Jane: Hi, my name is Jane. I am 71 years old. I am from Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Becky: Hi, my name is Becky. I'm 68 years old and I am from Allendale, Michigan.I grew up mostly in the Lansing area. Most of my friends, people I interacted with, their parents were either auto workers at General Motors, some of them were executives, some of them worked on the line, and or, also workers in state government. It was really a very mixed group of people that I went to school with, that I was friends with, even racially mixed at that time, which I think was somewhat unusual. And so, I'm very grateful because it really laid a good foundation for being able to go out into the world and realize that there are many perspectives out there and that everybody's experience of life is not the same as mine.
Jane: Well, it sounds like you were lucky that way. What was your family like?
Becky: At the time, you know, in the mid-60’s, a traditional middle-class family. My mom didn't work. My dad did. We were not wealthy when I was younger my dad did do very well in business later on. And so, I think we were probably what was considered upper middle-class, but we didn't live that way.
We had a very small house. We had one bathroom. We had one car. You know, we didn't have a lot of the things that a lot of other people have. And I just assumed that was normal, but it wasn't. A lot of my friends had things.
My parents didn't value that at all. I'm grateful for that too, because that was a perspective I got where the outward appearances are not what matter. It's really what's in a person.And my parents are not particularly what I would call religious at all, but I did pick up that value from them. And my faith is very important to me. They laid the groundwork for really a values-based life. And I'm grateful for that.
Jane: Do you have siblings?
Becky: Nope. I'm an only child.
Jane: You're an only child. I grew up in a Detroit suburb. As you noted about Lansing, very heavily automotive; friends, dads worked in the different companies. And I distinctly remember at one point, one of the schools had a fair and one of the most popular things at the fair was smashing a Toyota. So, I grew up in the 50s, 60s, early 70s in a subdivision of 48 homes and everybody was Catholic.
There are four kids in my family. I'm in the middle. I have an older sister and then I have a younger sister and brother who are twins. And my upbringing was very strict Catholic. We said the family rosary in the month of May and the month of October after dinner. We had to go to church.I am no longer a practicing Catholic. And that's probably why, because I felt that we were brainwashed.
I would call it an upper middle-class existence. My parents, especially my mom, always wanted more than they could afford. And unlike your parents, appearances were very important, especially to my mother. I went to a Catholic girl’s high school, and then I went to a Catholic college for about a year and a half before transferring as a result of a race incident that was very unpleasant and very unfortunate.
Unlike you, I did not grow up in any kind of a diverse place at all. Everybody was white. Everybody was Catholic. Everybody had a lot of kids. The one thing I can say that was really important that was like deal breaker for me was realizing when I was about 16 or 17 that a woman was not good enough to become a priest, to be Christ-like. So, I was out. When I transferred to U of M, suddenly I was free to do what I wanted to do. That was the end of that. I've changed careers at least three times. I graduated from art school.
Becky: Oh, gosh.
Jane: And I started out working in advertising and graphic design. And then I migrated to being a writer. And after I had my first child, that first year was really hard. I got myself into a position of creative director at the ad agency where I worked. And I lost my ambition as soon as I hit that baby boy. So, I left and I went freelance, and I did really well as a freelance writer. But then when I started to hit my mid late 30s and I had another child, I got kind of bored with what I was writing. So, I went through some counseling out at Grand Valley (State University) and counselor said, have you ever thought about going to law school? So, I ended up going back to law school in sort of midlife. After that, I practiced law for about seven, eight years.And then I got recruited by my law school to teach an intro course. And then I ended up teaching legal writing and research for about 12 years.
Becky: That's quite a diverse portfolio of things you've done there.
Jane: Yeah. Truck driving might be next.
Becky: (Laughing)
Jane: I always wanted to drive a big rig.
Becky: I ran for County Commissioner in Ottawa County to represent Allendale, which is a heavily Republican area. And, you know, I was actually encouraged when I was considering a run to not even run as a Democrat, to run as a Republican, which that's how unlikely it was for somebody running as a Democrat to be able to win. My values align with the Democratic party. So, there's no way that I would run as a Republican. But even if I were to try to do that as some kind of way of getting political traction, people would look at that and think that I was being dishonest, and I certainly would have been. So that was not going to happen.
