In the Beginning….
I was born on October 9 1950 at 5:12 a.m. in the Bulloch
County Hospital in Statesboro, the second child of J.G. Altman and Christine
Rogers Altman.
My parents were truly working class folks who were among
those people in the post war years who strived hard to move up in the
world. They had both grown up relatively
poor – and both were determined to work hard enough, smart enough, and long
enough to BE somebody in town and reach that next level of folks
whose children had it better than they did.
And, indeed, we did.
Not that there weren’t difficulties. My very earliest memories were of the Bulloch
County Hospital where I was taken after a tragic accident that left me with a
critical head injury. I was supposed to
have died, but the doctors and “the good Lord” saved me. I had lots of attention at the hospital – and
gradually began to talk again and walk again.
The first book that I remember was one that I received in the hospital -- Digger Dan. Digger Dan was a
steam shovel and there was one just like him outside the hospital window, for
they were building a new wing at the time.
Perhaps being able to connect that story of Digger Dan with the real
life “goings on” at the hospital encouraged me to understand the importance
that books could have in my life. In any case, I did fall in love with books –
and it’s been a lifelong love affair.
When I was taken home, my parents were told that I could not
hit my head and I should not get hot. So
we got window units for my bedroom and the main room that I would be in – and
that MAIN room was my mom’s little home beauty shop. She moved my high chair in
that shop and I remained there with her and all the ladies. They held me in their laps and interacted
with me and read books to me and, indeed, helped to raise me. Our home with my mom’s shop was right across
from the front gates of Georgia Teachers College – now Georgia Southern
University. All of the women whose
husbands taught there and the women who taught there were my mom's customers. These were educated women who valued reading, writing, and good conversation. And a once extremely shy toddler bloomed into a gregarious, talkative,
curious little girl. I thank these
ladies – a few who are still living – for that experience, and my mom for
sharing her work with me.
When I was five, we moved across town, just one block away from
First Baptist Church on Woodrow Avenue.
I loved that split level on Woodrow Avenue. We lived upstairs and my mom’s bigger beauty
shop was downstairs. The shop was big
enough for three or four operators and Mama became the most sought after
beautician in town. The shop provided a
place for me to work after school and in the summer. And I worked diligently, sweeping hair,
handing rollers to the operators, booking appointments, and when I was older,
doing the payroll.
Even so—there was plenty of time to play with the neighbors. My brother Johnny and I had the freedom to roam the neighborhood. When
we were a little older, we roamed the town.
We walked or rode our bikes all over Statesboro. When the Medical Center Pharmacy opened here
on the corner of Granade and Grady, it stayed open on Sunday afternoons and
welcomed all of us to hang out at the snack bar and read the comics. Yeah, it was that kind of white middle class
childhood like you see in Norman Rockwell paintings. And for the most part, it was fun for
me.
Sunbeam Girl
Though the Medical Center Pharmacy became a Sunday afternoon hangout
– my biggest hangout spot growing up was First Baptist Church. Since I could easily walk to all the
activities, I was there just about any time the doors opened.
And even if they were not opened for religious activities,
my friends and I would have fun exploring various parts generally off limits,
which included some swim time in the baptistery and dangerous explorations to
the steeple. For the most part, though,
I was a “good” little Baptist, attending Sunbeams (for preschoolers), then
Girls’ Auxiliary, children’s choir, plus Sunday School every Sunday morning
before church and Training Union in the evening before evening services. I had
good Sunday School teachers, for the most part, and believed everything they
told me – everything. During a revival
service when I was nine years old, I walked down the aisle to “take Jesus as my
personal Lord and Savior” and join the church.
I was baptized later by long time minister J. Robert Smith. I remember feeling a bit disappointed that
all I felt after the baptism was WET – but nevertheless, I was a baptized
believer – and vowed I would be a good Christian.
Teen Troubles
When I was 12 years old, I walked down the aisle again and
rededicated my life – as if a 12 year old needed to do that. But I felt that need to make an even stronger
commitment. And that’s when I got into
trouble. For you see, I became so
committed that I decided to really study the Bible – all of the Bible, not just
what the Sunday School teachers shared with me.
And of course, there are lots of contradictions in the Bible and lots of
really weird things that just didn’t seem too holy to me.
Soon after – in the 8th grade, we started studying Norse
mythology in Mrs. Roach’s English class.
