Jean, Harvey, & Jade

Episode 53 - Jean, Harvey, & Jade

Official transcript: https://www.cheynemusic.com/transcripts

Rob presents 3 people who have had a significant influence on him as he has been Making His Way: Jean Hawson, Harvey Allen Marks, & Jade Thomas Moore.

Thanks for listening. Share with your friends. Find this and more at cheynemusic.com/podcast.

Transcript

[Music]

JIM (voice-over): Who has helped shape your life? Who are your big influences? Who has helped you Make Your Way? Perhaps a lifelong friend, a mentor, or someone who came into your life at just the right time? We at Making Our Way have been reminiscing and celebrating some of those “right place at the right time” people. And today Rob concludes the series with Jean, Harvey, and Jade.

[Music]

ROB: You talked about growing up with a certain explanation of things. And that’s where I’m going to start. I chose Jean Hawson.

DEE: Aww.

ROB: And the reason I chose Jean is - well, okay, Jean Hawson was our Young People’s Sergeant Major in The Salvation Army, Detroit Citadel Corps. We went there in 1962, a year after Jan and Jim and their family got there, and the first person we met when we walked in the door was Jean Hawson, who immediately welcomed us and shuffled the three kids downstairs to Junior Church and to Sunday School. She gave us, provided for us, a system of learning about the Bible, about Jesus, that was a very good, solid foundation. It wasn’t always accurate, but it was what The Salvation Army could provide at that time. And she did that. And she cared about us. She took us to Chicago with the Singing Company and her sister Margaret. And she laughed with us and she cried with us. And she told us terrifying stories about children being dropped into molten gold. But that’s another story. She had a profound influence on a lot of young people my age, growing up in the Detroit Citadel/Dearborn Heights Corps. And I appreciate that. And that foundation was something to grow from. And I’m glad I had it.

DEE: She gave me her pasty recipe.

ROB: Oh, yes. And she would never do that for us. We asked her.

DEE: Well, she saw me because I was a newly married bride and we would hang out during band practice. And she said, “My love here, I’ll give this to you so you can make it.”

JAN: You know, she also taught us sayings that we still repeat like scripture…

ROB: That’s true.

JAN: …but they are at the core of who she was. And I think of “Remember who you are and what you represent.”

ROB: Yeah.

JAN: That echoes through the halls of that Corps. You could never get out of line too far without being called back by that saying, “Remember who you are and what you represent.” And it connected you to something bigger than yourself.

JIM: For people that may not be familiar with the structure of The Salvation Army as a church, in a large corps such as Detroit Citadel, the morning worship service: we had the officer in charge is really the priest, the father, the pastor. So we have that. In the worship service, you would have a choir called the Songsters. And then you would have musical accompaniment from a full brass band. We had 50 members in ours. Full brass band. And they would each present special music on that. There would be announcements, there’d be offering, there’d be a message from our pastor. And that was a morning worship service. Jean duplicated that for the young people in the Sunday school opening, because we had not Songsters, but the kids, the Singing Company. We had not the Senior Band, the Junior Band. And we’d come in, she was our Corps Officer. She was the pastor for the young people.

ROB: Yeah.

JIM: And so we would have - the Singing Company would sing, the band would play, there’d be announcements, there’d be offering, and she would give a message. And that was every Sunday morning.

DEE: I mean, that’s really smart because it’s preparing…

ROB: Absolutely.

DEE: …the young people…

JAN: Yes!

DEE: …for...

ROB: Yeah.

JIM: She was remarkable. And then we were fortunate enough that they retired down here to Clearwater…

JAN & ROB: Yeah.

JIM: …and so we could see Jean and Jack, whose Scottish accent - You know, some people, when they come from another country to the United States, their accent sort of gets absorbed into the American way of speaking. Dee, your family accuses you of having lost your…

DEE: Yeah, I get accused of sounding Southern.

