Indianapolis-Marion County City-County Council, taught history, ran a law firm and has worked for the Marion County Prosecutor's office.

Building a museum is unlike anything the commission had ever done either. With the exception of the state government building, the commission usually builds correctional facilities and health care centers - - institutional designs that don't require much architectural thought.

"To have the opportunity to build an important building Downtown is incredible," says Williams, who was master of ceremonies for the opening celebration in May. "It's a nice way to punctuate advocacy, because while I was on the City-Council I was the one to advocate for historic districts and design renewal and try to make sure our architecture made a statement."

Williams' straightforward manner helped her get the job done. When construction crews said they couldn't do something, she didn't take "no" for an answer. "She's very direct," says Virginia Dill McCarty, who was chief counsel to the prosecutor while Williams worked in the prosecutor's office. "You always know where you stand with her."

She's so direct that some people don't want to be in her line of fire. A businessman asked Karen Horseman, a City-County Council member and mentoree of Williams, to intercede on his behalf. Horseman asked the man why he didn't call Williams himself, and he responded, "I'm scared of her."

However, Williams didn't use fear to build the museum. "She offers respect to those who worked for her and expects them to do a very good job," says McCarty, a former U.S Attorney General.

The museum is a tribute to the strength of women in Indiana, literally. When the project was announced, construction firms wanted to meet with Cockrum, now state budget director; Sheila Snider, the director of Public Works, and Williams. The women decided to save time and meet the presenters as a group.

"Some of the men didn't know how to handle talking to a panel of three women," Williams says. "They were telling us how to manage construction crews. I mean, Sheila was the architect for IUPUI. Betty holds the state's checkbook. They talked to us like we had just fallen off the turnip truck."

Williams was on the construction site daily overseeing the final details of meshing the high-tech exhibitry with basic construction. "It's dynamic to watch the purebred construction people grow to appreciate the artisans," she says.

As she walked around the site, she always looked for female construction workers and subcontractors. "I have a reputation for that," she says, proudly noting that there were women on her work site. "When I go out there and don't see women, I start prodding."

The petite administrator never got lost among the hulking construction workers. Her pink hardhat shone from the sea of white hardhats like a lighthouse on a dark shore.

Decorated with a variation of stickers, including Dorothy's ruby slippers and a pair of stilettos, the attention-getter was a leftover gimmick from one of the many nonprofit committees she served. When she forgot it and wore a white hardhat, the upset crews let her know which hat they preferred. "We have to know you're in the building," she recalls a construction worker saying.

She never hesitated in wearing it because of the color that represented all things "girl." At a recent speech, she told the group that in the 1970s she remembers being told to wear a dark suit, white blouse and a bow tie. Her mentors advised her not to wear pastels, especially pink, or anything too feminine. Dressed in a pink outfit, she then whipped out the hardhat from behind the podium and said to her audience, "Now, I can wear pink all I want, because I have the checkbook."

Indiana government is run by lots of pink, even if it looks blue from the outside. These are strong women in high places, including Peggy Boehm, director of White River State Park; Mary Downs, the former chief of staff of the lieutenant governor's office; Cockrum; Snider; and Williams.

Their ideas and support are integral to the success of legislation. A recent e-mail showed how much power they have. A male government leader sent an e-mail describing a judicial appointment that he wanted accepted, but he needed the "skirts' vote" for it to pass. Williams and her female state colleagues lightheartedly call their group "the skirts."

"I don't think this community realizes how many strong women are very well placed over the state," she said.

Williams has relied on these women, who face the same daily challenges of being female government leaders, during the past four "very stressful" years of building the museum. They made her slow down by taking her to brunch on Sunday mornings, or forced her to have a glass of wine after work. "I would not have made it through this challenge, (for) which I was not qualified, had it not been for some strong women friends," she says.

She had forgotten what a strong female support system felt like, not having experienced that kind of network since leaving the prosecutor's office. McCarty urged Williams to take on bigger challenges.

"She (McCarty) made sure there were women in positions all over that place," Williams recalls, referring to Ann DeLaney, the executive director of the Julian Center and the first female nominee for lieutenant governor; Paula Lopossa, a judge for Indianapolis-Marion County Small Claims Court; and Pat Riley, a judge for Indiana State Court of Appeals.

Despite the success of these women, "this community is still not there in relation to women," says Williams. That was obvious when she and her colleagues who serve on Indiana Sports Corp. committees were advocating for Indianapolis to host the NCAA Women's Final Four in 2003. Even though the city has hosted the NCAA Men's Final Four and an array of sporting events too numerous to mention, the NCAA Women's Final Four committee was hesitant about Indianapolis. "We have a reputation of being a good old boys town," she says.

In fact, when the Indiana Sports Corp. asked her to serve on the Final Four committee, she asked straight out did the group want female faces or did they actually want female involvement, because she didn't want to do it unless she had a strong voice in the process.

Her devotion to the Final Four fits with her love of Downtown. After she left the City-County Council, she decided to dedicate herself to Downtown projects. Its survival is important to Williams, because she was one of the leading advocates for reviving the city.