So here I was reading the Bible – and wondering about lots of the
strange things I was reading; then also studying Norse mythology – and
realizing that these stories had some of the SAME strange happenings as those I
found in the Bible; and my little brain cells lit up with the realization that
perhaps they were all the same.
Now I still WANTED to be a good Christian and have that
Christian GLOW on my face when I sang in the choir. (Demonstrate)
My heart wanted to believe. But my mind was pushing back. Add to that mix the hormones that come at
this age, and first love, and first real heartbreak – with no help from prayers
to Jesus who was supposed to be my savior.
I cried almost every night my ninth grade year.
But then I started hanging out with Sammy Johnson and the
motorcycle boys and felt a little better.
If you knew me in high school you would have described me as an
outgoing, fun-loving, motorcycle riding, boy-loving, kind of wild girl who was
also extremely dedicated to her church and her faith. And all of that was very confusing. I could not decide whether I was better
suited to becoming a Hell’s Angel or a nun.
Seriously, that’s how confused I was.
After a while, I decided that the Hells Angel or Nunnery possibilities
weren’t realistic but I was determined that I was going to leave
Statesboro. My senior English teacher
had convinced me that I was a good writer, so I decided to apply to UGA’s Henry
Grady School of Journalism and have a good time at that party school, then head
to Atlanta to work for the Atlanta Journal.
I was going to be "Brenda Starr."
Then along came Fred.
An Education for Fred
and Me
The Page boys (Fred, Vick, and Will) were also active in
First Baptist Church. Fred had finished
high school in 1965, and had attended a couple of other schools for post
secondary work before being accepted into Georgia Southern College. I was a senior at Statesboro High and that
fall Fred asked me to go with him to the “Starlight Ball” at Georgia
Southern. To get the chance to go to a
college ball with a handsome guy was too good to pass up. I went.
He charmed me, and that was that.
My acceptance to the Journalism School at UGA arrived in the
mail – but by that time, I was too much in love to consider leaving and decided
that I would remain in Statesboro and attend Georgia Southern with Fred. He asked me to marry him and I accepted –
thinking that it would still be years away.
We kept moving the date up and up – and “sort of” eloped on June 12,
1968, just days after my high school graduation and the day before I registered
for Georgia Southern. I say “sort of”
because I took my parents with us. After
all, I was just 17 – too young to marry even in South Carolina without my
parents' signature.
Fred and I both majored in Elementary Education and took
almost all of our classes together. He went from being a poor student to being
a good one – and I became not only a better student, but an excellent tutor as
well. We continued our journey together
through three degrees at Georgia Southern and our doctorate degrees at
Mississippi State.
The Total Woman –
NOT!
Fred and I remained active in First Baptist and with the
College Student Union while we were students.
Actually that’s when I got my first opportunity to preach in a little
chapel that looked kind of like this.
Shhhhh. No one was supposed to
know. At that time the Baptist Student
Union conducted Sunday Services at the Bulloch County prison camp. During the summer most of the students left,
and Fred and I volunteered to continue the services. The plan was for him to preach and for me to
play the piano. But he gladly turned the
pulpit over to me; and I gladly took it.
We knew this was a special situation and it was not something we could
even tell anyone about. The guys in
prison didn’t mind though – and that’s what counted to us.
Fred was actually pretty open to me being a little
different; but he was more concerned about what folks THOUGHT. We had to at least SEEM to be a traditional
couple – and LORD I TRIED!! I stayed
home with our two boys when they were little and I even took a workshop at
First Baptist called “The Total Woman.”
Needless to say, I was not their model student. It just didn’t take with me – and Fred seemed
okay with that, as long as we looked traditional enough to others. They must have approved because they invited
Fred to be ordained as a deacon when he was just 27.
My own spiritual growth and development was
complicated. On the outside, it looked
terrific. When in my 20’s, I was
President of Baptist Young Women, a regular in the church choir, the pianist
for one of the children’s choirs, a teacher of
“Mission Friends” and a Sunday School teacher of 8th grade girls. But I was secretly continuing the journey I
had started as a young teenager of reading, studying, and thinking for
myself. And I was changing. I was becoming more liberal socially,
politically, and of course, theologically.
I would share just enough of my new ideas with folks at church to remain
in good standing – but they suspected I was falling out of line. And my husband knew it.
Are we there yet?
As young parents, we heard that call from the backseat of
the car from our two boys, Fred and John, often when we traveled to Valdosta to
visit my husband’s great Aunt or when we traveled to ballgames or for family
vacations. But this refrain is also a
good header for this period of my life because I was always moving, working,
hurrying, and scurrying.