JIM: …Newfoundland accent, which comes back whenever you’re on the phone with your mom. Others, when they come to the States, their accent thickens. Jack Hawson is an example of that. Grandpa Cheyne was an example of that. Davey Milligan was an example of that. But Jack on bass trombone and Jean in the Songsters. And always with a handkerchief upper sleeve ready for…

ROB: That’s right.

JIM: …whatever.

JAN: An emergency of some type.

JIM: Well, those are four diverse people right there. Dave McMahon, Roma Osmand, Jean Hawson, and Carl Sagan…

JAN: Well, there’s a group.

JIM: …walk into a bar.

[Laughter]

ROB: Yeah. How’s the rest of that go?

JIM: Well, Jean starts to lecture them. “Remember who you are…

ROB & JIM: “…and what you represent.”

JAN: Oh, that’s a good group.

JIM: She would go in if she had some War Cries to sell.

ROB: Yes, she would.

[Music]

ROB: My next is Harvey Allen Marks. He is my maternal grandfather. And I share his middle name, Robert Allen. And he probably has had the most profound influence outside the people at this table and my parents of anyone in my life. He had an eighth grade education. He was a profound student of the scripture. He knew a little bit of Greek. And he was a lifelong learner. He took care of us when we were little children, when my mom was working, my dad was going to school, studying at Central Michigan. Grandpa was the one that took care of us. Rick would have been just a baby. And Sandy and I would be, what, two, three, four years old. And we lived right across the street from Grandpa and Grandma. So it was a very close relationship from the very beginning. And even when we moved to Detroit, the Detroit area, we were back in Saginaw frequently to visit them. And after Jan and I were married, we would frequently go up and visit Grandpa and Grandma, too, as a married couple.

But his greatest influence was when we were at school in Colorado, at Colorado State. It was the first time when that foundation that was set by Jean was challenged. And we looked for other individuals in our lives that might be able to answer some of the questions that were challenging us at the time. And Grandpa was one of the one that we turned to and we’d write.

There were things called letters. And you would take an object that’s called a pen and you would write on paper out your thoughts and expressions. And then someone, and you put it in an envelope with a stamp, and magically it gets sent somewhere that you wanted to go. And then they would write back in the same manner. And Grandpa was so great, and Grandma, they both wrote to us frequently, but he was very important in helping us think through some of these challenges. And the thing I liked most about Grandpa’s advice was, “Don’t take my word for it. Study it for yourself. Find out for yourself what you think of what I’ve said here and you decide.” And I always appreciated that very much.

JIM: Do you want to talk about his approach to Scripture?

ROB: It’s an approach that I appreciate. I don’t believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible anymore, but I do believe that it’s important to have a translation that’s consistent in its use of the language. So you really know what’s being said. And he used a version called the Concordant Version of the Scriptures. There were a lot of things that came from that, and learning that process and the people that were involved in that process that changed the way that we thought about the Bible and the way that we thought about certain things that we had been taught about the Bible. That’s all I’d say about that.

JIM: Okay.

JAN: Yeah.

JIM: Best apple pie I’ve ever had.

JAN: He made great pies. It was the crust.

ROB: And I want to tell a story that Grandpa told frequently, because I think he wanted it told. And it’s about how he came to know the Lord. He had an older brother named Milton, and Milton was a Seventh-day Adventist. And Milton was always talking about the Sabbath: the Sabbath this, the Sabbath that, the Sabbath. And my Grandpa and my uncle, his brother, Bill, my Uncle Bill, found this totally aggravating. And so they wanted to argue with Milton about the Sabbath. So they went to their older sister, Millie, and Millie ordered a Bible from the Sears Roebuck Company. And it was one of these massive things, you know? And they would sit with it on their laps or on a table with the two of them, just looking for ways that they could argue with Milton about the Sabbath. But Grandpa says, as they continued to read, and they got into Paul’s epistles especially, they started to be convicted themselves.

