In Memory- A woman who changed my life
In 1971 I was a college student. An alienated college student who'd dropped out of most of the routines that had shaped my life to that point. I was anguished after the student strikes in 1970 ended as they'd begun with spilled blood and great uncertainty. I had been fired from my last job after my picture appeared in a news article during the demonstrations. I'd lived hand to mouth afterward. But I was beginning to be desparate. As a kid who'd always worked since I had a paper route and yard jobs, I wasn't at peace without being able to earn my way. But I also wasn't looking very employable at that moment and didn't have the resources to go back to school.
My mom knew that I was struggling to find a job and called a woman she knew who worked for the local Catholic Charities organization. Margaret Godfrey was the person in the organization who dealt with refugees. She was originally from Austria (OW-stree-A she would intone) where she had been a child during the war years. After, she had been employed by the Brits and then the Americans as a translator because she had learned English. She then met a young American, John Godfrey, and their romance had brought her back to Portland, marriage, and a career working with refugees here. In 1971 she agreed that the "clerk receptionist" job opening at the agency might be performed as well by a young man as by a young woman, and I got an interview. Miraculously, I was hired, a bushy haired, bearded student cut from the mold of that era. Imagine if you can, the clients of the social service agency stepping off the elevator to find such a figure at the front desk answering phones and saying, "May I help you?". I have trouble imagining it myself. Nonetheless, it happened that way. And as I look back, I would have to say that moment set the course of my life in some ways.
I write this tonight because yesterday afternoon I attended the funeral service for Margaret. The cathedral was full. The ceremony was the most integrated and diverse I think I have ever seen. In Portland, a 'diverse' event might simply mean there were two or three black people in the crowd. At Margaret's funeral there were Asians and Anglos, and Africans and Hispanics, and probably Romanians and Cubans and Indonesians and....well just about anyone. Two pews ahead of me, a short row of Immigration and Naturalization Officers in full dress uniforms lined up. Margaret, from the time she arrived in Portland, had spent her life 'welcoming' people and trying to make them at home. I was just a small part of the giant fabric she wove through her life, and yet what she did for me was a big thing when I consider where it took me. I had never thought of myself then as a refugee, but I think she knew that is what I was and opened her doors to my.
The job of being a clerk receptionist was not very demanding, but it was interesting. At the time, people who needed emergency services would arrive in a steady stream and a group of volunteer and staff intake workers would interview them and then try to help find them resources. The emergency services effort was led by a saintly man named John Curry. When I had been working for awhile, I got a chance to be an Intake Worker part of the time. I found that experience humbliing, enlightening, and challenging. People needed a bus ticket, a bag of groceries, a perscription filled, a place to sleep....every need imaginable. Sometimes the plea was from a woman with her children at her knees. Sometimes it was a grizzled hobo. Most of the time it was hard to tell what the best thing was to do. But I grew because I had the privilege of trying to help.
Not long after, I was asked if I wanted to become the bookkeeper's assistant. I said yes and found myself in the realm of Elena Rodriquez, a Cubana exile who taught me bookkeeping, a range of Spanish, and lessons about life and the way things worked. Flash forward to 1975. I had continued to work in the various parts of the service agencies and had a grasp of most of the operational pieces. The family counseling agency was relocating to far southeast Portland in the belief that their services were more deeply needed there. They asked if I wanted to go with them as the Administrator. I was just about to get my Political Science degree, but knew I'd need an income until the State Dept. called me to work on MidEast issues. So I said 'yes'. And in the next year and a half I learned what it was like to be the person in charge of supporting service delivery people in a non-profit business.
That's where I am today, thirty years later. I've been running not-for-profit community organizations all my professional life. I did a stint as a freelance writer. I applied for that slot at the State Dept. I took that four and half month road trip across Europe. But my work has been almost exclusively working to create institutions in the community that serve people. I have been shaped and challenged by the human issues that I saw when Margaret Godfrey first opened the door to invite me to join her and those other folks in service. I look at the 'save Darfur' bracelet on my wrist and realize that being thrust into an environment where refugees were real people has been a deep part of me ever since. I realize that Margaret gave me gifts with that simple opportunity to sit at the front desk and welcome people.
