No two
blades of grass are alike, and neither are the seven billion humans who inhabit
the Earth. Because each of us is unique, we all have different tales to tell. There
are stories of overcoming obstacles and wrestling with fears, of losing and
winning. Of imagining and growing up.
We are Bob Kerber and Linda Kerber
Schmitmeyer, two siblings with stories to share. We have a common heritage—Bob is
third and Linda fifth among twelve siblings—but we often view things differently,
which will be reflected in our individual stories. Yet we believe in the power
of storytelling as way to better understand the paths we’ve walked and imagine what
is ahead.
What makes any story worth
telling is the
uniqueness of the individual. For the two of us, that means being forged, in
part, by the following forces:
•
Our parents, George and Dorothy (Wuebker) Kerber, come from simple beginnings:
George was one of ten children of a railroad worker and an Irish/German Catholic
mother. He dropped out of school in the eighth grade, in the early 1930s, to
help support his family. Dorothy was the daughter of an itinerant farmer turned
factory worker and his German Catholic wife. The oldest of eight children, our
mother was deemed smart enough to skip third grade when her family moved from
one farm to another. Our parents’ early years were shaped by the Depression,
ours by two parents whose hard work, sense of curiosity, and high regard for
education propelled us to become who we are.
• Our parents had lower
middle-class means yet upper-middle class beliefs and values, ambitions, and
attitudes.
• The twelve siblings (ten males
and two females, all living) range in age from the mid-50s to the early 70s. There
were a dozen live births and a miscarriage in seventeen years and eleven days,
a crowding of children that created clusters of sibling dynamics that continue
to resonate even today.
• We came of age when ideas on
religion, race, culture, gender, and ethnicity were swiftly evolving. We grew
to maturity in the years between the aftermath of World War II and the winding
down of the ‘70s, a time of widespread change as world colonialism waned,
counter culture arose, and people in most societies began questioning once
unquestionable things. Our lives spanned the emergence of home TV sets and
party-line telephones to information
being transmitted almost instantly and personal computers empowering
corporations and individuals alike.
In writing our first blog post, one
of many we hope to share, we mulled over the use of the word “unique” because
it begs the question: Are we really unique? With the help of a thesaurus, we
considered other possibilities: “exceptional,” “distinctive,” “irreplaceable.” We
agreed on “unique” but knew the other words would have worked. For everyone of
us is all these, especially irreplaceable.
--Bob and Linda
Glad to see this!
ReplyDeleteExcited to follow this blog!
ReplyDeleteWow! Can't wait to follow your blog...feel like it is the Schlater clan, too
ReplyDeleteI'm curious about the distinction you make between upper-middle class and lower-middle class in regards to beliefs and values. What are the differences? I don't see how one's economic class defines one's beliefs or values. Maybe I'm misunderstanding your point but I'd like to hear more of your thoughts on that.
ReplyDeleteLooking forward to reading more!
Nicely put!
ReplyDeleteSuzanna, Linda and I have often talked about our parent’s economic situation. Here’s how we see it: Maybe not in the early years of their marriage, but after the babies kept coming, Dad’s paycheck did not seem big enough (to us, now) to meet the expenses. But it did meet expenses; they achieved this through determination and willpower. Mom, of course did not have a paying job.
ReplyDeleteIf the government did economic surveys back then, a family with 10 or 12 kids living on a baker’s salary would undoubtedly have been designated as below the poverty line thus classifying them in a lower economic class.
We believe Mom had a vision of what she wanted her family to look like, of what her family was: That is, a solidly middle class family, not one that had the words poverty or poverty line associated with it. I’m not sure how much of this vision Dad shared, although I suspect he probably agreed totally with the concept, but not with all of the particulars. While Dad would probably have been content with how ever our house looked as long as it was clean and orderly, Mom pushed for and got the inside rooms of the house remodeled and painted; she got decent furniture, curtains, etc.
Along with the physical trappings of middle class life, our parents strove for its less tangible aspects. But it was not so much middle class life that our parents yearned for, rather for anything that was a step up from the circumstances in which they were born. Education was the ticket away from their beginnings.
This was more our point in this first posting, not so much that being in a certain class defined our beliefs and values, but that our beliefs and values would carry us up a rung or to on the economic class ladder.