Abby: Hi, my name is Abby, and I'm 36 years old and I am from Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Sherry: Hi, my name is Sherry. I'm 73 years old. I am from Kalamazoo, Michigan. I grew up in the 50s and 60s in Cleveland, Ohio. The suburbs back then where I grew up were very diverse and not racially, but economically for sure. I was Italian and we had Irish families, a huge Catholic school, 1400 children in my grade school. Sixty kids in a class. A lot of my friends' parents were like first- or second-generation immigrants, very liberal Catholic school. I had a great experience as a kid and a teenager and got involved in volunteering very, very young. But also experienced a lot of different ups and downs because my father died and we didn't have money after that and my mom had to go back to work. I mean, we grew up with a lot of assassinations, the Vietnam War, there was a lot of turmoil. but it was always very hopeful and everybody was always like, we'll get through this, it's okay. What about you? Did you grow up in Michigan?
Abby: I grew up in West Michigan. I grew up in Grand Rapids, Grandville. So, I had a pretty large class size too. It's like 500 in my class, but not 1,400. I don't know how they even did that. But I grew up in a very conservative Christian evangelical home. Not Catholic actually, Catholicism was considered idolatry in my family.
Sherry: Right. Right.
Abby: Right. So...
Sherry: Right. Right. Right.
Abby: I love my family dearly. I’ve had to deconstruct the hell out of my faith. I knew that they were trying their best. I knew that all the choices they made came from a place of love. Whether that love was mixed with a lot of fear. That’s okay. I knew that the roots were love. My mom always worked in a church my whole life and my dad was post-military pilot in the Navy. It wasn't super strict, but I knew what to expect from them and I knew the rules.
Sherry: Right. Right. Right.
Abby: My mom would do anything for me at any time. I don't even know how to describe my life. It feels like it was just yesterday that I was living at home. I grew up with conservative values too. I grew up pretty Republican, felt like that was what I had to be in order to achieve heaven. The whole “Righteous Right” movement. My parents were heavily involved in that. James Dobson, Focus on the Family, all of that stuff. I don't have any resentment about it, but I definitely am very different from the way that I was raised now.
Sherry: What made you understand for yourself that it was too limiting?
Abby: One of my best friends was killed in a car accident when I was 17. I remember my grandpa telling me, did he believe in Jesus as a savior? And I said, no, he was an atheist. And he said, well, then there's no hope then. And I remember that sticking. And I said, how can there be no hope with this God that's supposed to be all loving and all powerful? And how does the hope not extend to those who've been killed? You know, maybe it's beyond the grave too. Maybe grace lives beyond this. Maybe we believe in a much bigger God than the one you're telling me about. And so, I started asking those questions and I was lucky enough to be in a space where I could ask those. I went to Mars Hill Bible Church. Rob Bell was the teaching pastor at the time and he was allowing room for those big questions like is hell real? Is this a social construct that we've made up to control people? He didn't say yes or no, but he was allowing space for those questions. So, I think I was the start of me saying, well, if there's no hope, then what now?
Sherry: Okay. Okay. I like that.
Abby: And I can't live in a world where there's no hope for my best friend. And I don't think that God is as rigid as you say he is, or as black and white. Do you still consider yourself Catholic?
Sherry: I've always been a very eclectic Catholic, I guess, in that sense. My Catholicism was Pope John XXIII, who was very liberal. The whole mass changed. All of that was like, okay, there's other ways to do Catholicism. And my education had always just been New Testament. We never studied the Old Testament. I always just felt that religion was taking care of other human beings. Our job was to make life better for other people and be accepting. I took my kids to church when they were little and like they went to Catholic school and you know, I told them once the church started getting very restrictive and political, I can remember my son was in seventh grade and there was a lecture at Western (Michigan University) about evolution. And I said, we're going. You have to listen to what they're telling you in school, but you don't have to accept it. At some point you're going to make your own mind and I'm going to give you the alternative. And so that's kind of how I raised them.
