Whistleblower

September 12, 2020

 

The divorce

 

Just a reminder that in an earlier post, I mentioned I was a whistleblower. Whistleblowers are righteous and that makes them slightly unlikeable. Why? They point out people’s lies, inconsistencies, and expose secretive behavior.

 

They’re the ones that say something such as, “Hey, you can’t do that.” In my experience, egos get ruffled when a lie is exposed. Lines are drawn and the need to retaliate takes over. There are people that back the liar, and ones that silently believe the whistleblower.

 

Remarkably more people back the liar, especially when the liar has power or charm. The more powerful a man the more likely he’ll be believed, the more beautiful the woman the more she will be believed. Curious isn’t it?

 

Proof doesn’t matter power and beauty sway belief.

 

And yet whistleblowers have to call out lies it is part of their DNA. I am that. Keep that in mind as you read this post.

In my senior year in high school, my class attended a lecture about career options. It sounds like it would be really dry. “Well, you can be a secretary and work your way up to executive secretary and be an important part of building a company.” Or “Become a registered nurse and help the sick.”  It wasn’t at all.

 

The lecturer was a Jesuit priest and told the auditorium full of fresh-faced seventeen-year-old girls, it was important to choose a career path simply because you loved it. In other words, you’d do it whether they paid you or not. Of course you’d get paid but that wasn’t motivation as to why you took the job.

 

He said, when guided by love, there is a freedom gained that people who choose a career to be rich, or powerful will never experience. He said it should be this way when you choose a mate. He reminded us of the marriage vows, to take this person and love them “in sickness or health, richer or poorer until death do you part”. He said when you choose someone with this promise nothing shakes your love, marriage is a path upon which to walk together.

 

It was one of the most interesting and inspiring lectures of my school days.

 

I talked with my father about it. No, I didn’t say the thing about marriage. That would have been crass to talk to a divorced man about his broken vows. “Hey, what about that richer or poorer thing, huh Dad?” Yeah, crass.

 

But I did ask him why he chose the law. He said his father was an attorney and he admired the skill it took to practice the law. I asked about money. He said “Money can’t buy happiness,” and then he quoted the bible, “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”

 

Timeless words even today.

 

Let’s travel back to just after WWII and consider career options for a young woman. High schools prepared students with typing and short hand skills to pursue office work. Literature and Religion classes assisted in writing and reading skills. Mathematics helped with the logical pursuit to an outcome.

 

 And with the war economy, such work as keypunch operators, sales clerks, newspapers needed editors, typists and society reporters. (There used to be an entire section in the paper detailing events in society that day. Announcements of engaged couples with pictures, what society events were held and who attended, and what they wore.See picture of society page in Pittsburg.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An intelligent woman could attend college. Career paths in medicine tended towards nursing, but many women became doctors during the war and encouraged others to take the same path.

 

Teaching, research, and writing were other paths.

 

 Obviously at this time, the ultimate goal was considered marriage and motherhood.

 

However, the young woman must marry a good prospect, a good provider, a ‘sure bet’ was paramount. Not much soul or love in the choice there.

 

When my mother graduated from high school in 1946, she was considered a pretty girl with an impulsive streak.

 

Compared to her younger sister the math genius, who at this time was considering her best scholarship options and Massachusetts Institute of Technology won, my mother didn’t seem to focus on her studies. If she’d only apply herself, her father would lecture her.

 

My mother rebelled against anyone who dared to tell her what to do, father, husband, or relative.

 

But she had a lovely singing voice and was a skillful cook. Her cakes and pies were a hit at every party and family gathering.

 

I like to think she would have enjoyed the competitive baking shows on television these days. The Australian baker Adrian Zumbo might have been her favorite. His drive to push the boundaries in desserts and his skill in layering flavors would have captivated her imagination.

 

But a career as a cook or pastry chef for a member of a nouveau riche upper class family wasn’t acceptable. They wanted to avoid any job that had no obvious prestige.

 

Music was a vital part of her family and she entertained the idea of a career in singing. Her father adored her singing voice but wanted her to attend college first and guarantee career options. They had an argumentative relationship.

