Betty Hansen Interview

Lotta Cool
And
17 Red Candles

Betty Hansen is a pioneer and a liberated woman, an activist who is not afraid to put her reputation on the line and tell it like it is. In the decades of the fifties and sixties, an age when most women stayed home and dutifully raised children and tended the roost, Betty raised nine children, tended the roost, wrote 3 columns a week for the Saginaw News, freelanced with at least five other publications, did PTA and took volunteerism to new heights of unbridled altruism. How could she do all that and have NINE kids... NINE KIDS?
Is she totally insane?
Betty always seemed to march to her own drummer. She survived the staid morality of the fifties and came into her own during the raging cultural battles of the sixties. Hansen always did her own thing, quietly, using humor and homespun wisdom to reveal and comment on the many forms of social injustice, the core wound of real human misery.

Betty, how did you first realize you had a gift for writing?

When I was about six or seven, I’d keep my siblings and neighborhood chums enthralled with stories I’d make up then assure them they were true. The other children would go home and repeat the stories to their parents who’d assure the they couldn’t possibly be true. Later, in second grade, asked to write stories about our lives I wrote that I wasn’t who everyone in the class thought. I was really a princess just staying with some boring commoners who were just taking care of me until my real parents, the king and queen came to pick me up and take me back to the palace and the life I was used to. Did I actually believe this? Of course not

Who inspired you as a journalist?

My mother added to our family income for years writing stories for confessions story magazines and articles on a variety of subjects. I grew up in a home where words, reading, books and story telling were as much a part of our lives as eating and breathing. Our library was enormous and unrestricted. A fanciful story told by one of us was never met with scorn or cries of “Liar,” but with “Very good. Why don’t you write it down.

What influence did your parents have on your choice of careers? Your style of writing?

My family obviously. Another influence was the writing of Robert Benchley in the New Yorker. During WWII, when I was a housebound mom, I went to the public library one year and read my way through all of the great humorists of the day including Benchley, Will Cuppy, Stephen Leacock (the Canadian satirist. Also Ogden Nash, Dorothy Parker and later Jean Kerr and some of the women humor writers of the day. Too humorist to list. Look them up.

When did you start working for the Saginaw News?

In 1968, I sent off a set of eight columns to the then new editor of The Saginaw News, Jim Brown. He liked them and contracted for two a week. Three months later they ran for three each week along with doubling the pay for them. The following year they issued “The Best of Betty Hansen” at promotion for Christmas $5 a copy. The 5,000 printing sold out in a couple of weeks. I got another raise an was doing quite well writing from my kitchen table. Nice perk — I didn’t have to even get dressed to go to work. Three years later, with two children heading off to college, I went to work full time. Downtown. In the office. Not wearing my jammies.

What was your most memorable assignment?

Memorable? Haunting is more like it. In 1981, a parole officer on leave of absence was killed in his home a shootout with police. I was assigned to do a background story focusing on his life.

Sue White told me that you mentored her when she first arrived on the scene. Do you have any stories about teaching Sue the ropes?

I am pleased to say Sue didn’t need much mentoring. It was like she couldn’t so soak in the information fast enough. I first saw her in a class I taught at Delta College called “Marketable Manuscripts.” Next time our paths crossed she was enrolled, full time (I think, you’d have to ask her) in journalism. I was delighted when I started seeing her byline as a staff writer. I’m also happy I’m still seeing it even though the paper has undergone historic changes this year.

What are your views of the Saginaw News as it exists today?

I guess I’m reluctantly accepting the fact that the slow death of the daily newspaper is a trend of our times. I don’t know how or even if it will evolve into something that was as meaningful. I get defensive when I hear one reason is that young people no longer read newspapers. I am not at all sure they watch the evening news either.

What was it like to raise nine children while balancing a career?

Who ever said it was balanced? Real life is learning to live with the truth that when you’re concentrating one part of your life, another is waiting for its turn. After awhile everyone gets into a rhythm of sorts and convince themselves that this is the way it is. This is normal — for you and yours anyway. I didn’t go to work full-time until the youngest was in school full time. My hours enabled me to leave the house at about the same time they did and get home about the same time. Like all working moms I ran my by phone, relying largely on meaningless threats there was no possibility at all of carrying out once I got home. But they didn’t have to know this.
As they got older, it seems as if the first and second born children just naturally fell into the role of assistant parents. They also got paid for the job and there were regular performance reviews with input from the siblings.

In reading your book the Best of Betty Hansen, it seems that you’ve always been a community activist. How did you come to embrace that form of altruism?

My grandmother, a preacher’s wife, was a social worker at Hull House in Chicago when she met my grandfather, then a student at Moody Bible College. She worked with the poorest of the city’s people and passed along stories to me. I saw my parents rearranging their very large home to take in the families of returning WWII vets. They charged a very modest rent and managed to “adopt” them while they were under their roof. All my life this was what you did. It was just a short step to volunteering, to speak out for causes. Along with this, hearing the biblical message of Matthew 25 and it’s mandate to feed the hungry, care for the poor visit the prisoner from my grandparents and seeing them living it spoke loudly to me. This is what you did.

You and your husband were both past Presidents of the Association for Retarded Children. Did this help you achieve balance or understanding in raising a developmentally disabled child?

Of course it did. Like so many communities like ARC, it begins as a place where people can go to find others who understand, then, having learned and healed stay to help. You educate, reach out and look around to see what you can do to improve the world around you.

In this day of political correctness, do you take umbrage with the term retarded as opposed to developmentally disabled?