When I ran, I actually made some huge inroads. I got 40 % of the vote, which was a lot for this area as running as a Dem. That's never happened before. And I worked really hard to do that. I walked, part of its rural, but part of it is developed. And so, in those developed areas, I walked every neighborhood, knocked every door, talked to everybody who would listen and got a lot of positive feedback.
Jane: Did you have the opportunity to talk to people who were Republican?
Becky: I got maybe just a handful of people that did not want to talk to me when they found out who I was. I mean, literally like five at the most. I knocked on, I would say at least 6,000 doors during this campaign. So very small number. And I got a huge number of people when I explained who I was, who said, I've never voted for a Democrat before in my life, but I'm going to vote for you. Not because I'm all that, but because they were concerned about what was happening in Ottawa County. I'm not glad about the outcome, but I'm glad I did it.
So, the other piece of that is my Christian faith. From my viewpoint, the two important things about Christianity are to love God with all your heart and soul and then to love others as yourself. Neither one of those is optional. And so, when I look at political platforms, I look at, in my opinion, which of the parties is doing the work that Number Two calls us to do, which is to love others as ourselves. And I see that in the Democratic party and specifically in ways that are controversial, like how to advocate for undocumented immigrants. That definitely puts me at odds with people, and I talk to a lot of them regularly around here who think that undocumented immigrants are breaking the law and they just need to go back where they came from.
That is true that some of them might be breaking the law, but I also think that immigration law is a relatively recent construct and that none of us would be here had our ancestors had to contend with that. All of that is just, it's an example of how I think government policy for so many years, in my opinion, has stood in the way of those in the margins. And it's not a case of giving handouts, it's just being mindful of the fact that government can make or break someone on the margins in terms of their ability to thrive and survive. And I feel very strongly that it needs to do that.
Jane: I completely agree with you on some things and on others I don't, which would be pretty normal. And I completely agree with feeling a moral obligation to help those who are less fortunate than we are.
I can't do the God thing. Some days, wish I did have that kind of a faith, but I don't. I admire those who have it, but I think that I'm still trying to live a good life because those values were instilled in me like they were in you. Whether you call it Catholic or Christian or Jewish or Muslim or whatever, I don't really care. It's valuing humanity.
Becky: I will just say the people that I'm most admiring of are the people who either are not Christians, have no faith at all, or people who did belong to a Christian faith of some type and decided to leave it. And they're very intentional about what they're doing and why they're doing it. It's not just a pie in the sky, kind of an abstract thing. I mean, they feel strongly that they also have an obligation to help remove barriers for people. I will count hundreds of them among my closest friends, probably more so than people that I know from church.
Jane: When I was 18, living in Birmingham, Northwest, all-white, suburb of Detroit, busing was a huge thing. Everybody was concerned that their white kids would be bused to black schools and that black kids would be bused into our lily-white schools. Running as a Democratic precinct delegate, there wasn't a hope in hell for me to win that one on that issue. And I remember standing outside a hundred feet from the polling place and having men who I knew walk by me and go, I'm not voting for you, but I admire your guts. That was my first foray into politics.
If you could talk to a younger version of yourself, what would you say?
Becky: Don't be afraid to be yourself. Don't be looking over your shoulder or wondering what anybody's going to think or whatever. I still have to tell myself that, but I would tell myself earlier than I've told myself that.
Jane: Yeah.
Becky: Don't be afraid to wear that. Don't be afraid to do that. Don't be afraid to say that. Don't be afraid to try that. Just do it. Do it all.
Jane: I have said this to that younger version of myself.I feel really sorry for her.She tried really hard. She tried really hard to please her mother, mainly, to be good. I want to say to her, nothing you ever did was bad. As a child and a teenager, I felt like I was so bad because I wasn't the person that my mother wanted me to be. She was probably the biggest influence in my life, good and bad.I feel sorry for my younger self. She really tried hard.And I'd really like to tell her now; you should have just let it all go. What's something that you will take with you, Becky, from this experience?
Becky: I would like to have you as a friend. That's what I would take from this experience.
Jane: Oh, that's really sweet. I'm really glad that you are in this world.