Margaret is no longer among refugees. I am sad that I will not cross paths with her again in this life, that I will not hear her animated and accented voice. But I take joy in being one of the people who were in the procession of her life. I hope that I can turn and pass the gift she gave me to others.
More information on Margaret is at www.margaret-godfrey.blogspot.com
My mom knew that I was struggling to find a job and called a woman she knew who worked for the local Catholic Charities organization. Margaret Godfrey was the person in the organization who dealt with refugees. She was originally from Austria (OW-stree-A she would intone) where she had been a child during the war years. After, she had been employed by the Brits and then the Americans as a translator because she had learned English. She then met a young American, John Godfrey, and their romance had brought her back to Portland, marriage, and a career working with refugees here. In 1971 she agreed that the "clerk receptionist" job opening at the agency might be performed as well by a young man as by a young woman, and I got an interview. Miraculously, I was hired, a bushy haired, bearded student cut from the mold of that era. Imagine if you can, the clients of the social service agency stepping off the elevator to find such a figure at the front desk answering phones and saying, "May I help you?". I have trouble imagining it myself. Nonetheless, it happened that way. And as I look back, I would have to say that moment set the course of my life in some ways.
I write this tonight because yesterday afternoon I attended the funeral service for Margaret. The cathedral was full. The ceremony was the most integrated and diverse I think I have ever seen. In Portland, a 'diverse' event might simply mean there were two or three black people in the crowd. At Margaret's funeral there were Asians and Anglos, and Africans and Hispanics, and probably Romanians and Cubans and Indonesians and....well just about anyone. Two pews ahead of me, a short row of Immigration and Naturalization Officers in full dress uniforms lined up. Margaret, from the time she arrived in Portland, had spent her life 'welcoming' people and trying to make them at home. I was just a small part of the giant fabric she wove through her life, and yet what she did for me was a big thing when I consider where it took me. I had never thought of myself then as a refugee, but I think she knew that is what I was and opened her doors to my.
The job of being a clerk receptionist was not very demanding, but it was interesting. At the time, people who needed emergency services would arrive in a steady stream and a group of volunteer and staff intake workers would interview them and then try to help find them resources. The emergency services effort was led by a saintly man named John Curry. When I had been working for awhile, I got a chance to be an Intake Worker part of the time. I found that experience humbliing, enlightening, and challenging. People needed a bus ticket, a bag of groceries, a perscription filled, a place to sleep....every need imaginable. Sometimes the plea was from a woman with her children at her knees. Sometimes it was a grizzled hobo. Most of the time it was hard to tell what the best thing was to do. But I grew because I had the privilege of trying to help.
Not long after, I was asked if I wanted to become the bookkeeper's assistant. I said yes and found myself in the realm of Elena Rodriquez, a Cubana exile who taught me bookkeeping, a range of Spanish, and lessons about life and the way things worked. Flash forward to 1975. I had continued to work in the various parts of the service agencies and had a grasp of most of the operational pieces. The family counseling agency was relocating to far southeast Portland in the belief that their services were more deeply needed there. They asked if I wanted to go with them as the Administrator. I was just about to get my Political Science degree, but knew I'd need an income until the State Dept. called me to work on MidEast issues. So I said 'yes'. And in the next year and a half I learned what it was like to be the person in charge of supporting service delivery people in a non-profit business.
That's where I am today, thirty years later. I've been running not-for-profit community organizations all my professional life. I did a stint as a freelance writer. I applied for that slot at the State Dept. I took that four and half month road trip across Europe. But my work has been almost exclusively working to create institutions in the community that serve people. I have been shaped and challenged by the human issues that I saw when Margaret Godfrey first opened the door to invite me to join her and those other folks in service. I look at the 'save Darfur' bracelet on my wrist and realize that being thrust into an environment where refugees were real people has been a deep part of me ever since. I realize that Margaret gave me gifts with that simple opportunity to sit at the front desk and welcome people.
Margaret is no longer among refugees. I am sad that I will not cross paths with her again in this life, that I will not hear her animated and accented voice. But I take joy in being one of the people who were in the procession of her life. I hope that I can turn and pass the gift she gave me to others.
More information on Margaret is at www.margaret-godfrey.blogspot.com
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