And he says, one day Grandpa was on the organ. [music begins] They had a pedal organ, I think. And he was just fiddling around on the organ. And Bill came in, put his hand on Grandpa’s shoulder, and says, “Harvey, if I try to live a Christian life, will you do that with me?” And Grandpa said, “Yes.” And Grandpa said, at that moment, he thought he saw a flash of light in the room. And he asked Bill, “Did you see that? Did you experience that at all?” And Bill said, “No, I didn’t know.” And so Grandpa imagined, he would always say, “Well, I probably just imagined it.” But I always wondered if he hadn’t had in that moment a Damascus Road experience. And it changed his life. He said, and then he would look at me, and by that point he had tears. And I probably did, too, and Jan probably did. too. And he would lean forward towards us and he said, “You know, Rob, I’ve never had a dark day spiritually since.” And I thought, “Wow, I wish I could live up to that.” But I don’t. And I admit that I don’t. But boy, it’s something to strive for. He was a tremendous influence in my life, and I miss him every day.

[Music]

ROB: My final one is Jade Thomas Moore. He was the executive director of the Pinellas Classroom Teachers Association. He has had the biggest influence, I would say, on my professional life, more so than anybody in the classroom or any principal I ever had. Jade taught me to be a real advocate for public education. And it took me out of my comfort zone because I was a died in the wool Democrat. I still am, but we live in northern Pinellas County, which is - lean’s Republican. And Jade always had this relationship with these Republican state senators and representatives, which at first I just didn’t understand. “Why? They are so anti what we’re all about.” But he taught me that you’ve got to try and influence them. I mean, they’re going to win. You can put a Democrat against this guy. He’s not going to win. This guy’s going to win. This Republican is going to win, and we need to be educators for him so that he will see our point of view and do that. And he had these kind of relationships with so many Republican legislators, and they respected him. Because of that fact, we were able to get them to vote in a lot of ways, not always to do things for us, but to prevent bad things from happening to us. And that was a tough lesson for me to learn. But Jade taught me that.

Jade - the best times with Jade Moore while I was president of the Teachers Association was riding to school visits in the car, and we would talk. And we would talk about, “What do we want to do? What’s the big thing that’s on our plate right now?” And having those brainstorming sessions with Jade, I think part of that relationship that was so important to me was the fact that I lost my dad before I was very far into my my career as a teacher. And so I couldn’t ask him these questions, and I couldn’t go to him, and I couldn’t talk to him about these ideas. But Jade was there. He taught me, he taught me - or, not to take personally the criticisms. I’ve gotten pretty good at that. And so I can slough that off. And he also taught me to say what’s on my mind, and to, you know, when the answer is no, to say no. It was good. He was a great man. We lost him too soon, and the Association has suffered because of that. But I’m glad that I had him in my professional life.

JAN: Yeah, he was huge.

ROB: Yeah. My dad would have liked him.

JAN: Yeah.

JIM: Who was a bigger influence on you becoming the teacher’s president? Would it be your father? Would it be Jade?

ROB: It was dad.

JIM: Yeah.

ROB: Yeah. I think it was my father. And, actually, and another person that worked associate executive director, Courtney Vandersteck. She really encouraged me to think about it. I’m glad I did. I think like my father, my dad wasn’t a politician, but he was political. He was very knowledgeable, and politics was very important to him, but he wasn’t a good politician. And I think I suffered from that a little bit too. There were things that I just, I didn’t enjoy the lobbying. I didn’t enjoy - there were parts of the job that - I didn’t like campaigning. I couldn’t do it.

JAN: This is the thing we talked, and when I was gonna talk about Dave, I remember when he ran for re-election as MEA president, I remember sitting and waiting for the voting results, and he was up on stage and he looked at his family and he just shook his head so that the family would know he had not won. There was a huge life lesson in that for me. He ran against somebody who was very savvy politically.

ROB: He was an excellent politician.

JAN: He was. And Dave wasn’t that. He wasn’t going to adapt who he was or what he was gonna say to the situation.

ROB: Right.

JAN: And that can cost you. That’s the thing. Being like that, that integrity is hard to maintain in an election environment. So, I always struggled with that loss. I thought the better man did not win. That’s not really fair to say.

