community, reflecting, remembering

On the Journey

Mary Elyn Bahlert

I was searching, it felt as if I was always searching, had been searching for a long time. Searching implies an object – what was I searching for? I had the idea that I could go into the ministry – but I had no church experience of a community of faith. I had only a history that included a family distrust of “Church,” and three years of study in a fundamentalist denomination. After confirmation, I had abruptly left what I knew as “Church.” I thought the social movements of the 70’s were more about Jesus and what he taught than what I had known of Church. In particular, I had noticed and admired the work of Father James Groppi in Milwaukee, a Civil Rights leader in my hometown and adjoining ‘hood.

After college, I embarked on a career with the Social Security Administration, and after three months of intense training as a Claims Representative in Minneapolis, I was assigned to the District Office in Green Bay, Wisconsin. At the time, I was happy to have been assigned to Green Bay, which was a couple of hours north of Milwaukee. I didn’t know at the time how lonely I would be, how lost as I began my professional life as an adult.

And part of me was still searching. I was always searching. For what? For love? For meaning? For connection? For depth? For community? All of these were to be answered, although I didn’t know it when I was searching. And part of me is searching, even now, which has given my life and faith a depth and richness I would not have had otherwise. I’ve always been open to new understandings, to new learnings. I’m grateful for that.

After a couple of years, as the Social Security Administration took on the administration of SSI – Supplemental Security Income – the staff in the SSA office at Green Bay grew. From my first days, when I was the first woman CR, staff numbers grew. My first colleagues – who ruled the roost as only white men in power can do – were challenged to accept women who were at least as good at what they did than the men had been.

I was still searching. One of my colleagues was a woman named Joan, who was a bit overwhelmed by the work as a Claims Representative, but whose life I noticed. She was a white woman from Wisconsin, married to a disabled African American man from the South. Joan always wanted to go deeper, and I sensed a depth in how she wanted to relate to others. She didn’t engage in the politics of the office, often spending her breaks reading a Holy Book – the Holy Book of those people who are called Ba’hai, the teachings of their prophet. In a way, Joan was difficult to relate to, but I liked her depth, the way she looked at others as she spoke to them. Joan and Nat invited me to dinner at their house, and there, after the meal, we talked.

Joan and Nat were the first people I knew who took the faith they professed seriously. They allowed my questions. They didn’t expect rigid answers, the answers of a “right faith.” They wanted to talk, to learn where I was going with my questions. They took me seriously, as well as the faith they professed. When I asked about becoming a Bahai’, they didn’t surround me with evangelical fervor – they encouraged me to explore my journey, to see how my journey unfolded.

And my journey unfolded in another direction – in a way. I’ve written about returning to Milwaukee, still working for the Social Security Administration, and following my heart and questions to the people called Methodists, to my friend and guide Harvey Stower, and into the ministry.

I’m grateful for the journey, and for the questions, which still arise, will continue to arise. I’m grateful for all those whose path has lit my way. I’m grateful for the ongoing quest of faith, of trust in life as life offers itself. And I’m always grateful for the beacons of light who have lit my way – for Jesus, for Joan, for Nat, for Harvey – for all the others. 

The Blue Mosque, Istanbul - View by Mary Elyn Bahlert, 5/2023
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Little blue gym shorts

Mary Elyn Bahlert

I expect I could find those little blue gym shorts on an Amazon search, if I wanted a set! Those little blue gym shorts marked my passage into Junior High and High School. And they were a sign of that time in history – my personal history and in the history of schools.

I wasn’t good at gym, but I don’t remember having a sense of dread about gym, either. That’s good. I was shy and had a few good friends – which holds true in my life even now.

I loved the classes, I loved learning, and that is an attribute I carry with me today. My mother loved to say: “you learn something new every day -” a bit of wisdom she held on to tightly. Although uneducated, her people were inquisitive, and learning satisfied that quality, it seems.

But I’ve lost my train of thought: little blue gym shorts. Shy, I hated having to change clothes in the locker room, but here I am, remembering – so I survived the trials a public education granted me. Now, when I read about the learning curve of an Olympic contender, particularly a woman, I notice how her life was shaped by being an athlete even from childhood. I am not an athlete. I was not an athlete.