After she and her husband, David Rimstidt, a mediation attorney, decided to renovate an 1870s Victorian home in Chatham Arch in 1980, she and several of her neighbors began working to get the area declared a historic district. As a result, she learned a lot about the "ins and outs of city politics."

When the city-county councilman representing her district died midterm, she succeeded him and continued to represent District 22 for 14 years. While sitting on the City-County Council, she focused on Downtown development, historic preservation and affordable housing.

She helped improve the neighborhoods of Massachusetts Avenue, Lockerbie, Riley and the Old Northside. Steve Thornton, who sits on the board of Massachusetts Avenue Community Development Corp. with her, recalls her driving out liquor stores from Downtown neighborhoods.

Even having two babies didn't pull her away from serving the city. She was sworn into office while her oldest son, Aaron, was still in diapers. She took Aaron and Matthew to neighborhood cleanups and committee meetings. "They are products of a political mom," she says. "When child care failed, they went with me."

During her City-County Council tenure from 1986 to 2000, Indianapolis reawakened. She helped plant every seed that has caused the city to flourish, including the city's red rose, Circle Centre.

"It was an exciting time to be Downtown," she says, her eyes lighting up. "I developed a real passion for city politics then. It's close to the touch. You do your work in the grocery store, the drugstore, at the park. It's one-on-one."

Those are the reasons she's turned off by state politics. And she's had plenty of people asking her to run for a legislative seat. "State legislature never appealed to me," she said. "This session more than ever demonstrates the disconnect between the lawmakers and the people."

That's not what she believed as a young government teacher at Brownsburg High School in 1973. "I really tried to engage my students in other ways than with their noses in a textbook, and wanted to engage myself," says Williams, a native of Brownsburg.

She volunteered for Bayh's campaign, stuffing envelopes and knocking on doors. Eventually she got noticed and put together a leadership conference for him at the high school. She declined his first job offer. But the next fall she worked as his campaign manager and followed him to Washington, D.C. "I stayed one month and left," says the Franklin College graduate. "Washington was not the place for me. I'm a small town girl."

She returned to Indianapolis in 1975 to work in the prosecutor's office, where she discovered city politics. The staunch Democrat brags she was the first person Stephen Goldsmith fired when he became prosecutor in 1979. "It was an amicable firing. Basically he said, 'You're fired, but now I need you to help me with the budget and everything,' " says Williams, who Goldsmith used as a sounding board throughout his prosecutorial and mayoral tenure.

She left the prosecutor's office to work as a training coordinator for Indiana University and then as a business administrator for Bingham Summers Welsh & Spilman until she moved onto the City-County Council.

Despite not being interested in running for a state seat, Williams admits to having had higher political callings. In 1999 she planned to run for mayor. She had the strategy sessions, the detailed budget and the right connections. But she also had two sons.

The final decision was made at the dinner table one night when she asked her husband and sons what they thought about her entering the race. Her youngest, Matthew, was all for it, dreaming of box suites and free tickets to city events. Then Aaron, the quieter of the two, spoke. "If you do this thing, you'll be robbing us of our privacy," he said. "We'll have to read about you in the paper every day. I hate that.I don't want you to do that."

She realized that four years turns into eight years, and running for office never really ends. She didn't want to leave the mayor's office to come home to find two grown men she didn't know.

Instead she spends the weekends with her husband touring colleges with Aaron, a junior at Brebreuf Jesuit Preparatory School, and shopping for clothes with Matthew, a freshman at North Central High School.

"Right now, I have a lot of anxiety about quality family time," she says, relishing a trip to San Antonio with Aaron to watch the Women's Final Four. "Now I have the time, and they don't want to bother with me."

But she likes that the break from politics has allowed her to become more active with her synagogue, Indianapolis Hebrew Congregation.

She plans to become even more involved now that the museum is finished. She's taking off the month of July to crash. During that hiatus, she'll garden more, or less, if the neighborhood joke is correct. When she's stressed, she likes to dig in the dirt and plant lots of flowers. The joke among the neighbors is "Ah, she's digging again; Susan must be stressed."

She hopes to spend more time serving on the boards of Indianapolis Downtown Inc., Methodist Hospital and the National Institute of Fitness and Sport. Her goal for the summer is to reconnect with friends whom she neglected while building the museum.

But otherwise, "I'm pretty happy being a senior statesperson who gets called in from time to time to help with stuff," she says of her political career. Presently, she's mentoring council members on time management.

"It's amazing; if you focus your energies you can keep everything simple and sensible," says Williams. She attributes her ability to prioritize to her children. When the boys entered school, if someone wanted to meet after 3 p.m., she said she had a conflicting appointment - -an appointment at the schoolhouse doors, but she never told anyone that. She makes a point of making time for herself, including a two-hour workout at the gym on Saturday mornings.

"You can't let people control your life," says Williams, who relies on being a "creature of habit" to master her schedule. "You have to stay true to what you want to accomplish."

She has done just that. She's achieved more than most people do in a lifetime. There's the NCAA Women's Final Four yet to come and who knows what else? But Indianapolis residents can count on one thing:The next big project that comes to Downtown, Susan Williams will be behind it.

This pioneer among women in Indianapolis government and politics still has more history to make.