Abby: Could you describe in your own words your personal political values?
Sherry: I never had to describe them before. I guess my belief always been a Democrat. My school was pretty Democratic when we grew up. There were lots of Republicans though, because it was a fairly expensive Catholic school. And so, a lot of people with money tend to be Republican. I guess my belief is that government is made to better society. Keep them safe, protect them, and to make their life better for everyone and to allow people the opportunity. I feel that right now, a centrist or Democratic party does that better than a Republican. I find the difference in my thought right now and probably for the last maybe 10 years is that to me, the Democrats, and they're not always right, they've got some crazy ideas, are looking at you, at others, and the Republicans tend to look inward, make things good for me and mine. And what about you?
Abby: Very similar. I just had this conversation with my parents, actually. It started to get a little heated. But I just said, you know, what it comes down to, Dad, is that I care more about other people than money. And I think that the Republicans, from my experience, tend to think about how to protect me and my assets, me and my money, me and my family, and don't often think about who is struggling and why. Why is often missed. It's often glossed over because they're not seeing the whole picture. To be honest, I didn't vote Democrat until the last election, until Obama's election. And I changed quite a bit even since then. And I voted third party thinking it was just a joke. And it's getting more and more real how politics affect my life and my children's lives. And I can't just say, oh, well, third party will, you I have the right to vote that way. I have to choose the candidate that I think is going to be the best for my family, but also the best for our country and the world. Politically, I think I'm Democrat. I think I'm pretty moderate for the most part. I hold a lot of Republican values in some ways. Like, I don't want to just spend money frivolously. I've had to learn that as a library director, like using taxpayer’s dollars. And I also care deeply about providing women with support for all areas of their life. And that means I want babies to live. No one wants abortion, but that's something I've grown into is being pro-choice. And I really hate guns.
Sherry: It's terrifying. Why did you decide to be a librarian or how did you decide?
Abby: I got lucky. I went to Grand Valley State University with my undergrad in literature and classics. Loved literature, loved stories, had very wonderful people encourage me. Loved my professors, and I had no idea what to do after college. And I randomly saw an ad for a youth librarian position in Coopersville. And I went in, I interviewed, and I got it. No experience. It didn't require the master's degree yet. So, I spent two years working there. I loved public librarianship. I loved working with people. I love, love the career itself. So, I decided to go and get my master's degree when I had a newborn baby, like you do. And I got a full-time professional librarian job. Did that for nine years and just got this director position nine months ago. I'd love to hear about your library experience about disarming a teenager.
Sherry: I was in engineering. I wanted to go into the Peace Corps in Africa. And I was struggling with fourth semester engineering calculus. I talked to the Peace Corps recruiter and he said, we don't put women in engineering positions because they're single assignments. We don't do it. You can teach English or you can feed people, but you can't do what you want it to do. So, I said, okay, forget that, I'm not pursuing it anymore. So, I got a degree in creative writing, got done with college in three years. So, then I thought I would like to write for kids. The best place to know where to write is to be surrounded by children and their literature. So, I got a library degree in Children's and Public and I worked at Cleveland Public (Library) for a year and loved it. It was across the street from the high school and there was a shooting in the early 1970s at a football game. And there was a kid that I believe was killed. We had a kid that was a dropout that used to come in the library all the time. The Monday after the shooting, he came in with a gun. So, I spent like 10 minutes explaining that he would get in big trouble. And if he would put the gun down on the counter, we could call the police and the police could take it.
Abby: What is something that you will take away from this experience, Sherry.
Sherry: There are lots of thoughtful, intelligent people that just with a little bit of self-confidence or self-reflection can see through the mess that we're in as a country or society. I see that you've done that.
Abby: Thank you. I think sometimes it feels so messy that I'm like, well, we've got to fix it. We've got to fix it for my kids. Maybe it is just this. Moments by moments and connecting to people and that's what's going to change things. I hope.