But what did the athletic girls do in the years when I was in school, graduating from high school in 1967? Women in sports had to pass through a lot of hurtles, including academics. I was good at the academics, in fact, academics came easy to me. So the hour of gym class every few days was a blip on my screen of uncomfortable times. I did it. I made it through.

I’ve checked Amazon – no luck on the blue gym suits. Now, it seems as if girls get suited up in leotards. But I can find a set of “little blue gym shorts” on a google search. Vintage! The gym sets are vintage! And, I expect, so am I.

1930s-40s bloomer gymsuit, blue cotton sanforized 1940s gym suit romper playsuit, medium large size
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Chicago, Chicago…

Mary Elyn Bahlert

I’ve written about the trip I took to New York City with my friend Vicki, while I was a student at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.  Big cities have always been a joy for me to navigate, even now, in my elder years, when I travel.

Some of the fondest memories I have of my earlier life involve the trips I took to Chicago while I was an employee of the Social Security Administration in the 1970’s.  All of the trips – there were many – hang together in my mind and memory, as if one.  

I worked as a Claims Representative and then a Field Representative at Social Security offices in Green Bay, Milwaukee, and Waukesha, Wisconsin, starting in 1973 and until I was offered the position of Consumer Affairs Officer for the Food and Drug Administration in downtown Milwaukee in the fall of 1980.  Unknown to most folks, at that time the professional education offered by the government for staff was excellent.  And so I had the privilege to take executive level courses in various fields, including public relations and communications.  Doing so involved my spending a week at a time in the Loop in Chicago.

I’d board the train in Milwaukee and arrive in the Loop after 90 minutes.  From the train station, I’d walk to my hotel – my reservation waiting for me – at the Palmer House in downtown Chicago.  After checking in for the evening, I’d take myself out to dinner at a nice downtown restaurant.  Being on my own, traveling alone, and eating at a restaurant alone might have been a stretch for me at the beginning, but I found that I liked the freedom of having my own time.

In the morning, I’d arrive at the government offices, a short distance from the Palmer House, and begin the class, which lasted for five days.  In the class, I had new friends and acquaintances, and after the first morning, I had companions to explore the city during lunch break and in the evenings.  

On one trip, I had my hair cut at the Vidal Sassoon studio in the Loop, the year that his famous shag cut was all the rage. On another trip, I shared the elevator in the hotel with a comedian who was famous at the time. As I walked to the restaurant in the hotel one evening, I saw Ella Fitzgerald and her entourage as they navigated getting her safely checked in to the Palmer House.

As the week ended, I’d walk back to Union Station to meet my good friend Sue – who passed many years ago – for a cocktail at the station before I boarded the train that took me back to Milwaukee, to my regular life.

A theme in my life seems to be that my life has expanded as I’ve grown older.  As a young person, my life expanded as I met new people and new experiences, going places that I’d heard others talk about, but never imagined for myself.  Maybe my mother’s imagination – her dreams for me – held those places.  I know she was proud of my expanding world.  As for me, I’m grateful.  

“Chicago (My Kind of Town)”, Fred Fisher, lyrics

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The other side of the tracks

Mary Elyn Bahlert

I lived on the other side of the tracks.  In Junior High, I walked with a couple of friends northwest on Fond du Lac Avenue from 27 Street, under the train tracks where the Master Lock Company stood, and up the street about 3 blocks to the commanding school building, Peckham Junior High School, at 37 and Keefe in Milwaukee.  I walked with kids from my neighborhood, in warm weather and in cold weather, with a few days off during the winter for snow days.  

The neighborhood I walked from was distinctly different than the neighborhood I walked to when I emerged from the street under that tracks. 

I’m always grateful for the education I received in the Milwaukee Public Schools, and I’m troubled by how schools in the United States are begin gutted – literally – by lawmakers who value the prejudices of their electorate over the needs of the communities they are called to serve.

Lately, I’ve discovered that one of the buildings I passed every day had been the home of the original factory of the mattress company owned by my husband’s great grandfather.  The walk I took under the viaduct at 32 and Fond du Lac Avenue was a walk into a different life for me.   

Peckham Junior High School has now been converted into Senior Apartments, large and beautiful apartments that have the same big windows overlooking the bungalows that line the streets in that part of Milwaukee.  

