Lisa: Hi, my name is Lisa. I am 55 years old, I am from Dorr, Michigan.
Anne: My name is Anne. I am 70 years old. I'm from Hart, Michigan. I moved four years ago from a moderate touristy area up to Hart. I thought it was really challenging for me because it's easy to get along with people when you all have the same view. And I thought I would be a real outlier up here, but I'm not. And I think that's what really compelled me is that I've had such a wonderful experience in Hart.
Lisa: I'm a career advisor at a university and we teach students to tell their career story. What are their whys? What can they do? What's motivating them to want to contribute to that organization in that role in a big picture? And the power of story is so profound. It changes your brain as you're listening to somebody else's story and it connects you to them and gives you empathy and helps develop just an understanding of the ways that we're the same and the ways that we're different, which is cliche, but it's true. Thank you for being here to share your story.
Anne: So where and how did you grow up?
Lisa: I grew up in Ravenna, Michigan.
Anne: Okay.
Lisa: Which is small farm town, Muskegon County. My mom is still there. My dad died, but he was a schoolteacher and a coach. So, we were very embedded into the community and my mom was a nurse. My dad was a teacher. I have great love for Ravenna and the things that it taught us about community and connection and being there for people, no matter what. Hard work. And I would imagine Hart is very similar.
Anne: Well, I've only been here four years, and I moved here from Montague where I'd lived for 24 years. I grew up in Charlotte. I was one of five daughters. I was lucky my parents stayed together. They were really embedded in the community and my grandfather was an immigrant from Ukraine. And so, my dad just had this very sincerely held belief that we owed our communities our service as a way to show our appreciation for the privilege of living in this country. And we all, my sisters and I all do tons of stuff, but my kids do not.
Lisa: Yeah, it's a new world. How old are your kids?
Anne: Old enough to know better. And in fact, my grandkids the other day were mocking me for my volunteer work. Yeah, grandma loves to work for free. So that just really made me sad. I didn't communicate my dad's message strong enough to my kids, I guess, for them to pass it on to my kids. So how are you guys doing?
Lisa: Well, working on a college campus, I have a little different perspective sometimes because you hear the collective conversation of watching how fragile the world is. It scares them. It feels temporary. It feels like relationships are often negotiated all the time. Right now, the big conversation among the daters is, do you have anxious attachment or avoidant attachment? So, they're, breaking up because their attachment styles are different. And I'm like, man, my husband and I, we just grew up together. Well, he's like that and I'm like this, and we'll figure out how to be like us together. And we've done that for 33 years. When you were talking about your dad's message, passing it on, we've tried so hard to pass the message on to our kids. Both my husband and the work he does and myself, same thing, we both do a lot of work for free. But it's because we know we're not here alone. We're meant to help each other. That's really our call.
Anne: I think that's why we're here. So how did you learn those qualities?
Lisa: My parents weren't traditional in like, you do this work, you do that work. There was laundry and it needed to move forward. Whoever was there went and moved it forward. And so, I think that is part of it. My husband is a police officer. He has done several things over and above what his duties as assigned are and my kids see that. They all are helpers. They all have a heart for others, but I don't think that they will make it the centerpiece of their life in the same way that we do just because they're like, Oh, I've got to have time for me. I've got to have time to relax. I've got to be healthy before I can help other people.
Anne: Is that their age or is it our culture or our changing culture? Like, is this it? They were saying once about how, well, I don't know why you do all this stuff for free. Well, do you like the pumpkin rolls? Do you like the fireworks? Do you like the 4th of July? Those things aren't created by paid people, you know?
Lisa: Right.
Anne: It’s what it takes to make a community.
Lisa: Yeah.
Anne: I was curious about your love to read.
Lisa: I'm going to tell you a little sidebar first. I went to Hope College and one of my professors, Dr. Charles Huttar was retiring. And so, their retirement semester, they got to pick whatever class they wanted to teach and he caught a class called Angels in Literature. And he said to us, what if instead of an exam, we went to my house, he lived in a big old historical house in Holland, and we read Paradise Lost out loud. Now don't know if you've ever seen Paradise Lost, it's like this thick. A poem. We started at 6:30 in the morning and we didn't finish till eight o'clock at night. But in his house, every inch bookshelves above the windows, above doorways, from the floor to the ceiling, books upon books upon books. It was this surreal thing. And he just said, start reading when you're kind of done with your turn, the next person will go. About halfway through, he leaned back like this in his chair and he was breathing really slow, and we were all like, he brought us here and now he's sleeping. And we got to his turn and he started reciting. And he did that the whole day, no matter where we were at. I don't know if he had a photographic memory. What kind of brain is that that you could just embrace it and then love it so much that you would want this to be your final act as a professor was to read this out loud in your home. I write all the time, just for my own pleasure. I was a newspaper reporter for a number of years. So, I like to write short.