Of course not. Before the PC age, it was accepted and not intended to be an expression of scorn or ridicule. Special needs doesn’t really describe any condition. The dictionary definition is’ “To cause to move or proceed showly, delay or impede.” This is exactly what the conditions holding back development of a child is. I am also comfortable with “developmentally delayed. Notice that this is eight syllables. The agency was first called the “Association for Retarded Children.” As its scope increased “children” was dropped from the title. It was what it was from the started so I never have felt uncomfortable. Even now I have to stop and remind myself to say special needs so as not to offend others who are sensitive. I respect that.

What were some of the challenges you faced as a mother and an activist for raising awareness of the needs and the gifts of developmentally disabled children and adults?

In the beginning the biggest challenge was facing my own family and my in-laws discomfort with having a handicapped child in their midst. There was a stigma attached to it; “bad blood,” a punishment from God for some secret sin. How many times were parents in the early days of organization of parents did I hear pastors or very religious people quote scripture, “the sins of the father” verses among others as justification for turning their backs on these children and their parents. I think the Kennedy family did so much to advance public education concerning the retarded or developmentally delayed if you will, by publicizing the child in their own family and through their support of ARC and promotion of the Special Olympics.

I read your book about Raley’s Superstore chain located in California. How did you get that job?

Pure dumb luck. I attended a meeting of the Sacramento Women’s Network, an organization for career women. I was working for two temp agencies at the time and it was a “network.” Speaker was a former high school guidance teacher in her 50s, who left that job and opened her own career guidance service. I contacted her. Lacking the $500 fee I bartered six months worth of newsletters for her agency for her services. Turned out she was a college friend of the daughter of the owner of Raley’s. Joyce Raley Teel had recently joined the company. Her first thought was that they needed a company magazine or newsletter of some sort and had asked her friend to be on the lookout for someone. Joan introduced me to Joyce and after a lengthy interview process I was hired. My first assignment was to travel with her on a two-state tour of the Raley Stores to get a feel for the company and it’s employees. It was orientation for both of us, since we was also new to the company as far as the business operation was concerned.

What did you think of Raley’s?

I recall in the introduction there was a photo of well placed Raley’s artifacts including a Nixon/Agnew button, an NRA poster, a bottle of beer and a pack of Lucky Strikes (among other things). What was the Raley’s message? I am surprised you read anything political about that photo. It was the work of the artist who set up all of the photo shoots for the books. Notice that all of the photograph were set up that way. He is a well-known artist in Sacramento and does a lot of advertising photography. He also did the layout for the book What he was trying to do was offer a visual interpretation of the beginning decades of Raley’s stores, from the early days of the Roosevelt administration, child star Shirley Temple “Lucky Strike goes to war,” and the stores’ history.

What are your views of our new President Barack Obama?

I like him very much. I campaigned for Obama and continue to support him as he faces not only the worst economic conditions since the Great Depression, but whose opponents who seem willing to take down the nation in their efforts to take him down. I’ve voted in every election since Harry Truman, three times for a Republican candidate. In spite of efforts by his opponents to take him down, I still think he carries the seeds of greatness.
I may be the only person around who was inspired to campaign for him by Rush Limbaugh. I was driving up Michigan Ave., punching the buttons on my radio when I came across Rush giving his usual diatribe. He was talking an historical event which I am old enough to remember. I realized this guy was either lying through his teeth or had not the faintest idea of what happened.
At the time it occurred to me that a huge segment of the population believes every word he says. Even now, I see this in the people who listen to Fox News 24/7 and if they heard it there it’s Gospel. This can be very dangerous to a country. Sorry for digressing: I passed Democratic Headquarters, made a left turn at the next corner drove around the block, found a parking space then walked in and told them I’d like to help out. I wasn’t feeling at all well at the time, not knowing that in December I’d be having a triple bypass and mitral valve repair. I was running on energy. I didn’t go door to door. I was tiring quickly, but putting it down to the aging. I’d campaign for him again and still support Move On.

Let’s go back to your marvelous book The Best of Betty Hansen. I was especially taken by Happiness Isn’t a Lot of Things. I thought it was pure genius to turn that whole question inside out and reveal the source of modern annoyances. How did you come up with whole idea of shining light on the mundane to reveal greater truths?

That’s such a nice way of putting your question. I’m really complimented by it. Truth is I have no idea how I came up with it. I was just sharing with reader of the column how I think and feel about life.

You were able to layer a sense of quiet joy with an enduring core wound in Life Without Him Joyless and Just an Average Kid. How did you develop that balanced perspective and capacity to see multiple truths? It is the hallmark of your writing.

Sorry to disappoint you, Bo, but I don’t have the faintest idea. I’ve been who I’ve been and perceived life the way I do since I very little, learning as I grew older. Maybe if I actually get around to writing my memoirs and thinking about it I’ll find out for myself.

You evoke the qualities of the mystical mother, who gives her gentle love without hesitation or condition yet at the very same time holds passionate views of a larger world. Can you speak to that dialectic?

I don’t think there is any tension at all between the two. I’m passionate about my family and others I love and passionate about what happens in the world around me. I remember my dad telling me “Try always to leave people, places and things better than they were when you found them. Doesn’t mean I always succeed, but I try. Hope that’s answers it clearly enough.

What legacy would you like to leave for the Saginaw community?

Hmm…your legacy makes itself. You’ve either done something or you haven’t. And how I am I going to know anyway? I believe in living life according to what you believe.