In my memory, I see clearly that I had a certain consciousness about the path I was taking, that I was walking under that viaduct into a different life.  It’s as if some part of me, deeper than words, and perhaps even deeper than thoughts, knew that I was walking into a way of living that my modest ancestors could not have imagined.  I couldn’t imagine it, either, but there it was, “deep inside,” always.  

Their dreams for me were being brought to life under the viaduct that led to the other side of the tracks.  

Korean Lilacs, our garden in Oakland, Spring, 2023

community, nostalgia, remembering, Uncategorized

Meeting Joanne

Mary Elyn Bahlert

2023 marks fifty years since Joanne sat down across from me at my desk in the Social Security office in Green Bay, Wisconsin, smiled warmly at me, and said: “Do you golf?”

I answered: “I haven’t, but I could try.” I have never tried, in 50 years. But Joanne is still a good friend, to me, and to my husband, Jeff.

We were both Claims Representatives at the Social Security office in Green Bay, Wisconsin. I’d arrived at the office in June of 1973, after three months of training in the Minneapolis office. In March, I’d driven my red VW bug to Minneapolis while I received training, and now I was permanently assigned to Green Bay. When I came to the office, I was the first woman to work as a Claims Representative in that District, helping folks who were about to retire to complete their claim for benefits. Joanne would follow, a couple of months later. She’d been promoted from her job as a Service Representative. As a Service Representative, she’d helped folks with issues they had after they had begun to receive benefits: Retirement, Disability, Child’s Benefits. In the time I worked at Social Security, in the Green Bay office, at the office on the South Side of Milwaukee, and later, as a Field Representative out of the Waukesha office, I never ran into a person who performed the job better than Joanne. She read each of the papers that came across our desk each week, filing them in the proper place in her copy of the Social Security Manuel, the working details of implementing the Social Security Law. She was smart and competent, the hardest worker I knew.

We traveled together, driving to the Northeast, to Florida, to Washington, D.C., to Montreal and Quebec on our vacation times. We met one another’s friends. We lamented our lack of dates. We shared recipes. We took rides together on warm summer nights, ending up on the Eastern Shore of Green Bay, watching the sun set over the Bay. When I was able, I moved back to Milwaukee, and Joanne followed, not long after. She bought a little house and she spent her weekends and evenings working hard on that house. Joanne can do anything, in my estimation.

The contractor that helped her with one of her house projects told her that there was a nice, young, divorced man who lived in a house around the corner. He wanted them to meet. Sure enough, Rich and Joanne began to date, and after a couple of years, they married, in the spring of 1983. They moved into his little house in the neighborhood, and later, a larger house. In 2014, they moved into a home they’d built on a small lake in the county to the west of Milwaukee County. Joanne had accomplished her life long dream to live on the water.

I was in seminary when Joanne and Rich were married, and she stood up with me in my wedding to Jeff in Milwaukee in March of 1984. In later years, after I’d moved to California, she and my mother became good friends, baking and cooking together, enjoying one another. When my mother’s memory became bad and she needed help, Joanne visited her and answered her frantic phone calls, until we knew she had to move to be closer to me in California.

A few years ago – 2016 – I answered the phone in the kitchen on Labor Day, in the evening, when Jeff and I were about to go to bed. I heard Joanne’s voice then, and I heard something in it I hadn’t heard before. “Joanne?” I asked. And then again: “Joanne?” She told me that she and Rich had spent the day in Emergency at a local hospital. Rich had been diagnosed with Glioblastoma, an aggressive cancer that originates in the brain. By October 15 of that year, Rich was gone. Jeff and I made sure we cleared our calendars and made the trip to be at his Memorial. There, Joanne was surrounded by so many friends that she and Rich had made over the years, both Rich and Joanne folks who were important to the community in which they lived.

Joanne came to visit us in Oakland this past winter. She’d arrived from Wisconsin, hoping for some nice, sunny weather. Winter can be long and gray in the Midwest, and sadly, winter here was long and gray, also, one rain storm following another for days. But the conversation that started so long ago in Green Bay continued, and since Joanne was visiting, we explored some interesting places in the Bay Area.

Next week, Jeff and I will be flying to O’Hare Field in Chicago, where we’ll rent a car and drive to spend the first night of our trip with Joanne in her house on the water. We won’t run out of things to talk about, the three of us, and together, we’ll make sure we remember Rich, how he made us laugh, how he made Joanne laugh.