ROB: No, it is. [Both laugh]

JAN: Well, but you know, I mean, it is that thing that can cost you if you don’t play the game.

ROB: Yeah. I ran once for executive board, twice for vice president, twice for president. I was never opposed. I never had an opponent, so I didn’t have to campaign.

JIM: Then you ran…

ROB: I think the reason is because I think a lot of people thought, “Yeah, this is a good guy. He deserves it.” But I didn’t have to do that and I’m so glad because I…

JAN: You would have hated that.

ROB: I would have hated it.

JAN: No.

ROB: I just - You know, I don’t like to put, the only person I know that likes to put themselves out there less than I do is this guy to my left, all right? Mr. Cheyne here. It’s just not something that we’re comfortable with.

DEE: I know, but I think you would do well.

ROB: Well, I…

DEE: I think you would just speak your mind…

ROB: Well, I would…

DEE: …and you wouldn’t care. And I think people would like that.

ROB: Well, you know.

JIM: That speaks well with you that you’d run unopposed. I mean, it’s a trait you share with Vladimir Putin and the Ayatollah Khomeini. [laugher] But you were, you say you ran twice, you were term limited out of office…

ROB: Yes.

JIM: …because the teachers unions - can you explain how this came together? With the teachers unions, there were two different ones that were then joined together in Florida, but they still have these vestiges of the way they used to run…

ROB: Yeah.

JIM: …because in Pasco County, a different teachers union was there and that union president can be there as long as they want.

ROB: Right.

JIM: You know, as long as they’re reelected, they don’t have term limits, but yours did, because of what?

ROB: Well, we were associated with the National Education Association and your local was associated with the American Federation of Teachers. The NEA is the largest professional union in the world, I believe, country at least. But yeah, there were always term limits for the National Education Association and most of the locals and states that were affiliated with that did the same thing. So, in Pinellas, there were two year terms and then you had to run again and you could only run for two consecutive terms and that was it.

JIM: Do you have a preference for which way to do it?

ROB: I...

JIM: Turn limited person? Or let them stay there?

ROB: I like term limits. I think term limits are fine for that.

JIM: So you could be president twice and then you had to leave.

ROB: Yes.

JIM: Good. Okay.

JAN: Just keep that one.

DEE: Yeah.

JAN: File that one away.

ROB: Yeah. No, I think it’s good because...

JAN: There were some significant differences between the Education Association and the Federation of Teachers in their whole approach.

ROB: Right.

JAN: And the NEA saw itself as a more of a professional organization…

ROB: Right.

JAN: …and the AFT…

ROB: Is a labor…

JAN: …acted more like a traditional union.

ROB: A labor union.

JAN: A Teamsters-more approach. And that so when they came together, that was for strength, but they’re still fundamentally different in their approach.

ROB: Right.

DEE: This talk about, okay, Trump is attacking the Education Department.

ROB: Mm-Hmm.

DEE: How do you think that’s going to affect things?

ROB: Oh, it’s going to affect them tremendously. It’s going to cut funding for...

DEE: Programs.

ROB: For many programs, especially for children with special needs.

DEE: Right.

ROB: Special education. Funding for universities.

DEE: Yeah.

ROB: A lot of funding for public universities comes from the Education Department.

JAN: Well, that’s where it funnels through, right?

ROB: Yeah.

DEE: And all of this is so that they can get the money they want for their tax cuts. That’s why they’re doing all this cutting, right?

ROB: That’s going to turn out to be, yeah.

DEE: Yeah.

ROB: They’re not going to say that, but...

JIM: Jade had said something that you had said he had said, and I always tried to remember it, and my wording is all wrong, so let’s get it right. “A good learning environment is a good teaching environment?”

ROB: Yes. No, it was the other way around. “A good teaching environment is a good learning environment.”

JIM: Okay, so “a good teaching environment is a good learning environment.”

ROB: And he also would say that every decision that affects the classroom is a political decision, and that’s why we have to be involved in politics.