I began work as an assistant professor at Georgia Southern
in 1979, shortly before my 29th birthday, and resolved to be a full professor
by the time I was 40. No time to
waste. Our children were enrolled in the
laboratory school next door, which was awesome for us. Fred also worked in the College of Education
and we continued the partnership we had as students by doing all our research
together. Our primary research was
related to the teacher shortage that was growing at that time. As we “milked our data” for other
presentation and publication opportunities, we reported on subgroups according
to various categories – teaching disciplines, age, gender, and race. And that’s when I really began to receive
what was a higher calling, because I became committed to working through my
research to publicize what had become a devious method for re-segregating the
schools; the academic tracking of children from as early as kindergarten.
By my late thirties, qualitative methods became more
acceptable in educational research and I began to interview African American
teachers as part of my research. As I
interviewed one teacher who shared her experiences of not only students being
tracked but teachers as well, tears came to her eyes and I thought, “I cannot
just research this stuff and present and publish this stuff. That is not enough. I must actively and openly work to help
change the system here at home and beyond.”
So I came out as an activist for change and haven’t stopped
since. And this, I believe, is where my
partnership with my husband became strained.
He was openly supportive of me, but he questioned me on my ideas when we
were at home. He too believed in equality,
he said. But did I also think it was
okay for blacks and whites to marry? “Of
course,” I said. And I added same-gender couples to my approval list as well.
Fred wasn’t there yet – and he did not like that I “thought
differently” than he did. He said, “We
are married, we should think alike if we are going to have a strong marriage.”
I replied, “Well, I don’t see it that way. Maybe we are like Ying and Yang. Maybe our differing views complement each
other.” It had been okay in the past
with him, but now my differing views were being made more and more public. The next thing you know, I may be pushing for
changes at church. And YES, I did!
On August 9, 1992, our pastor preached a sermon indicating
that the Bible was an authority and was inerrant. In my Couples Sunday School
class the following Sunday I presented information which challenged his
message. I included lists of things in
the Bible that it would have been difficult for this moderate group to believe
– and I added verses related to women’s subservience to that ridiculous list as
well. I was calling out my pastor from
my little Sunday School pulpit. My
public witness door was opened now in the church as well, and I wasn’t going
back in. For I felt that my work with others
WAS making a difference!
Meanwhile, I was being promoted at work and had become the
chair of a department that would change as well. The Department grew from a small group of
mostly old men who did no research to a vibrant, diverse group of free-thinking
guys and gals who developed a doctoral program that leaned even further to the
left than I did. And I was becoming
known at the University for not only being a hard working woman, but as someone
who would stand up for faculty and students, for folks in education, and for
the oppressed. Yes, that would later get
me in trouble – but for now, I felt like I could fly with those Eagles winning
those championships. I was even back on
a motorcycle. Like Helen Reddy, I was
woman – strong and invincible – at least at work. There was a perfume advertisement that was
popular back then with a woman I tried to identify with who sang: “I can bring home the bacon, fry it up in the
pan, and never, ever let him forget he’s a man. – Cause I’m a woman!” Well, I could bring home the bacon – but
obviously fell short in other areas.
Frustrating Forties
Indeed, I was bringing home the bacon but became less and
less interested in frying it up in the pan.
We ate a lot of bad fast food – and my younger son blames me for feeding
him all those growth hormones via the food we ate. He says that’s why he and his brother are so
big now and it takes more food (and therefore more money) to feed them. And in terms of keeping my husband happy –
boy, did I try! I shall not share what
lengths I went to … but I did try.
However, the failure of me and our boys to fit his idea of that
traditional Baptist family drove him into depression. His only relief seemed to be in running away
to Brunswick, where he could always arrange for night classes – with days on
the beach and evenings after class receiving warm fuzzies from graduate
students enamored with his charm. That’s
how he kept his sanity. I begged him to
see a marriage counselor with me – knowing that his extracurricular activities
were not the cause of the problem – but the result. He refused.
I have often wondered what would have been the result of some good
counseling at that time in our lives.
Would it have made a difference?
I kept my sanity through working and through reading. Although I did read theology, philosophy, and
psychology – my biggest revelations came through radical fiction – especially
writings of the likes of Tom Robbins.
This was also the phase in my life where I discovered Unitarian
Universalism and sent off for the materials – hoping they would come in a plain
brown wrapper. I hid them in a bathroom
drawer under the feminine sanitary supplies with my other reading
contraband.