 

That year, my mother met my father through a family connection. Her Aunt Mary knew a wealthy family with a son home from the war and introductions were made.

 

My father was twenty-eight when he met my eighteen-year-old beautiful mother. In those days the age difference wasn’t considered a bad thing. Men were supposed to be more mature and ready to support a family.

 

When Pearl Harbor was attacked on December 7, 1941, my father was in his last year of law school at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor. Like every qualified male in America he was drafted. When he was brought before the draft board, his induction was deferred to June of ‘42. He was instructed to finish law school and take the bar exam then report for duty. He felt honored to be given the time to complete his degree and studied hard to pass the bar on his first attempt.  He did and in the heat of July of ‘42 was sent to boot camp in Mississippi.

 

He’d never seen blatant prejudice as he did in the south. One night he told me how angry he got when he went into town on leave. He said he sat in the back of the bus with the ‘coloreds’ rather than stand with the stuck up whites in the front. He drank from ‘colored only’ water fountains and sat at the ‘colored only’ lunch counters. I cried myself to sleep that night. I can’t put into words why.

 

My mother and father bonded in the belief that all men are created equal and both worked in one way or another to stop the discrimination of people of color.

 

They had a storybook wedding, the satin and lace dress, oodles of bridesmaids and grooms men, ring bearers and, get this a free bar. My grandfather got a $2,000.00 bill from the bar tab alone. And that’s 1947 prices! It would be close to $24,000.00 today.

 

I don’t know much about their early years of marriage. When my sister was born she had colic and cried a lot. That was stressful for both my mother and father. My older brother was born and he was, let’s just say, demanding. He would wail the minute he woke up until food was set in front of him. He had temper tantrums and banged his head against sidewalks.

 

This added to the normal stresses every couple faces of money, parenting and cramped living quarters. My father’s depression deepened at this time.

 

I can only imagine what it was like for my mother with a depressed husband and not able to understand why. All she saw was he was as difficult as the children. She complained loudly to her sister and brother. They backed her, and the silent war against my father began.

 

The question I wonder is when did my mother begin to have affairs? She was a beautiful young woman who loved excitement and social events. A notorious flirt she liked attention from men. I know my father caught her in one affair and told her if she did it again, the marriage was over.

 

You could ask, should he have said it that way to her with her temperament of nobody tells me what to do? Was this the moment in which real communication between them could have opened up?

 

Well, hindsight is 20/20 and no they didn’t communicate. My mother heard my father’s words and thought, “How dare he tell me…” She had the affaire that cracked their marriage apart in a matter of weeks after his threat. A messy scandalous divorce followed.

 

My mother admitted years after their divorce, she didn’t marry my father because she loved him she married him to get out from under the thumb of her father and to avoid attending college.

 

So, not really surprising when things got rocky between them, and my father’s unrecognized, undiagnosed PTSD bled into their marriage, she balked.

 

And what of my father? Again, I have more access to his side of the story as I lived with him all of my high school years and two of my college years.

 

After he spoke about his war experience to me we’d speak of many things. In particular I wanted to know why he didn’t remarry. His answer was simple. The Catholic Church said only one marriage, and he would live as his word and have only one marriage. He had married for life and that was it.

 

We might laugh at his commitment but I understood it. He was a soldier. His word was his bond. There is power in living as your word.

 

So, when my younger brother and I went to Minnesota to visit him the summer before I was to enter high school, I knew I needed something different or I would slip into delinquent behavior.

 

I’d already been caught shoplifting at age 12. What was next Smoking, drinking and pregnancy? It was possible.

 

I’d seen boys at my middle school drunk, smoke pot and pressure girls to let them go farther sexually. I knew I was weak and easily swept up by charming personalities. I knew I needed guidance, parenting and structure. None of which I felt I was getting living in California. I asked to stay and live with my father and attend an all girl catholic high school.

 

My extended family saw my request as a betrayal of my mother. I was ridiculed. “Oh, you just want to live with your father because he spoils you.” And “You just want to be with your little friends in the old neighborhood.”

 

I was now included in the silent war against my father.