JAN: This actually speaks to our sermon this morning. There are people who step way back from anything they consider to be political, but the truth is that everything is political, and including the gospel. So if you - I don’t know how you avoid a conversation about politics if you’re going to talk about education or the poor or disabled children, or - any of these things are political.

ROB: Right.

JAN: I would argue that there is a direct attempt right now to attack academia. That’s being done through the grant elimination. Most of our research universities are dependent on that money…

ROB: Yeah.

JAN: …to staff, to research, to educate, and it’s being pulled intentionally. I got a text from Beth, who works at the University of Michigan. University of Michigan is the third largest recipient of grant money for research. If that gets pulled, the impact on that university, which is at the forefront of scientific research, medical research, what’s going to happen?

DEE: The US is going to decline.

JAN: Well, yes, it is the undermining of science, which we’ve seen across the board. And I know we’ve gone a place here, but I’m back to Jane Goodall.

DEE: Right.

JAN: Or...

ROB: Carl Sagan.

JAN: Thank you, Carl Sagan. These things matter. They matter hugely. So.

JIM: Thinking more about what you were saying about Jade Moore is - actually ties into what I was hoping for the next question episode. The idea of asking questions, not with a goal of finally getting to where they’re weak, and then you’ve defeated someone, but to keep the understanding going among people. Because I need a lot of Republican friends who I have good relationships with for the recovery that’s going to have to happen. We’re going to need them…

ROB: Yeah.

JIM: …and I want to get people to the right of me with me in some sort of relationship way that “I need you now.” This is a good time. I remember a scene from the West Wing when someone was in talking to Bartlett. Bartlett’s trying to convince him to vote for a certain bill. And the guy says, “Well, and what do I get in return?” And Bartlett says, “The thanks of a grateful president.” And he says, “Good answer, sir.”

ROB: Yes.

JIM: I want that person to be on the other side. Because of this relationship, we can work on this, and forget this “building a wall between people” all the time.

JAN: There’s a reason, I believe, that we are in a situation that we are right now. I would say that not everybody understands the connections between policy and people. So when I did my post about mom and Medicaid, do people actually understand that gutting the government could affect their parents or their child in very direct ways? And if there’s a way we can demonstrate that through personal story, I find that powerful. That’s the only thing I know really to do. Here’s a face of somebody that matters. I mean, you have to draw the line for people and say, “This policy, this candidate can severely damage this person.” I can talk about research money and people don’t care.

ROB: Yeah.

JAN: Now, let’s connect it to the research being done right now for cancer…

ROB: Right.

JAN: …and maybe your relative has that kind of cancer. And there will be no experimental drugs for that person because of this cut. When I’m looking for a way to build a bridge, that’s the way I’m looking to do it. And what was interesting about that post was a lot of people acknowledged it. And a lot of the people that did would not have been people I traditionally would have seen as the same political viewpoint from. And that was very gratifying to me. I think we have to tell stories and connect it for people.

ROB: Faces are important.

JAN: Anyway, that’s what I hope to do when I’m in a rational mind, and not mad. [Laughs]

[Music]

JIM (voice-over): You might recall the many recipes we shared in season one of Making Our Way and thought we’d be sharing some today as well. Sorry to disappoint, but Jean Hawson’s pasty recipe is secured in a locked box at an undisclosed location. And Grandpa Mark’s apple pie recipe? Well, we don’t know where that is. We’ll look into it.

We hope you’ve enjoyed learning about these people, who are very important to us, as much as we’ve enjoyed celebrating them and sharing their stories with you. Thank you for your company.

Coming up next, you may have seen a recent 60 Minutes segment about Equity Arc and their efforts to provide young musicians a performance opportunity with the U.S. Marine Band - the President’s Own. That concert was canceled in the wake of the current administration’s anti-DEI agenda. But then veteran military musicians came charging over the hill to the rescue. Our guest next week is Maria Mathieson, who serves on the board of Equity Arc, and who can give us a behind-the-scenes tour of this extraordinary event, and of her efforts to ensure equitable access to the arts for all. Join us.

Until next time.

[Music]