My mother was a product of the 30’s – when she came of age. When she and my father married – her second marriage, my father’s first – she quit her office job at Cutler Hammer to stay at home to work as a housewife. She had been well regarded at her work, crafting a life for herself as she navigated being a single mother to my brother, Ronnie.
From the beginning, my life had taken a different shape than my mother’s, whose parents kept a sort of “rooming house” for men who arrived in Milwaukee alone, without families, from Ukraine. Her first language had been Ukrainian, and she made her way through the 9th grade before quitting school to go to work. Like many of the children of immigrants, she taught her father to read and write English. She would have been a great teacher, I’m sure. But that path was not open to her.
My parents – who both valued education, although that path had not been theirs – supported me as I lived at home and commuted to the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee to get a degree in English. I graduated in the winter of 1973 and worked for several weeks in the offices at A. O. Smith, the steel mill where my father worked as an inspector on frames. Then I interviewed with several other young people – also new college graduates – for an entry level position as a Claims Representative for the Social Security Administration. In 1973, SSA was bracing itself for the coming of the Supplemental Security Income, which offered benefits – not livable benefits, but benefits, just the same – to the disabled and elderly. And so I was hired, along with other college graduates from all over the country, and left home to train as a CR at the Social Security Administration in Minneapolis. At the end of training, we all waited anxiously for news of our assignment, and I was relieved when I was sent to Green Bay, Wisconsin – a city, at least – to begin my career with the government.
When I arrived in the office in Green Bay, I took my place at one of the desks in the long row of desks, separated by a center aisle, in the offices of SSA, on the second floor of a government building in downtown Green Bay. I was the first woman to work as a Claims Representative in that office, although a woman who had been promoted from her current position – Joanne – was away at training to hold the same position. Five days a week, we interviewed, completed applications, followed up to back up the applications with photocopies of the necessary documents for each applicant, and adjudicated the claims that came with the people we’d interviewed. The SSA and SSI laws were constantly changing, and week after week, we received pages and pages of material that needed to be read and filed in the proper place in the copy of the SSA Law that each one of us had at our work stations.
It would take three years for me to achieve journeyman status as a Claims Representative. I’m grateful for the additional training I received in public relations and management through the government, traveling from time to time to Chicago to take a class (I’ve written about my trips to the Big City in another post), offering training to the other CR’s, receiving training. A year or two into my work at the office in Green Bay, the new building in downtown that would house only the Social Security District Office was complete, and we moved – files, machines, desks, and all – to the new office. I commuted each day three miles to my little one bedroom apartment in Ashwaubenon – home to the Green Bay Packer stadium, Lambeau Field.
My apartment was simply furnished with a telephone on the wall. I had a black and white television and a turntable and speakers for my LP’s. Mostly, I watched PBS shows, one or two nights a week. A small round table with four chairs filled the small space between the kitchen and the carpeted living area. Sitting on the second hand couch I’d found – somewhere – I read a new magazine I’d heard about and subscribed to: Ms. Magazine, Gloria Steinem, publisher. I was hooked. I read those monthly issues of Ms. from cover to cover, reading articles that opened my mind to a new way of looking at the world.
Looking back now, I can say it this way: my consciousness was raised. I had a “feminist click,” a way of looking at my life and the lives of other women that shed light on the second class status that women had – have – in our society, and in the world.
The work world continued in my day job. Every few months, a paper would appear on my desk, passed from one person to the next, asking the women in the office to sign up for a week to clean the break room at end of the week. Like the other women in the office, I signed my name dutifully, not thinking more about it. Until. Until what?
One day when that sign-up sheet arrived on my desk, I picked it up, walked to the desk of the Administrative Assistant, outside the office of the District Manager, threw the sign-up sheet that already boasted some signatures onto her desk, and said: “until the men have to sign up too, I’m not going to clean the break room. I’m a CR, too.” Usually easygoing and fun, I could see that the AA was stunned. I walked back to my desk.
I suppose something had to be done: the District Manager consulted, discussions needed to be held, opinions shared (I’m sure) – all behind closed doors.
A few days later, we learned of a new policy regarding the clean-up of the break room: the cleaning folks who came after hours to vacuum and get rid of the endless papers would be cleaning the break room from here on out.
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To me, it seemed like a half victory – still, I’d stuck my neck out to say “no more.” To this day, I’m disappointed at the result, because I realize allowance had been made to make sure the men – who held the same position and grade as I did – did not have to clean the break room. I’m sure they retired without ever having to do the job.
Years later, when I was pastor at Lake Merritt United Methodist Church in downtown Oakland, I told the story as an illustration in a sermon. I wish I could at least remember the text! What I do remember is that after I’d told the story, the gathered worshippers had a reaction: they applauded!