Anne: I was a news reporter too.
Lisa: Were you? For who?
Anne: The Arenac County Independent. And then I freelanced for some bigger papers, but it's not what it used to be.
Lisa: No, it's not. That's why I'm a career advisor. I started at the Ravenna Independent and they saw that I liked to write in high school and they said, come write for us. And one of my friends says, you did newspaper writing, the Grand Rapids Press needs somebody on the Lakeshore edition. So, I got to work for them for 10 years and then they started gutting the newspaper and then I went to the Holland Sentinel for a little bit. That was a bad fit. And then it was like the newspaper industry's gutting. I knew I had worked in higher ed and liked it. It feeds that connector in me and you get to tell a lot of stories. My awkwardness and my ability to be approachable has allowed me to advise and mentor a lot of students.
Anne: Sounds like you really know who you are.
Lisa: That part I do have down. I don't always know what to do with that. One of the things that I was curious about, Anne, is you were raised by two World War II Marine Corps vets. I know World War II a lot of women were called into service, but it still was unusual.
Anne: Her dad was a Marine and she vowed she was going to be a Marine, but they didn't allow women in. Then one day her brother came home and said, well, your dream just came true. The Marines are now admitting women. And she was in the second year that they allowed women to come in. The slogan was free a man to fight. So, you would take their desk job and then they could go overseas. So, she was stationed in South Carolina. And when he got sent back from the front he was sent there, and she admitted him, and he was sicker than a dog. And she said to herself, thank you angels, I think an angel just brought him to me.
Lisa: That's cool.
Anne: So, I got to tell you, we are all named Mary. Very strong Catholics.
Lisa: Uh, huh.
Anne: And so, there were two stories. My mom said that they just wanted to name us after Mary. I think they thought we would all stay virgins that way. I’m not sure.
Lisa: (Laughing)
Anne: But then my dad said that at one point in the war, his whole platoon was trapped. There was a sniper who just kept shooting at him. He said he just rolled from side to side to side, you know, and he said, Jesus, if you get me out of this, I will name all my daughters after you.
Lisa: Could you briefly describe in your own words your personal political values?
Anne: I've always been a political nerd. I remember watching John F. Kennedy's, the convention that nominated him. I was five years old.
Lisa: Wow.
Anne: I remember asking my mom or dad once, are we Democrats or Republicans? And somebody said, well, we're Democrats. You know, our folks were in the union. I go, oh, okay. As we got older, my sister became the county clerk. So, she was the Republican county clerk for, I don't know, 25 or 30 years. And so, they all worked elections. I mean, there's a huge amount of patriotism behind elections.
Lisa: Yeah, there is.
Anne: I’ll fight to my death to protect elections. But I really think that was the extent of the political involvement for my family. And my dad had a business in town, so he would never put signs anywhere.
Lisa: Right.
Anne: No matter how he felt. I have actually worked on some political campaigns at the state level.
Lisa: Nice.
Anne: No, I'm not sure. It's a whole different world in there and it wasn't good for my soul. I don't care what party or gender you are. There can be a viciousness that goes with it. Doing what's right for the general population is morphed into how will this get me ahead as a candidate? And I have a problem with that.
Lisa: But that kind of goes back to what we talked about earlier in the, I'm not going to volunteer because it doesn't serve myself. People are in it just for themselves. So why shouldn't I be? You’ve got to take care of yourself. I grew up in a household that was neutral. I watched my parents study all the candidates that were available. They didn't vote by party. They would take a well-balanced approach. It was almost job interviewee. I think that's the way I've approached politics too, but I don't live my life connected to a party. What is something that you will take away from this experience, Anne?
Anne: It's just been a real pleasure. We have a lot of connections with where you live,
Lisa: Yes, we do.
Anne: And where I live.
Lisa: Yep.
Anne: You have no idea how many times I told my oldest daughter; you need to go to a career counselor. Go to somebody who can help you.
Lisa: Yeah.
Anne: I was really afraid of this.
Lisa: And I know I will be blessed by this. I will think about story and I will think about faith and I will think about politics and how all of that plays together. And I hope someday when I'm walking around Hart, Michigan, I see you, Anne, and I can say, Anne, there you are.
Anne: I am a DJ in the evenings at a couple of local bars of all things. Yes.
Lisa: Oh, very fun. That sounds like a good change, and I can find you as a DJ.