Eventually things at First Baptist got too difficult. Because of my social justice activities in
the community and my push for equality for women and more openness to African
Americans in church, I was literally shunned by many. After one study group meeting in which I
encouraged the study of the role of women in the church – “Just study it” I
asked, I was confronted by the chairman of the Board of Deacons and by the
pastor who demanded that I withdraw the recommendation. And the pastor basically let me know that he
had to follow the power – and that was not me.
I decided to move on – not from my marriage; but from my church which
had been such a meaningful part of my life.
But I knew I couldn’t go to UU.
That WOULD have meant the end of my marriage.
I joined Pittman Park United Methodist Church after finding
that they had a liberal Sunday School class.
I also joined their choir and began training as a Methodist lay
minister. After getting that
certification, I began preaching at some evening services. This was a good transition for me, my "half-way" house. But the doctrine was still stifling. Shari Barr was also going to that class but
would leave a little early to go to the UU church. I envied her.
But I had my family to consider.
And we continued for a while to have that “happy family”
appearance to the community, while we all struggled at home. My sons had especially problematic teen and
young adult years. I was constantly in a
“fix it” mode for them. My in-laws were
also very sick during this time. And our
lives were getting more depressing. I
told NO ONE about any of this – and instead screamed at the trees at night when
I needed an outlet.
My Awakening!
My religious reading included Buddhism. But I never thought that I would have the
kind of enlightening experience that the Buddha did. Perhaps mine is not comparable, but I tell
you – I did WAKE UP on Christmas day, 1997!
I remember the spot where I was standing. I was holding
grandson JD who was almost a year old on my hip. It was his very first
Christmas. But his grandfather wasn’t there. Fred had left the night before saying he was
just too severely depressed to be with us.
And it was Christmas. And we were all depressed. Then...it just fell on me. I woke
up. And for the first time in my life I realized that we didn’t have to
live that way. And I said it out loud.
“You know what? We don’t have to live this way.
We are going to get a divorce.”
My life changed after that.
I changed everything. I colored
my hair, I re-modeled my house, and I – at last – became a Unitarian
Universalist!
I LOVED Unitarian Universalism. Indeed, I’ve described this religion as my
salvation. I was not born with the gift of unquestioning faith like some. But I was born with the need for religious
community. I found a home here. Here was a place that I could ask questions,
share my doubts, and affirm my commitments to those values that had become so
important to me. I also met Greg here,
and what a support he has been on this journey.
And HERE was a place where my gay friends could come and be OUT –
Hallelujah! To use one of my dad’s
phrases, I was “in HOG HEAVEN.”
My Ministerial
Journey
Because I had been a lay minister at the Methodist church, I
sought to continue some kind of lay ministry at the Unitarian Universalist
Fellowship of Statesboro. And folks here
were glad to have me fill their pulpit for free and take on other
responsibilities. It wasn’t long before
I realized that these activities were becoming more important to me than my job
at Georgia Southern. So I made an appointment
with the nice lady at Human Resources to see when it would be possible to
retire with full benefits. And I learned
that I could retire in 2005. So I began
to look at the possibility of going to seminary and becoming a REAL
minister. It would not be easy. But it was possible. The congregation agreed to be my sponsor and I
was accepted by into the modified residency program of Meadville Lombard
Theological School – a Unitarian Universalist seminary in Chicago. With careful planning and an earned
sabbatical from Georgia Southern, I would be able to complete most of my
coursework and my clinical pastoral counseling unit by the time I retired. Then I would have only a one year internship
remaining. That was the plan – and it
became my reality.
I jumped through all of UUA’s hoops for preliminary
fellowship in March of 2006 and immediately let the folks here at UUFS
know. They had a meeting of the
congregation and called me as their minister.
I began on July 1, 2006 – and I’m still here, now in my eighth
year. I’m enjoying the fact that our
ministry has become a shared ministry with participation from many of our
members and friends. And last year, I
joyfully welcomed that little child who had been on my hip at my awakening – as
a full member of this fellowship.
I have not been without struggles. We have not been without struggles. Yet – all in all—I still feel like I’m in a
spiritual HOG HEAVEN!
The Building Your Own Theology Course that I’m sharing with
others asks for us to consider theological values that have informed our
journeys. I’ll have to think some more
on that…, but for now I would probably say “continuous revelation.”
Perhaps I’ll reveal more later. But for now -- as fellow Hog Heaven inhabitant Porky Pig
says, “That’s All Folks!”
