The Lord Told Me, "Be Available"

By Janet Lerner

This book describes my life and many of the experiences I have had. If it can help one person to hang in there and not give up, everything relate to the book will be worth it. When I was ready to go to Columbia for my doctorate, my father kept telling me that I should not bother because I was always going to be a secretary anyway. Thank God, I didn’t listen to him. The Lord told me, “Be available.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Oct 31, 2017
• ISBN: 9781635688702

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The Lord Told Me, Be Available.

Janet Lerner PhD, LCSW

Copyright © 2017 Janet Lerner PhD, LCSW

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING, INC.

New York, NY

First originally published by Page Publishing, Inc. 2017

ISBN 978-1-63568-869-6 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-63568-870-2 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Chapter 1

Where I Started

It’s really hard to write a book about your own life. For one thing, you never know where to start. If you begin at the beginning, it will go on and on, and no one will read it. If you pick a particular incident, no one will understand it in the context of the rest of your life.

Having said all of that, I have decided to begin at the end of my marriage or the beginning of my life as an independent individual. Some context will inevitably be necessary. I was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, and raised in northeastern Ohio around Canton and Alliance, Ohio, and, as a senior in high school, moved to Columbus where I lived until I was forty years old and moved to New York City to do my doctorate at Columbia University. My father was the comptroller for Sears, Roebuck & Co. for Canton, Alliance, Massillon, Lorraine, and Sandusky, Ohio. My mother was a nurse and a Christian Scientist. I have one sister, ten years younger than I, who had a much rougher life than I did, because she had to deal with not only my parents’ divorce, but also my mother’s second marriage, which was much worse than the first (to our father).

I grew up on a farm, started driving tractor at eight years old, but was feeding the animals even before that. I became a very hard worker, and in the long run, that benefited me because it took all I could muster to get through a doctorate at Columbia University School of Social Work.

I was married at age twenty. My husband, Stan, was twenty-two. We met at Ohio State University, and after a year of talking as friends, we began to think of each other as more.

Stan was finishing his fourth year of college and had been accepted into medical school in Iowa. We became a serious item during the spring of 1962 and maintained that relationship all summer long. When fall came, and he was to leave for med school, we vowed to keep in touch.

Stan probably had a difficult transition, and I was feeling torn because my parents were in the process of divorcing. Anyway, two months later, he dropped out of medical school and returned to Columbus; I dropped out of Ohio State, and we started to live together. Two months after that (five days before my parents’ divorce was final), we married.

Since Stan was Jewish and I was not happy with being a Christian Scientist, I converted to Conservative Judaism. I spent about six months in total learning about Judaism and preparing to be a Jewish wife. Shortly before we married, I went for the mikvah (a ritual bath somewhat like baptism). On the Saturday before my wedding day, I sat before a tribunal of rabbis and answered questions that allowed me to officially become Jewish. Being Jewish became and continues to be important to me. The next day we were married.

We spent eight years together. During that time, my husband went to school, worked at jobs like clerking in a liquor store and being a management trainee and collection agent. I worked most of the time as a statistical typist in a small firm in Columbus, Ohio, where we made our home.

I joined the National Council of Jewish Women, evening branch and was elected vice president in charge of education. As part of the responsibilities of that position, I was asked to attend the Columbus area council on civil rights (it was 1967). I became active in the civil rights movement and was asked to coordinate the investigation of individuals and families of color who were having difficulty finding housing. I worked with the ACLU and the Ohio Civil Rights Commission and the NAACP Legal Action Center and coordinated several investigations with people of color who were seeking housing. We filed four federal class action suits against owners, landlords, or real estate agents, and we won all four. The outcomes were not really satisfactory, e.g., the most indisputable case awarded the family who was discriminated against $200 in compensation.

Between the NCJW and the CACCR, I was very busy, and a lot of stress began to develop in our marriage. Finally, Stan and I broke up. I moved from our modest apartment in a Jewish neighborhood in Columbus, a short mile to the inner city of Columbus. The apartment I rented there was a one-bedroom with a comfortable living room, kitchen, dining area, bedroom, and bath. I didn’t have a lot of furniture, but I was able to make do with what I had. I took my favorite round dining table with the grape-colored leather chairs, the double bed, a living room chair, a bench, and one of the TV sets.

It was the late ’60s, and I was experiencing the start of the hippie movement. I had started seeing a young man that I worked with in the Model Cities Program on open housing where I had just become employed. Jimmy was a young black man, about nineteen years old, who had grown up knowing only his mother, who was a drug addict and a prostitute. He learned the streets before he learned to walk. He was an intelligent young man, very clever and very slick, and he knew how to approach women and get them to work for him. In other words, he was a pimp.

The first night I was in my new apartment, I expected Jimmy to drop in. I sat in the living room watching TV and waited. When he finally knocked at the door, it was after midnight. He came in, sat down in the chair (I sat on the floor), and we talked for about ten minutes. He patted his coat pocket, implying he had a gun, told me that he would be back, and disappeared into the night. I waited up until 3:00 a.m. before deciding that he was not coming back that night. This was his pattern for our entire relationship.

A few days later, I invited another coworker over to my house. He brought a friend. He and his friend sat on the bench, and I sat on one of the grape-colored kitchen chairs. He started talking about Vietnam and pulled out a baggie that contained marijuana. I had never seen marijuana before, and he called it dope; so I was surprised when he explained to me about reefer, dope, numbers, etc.

He talked about how the Chinese and Vietnamese had given out free drugs during the Vietnam War. He had gotten strung out on heroin and had gone AWOL to live with a local woman. When he got arrested, he was sent back home. I was enthralled. I had never known anyone who did drugs, lived with an Asian woman, was in Vietnam, etc.

The friend he brought with him was the receptionist at the agency where I worked. She had just begun a relationship with someone who was also using drugs.

Billy started rolling a joint. He said the dope was Vietnamese—the strongest stuff you could buy. We all took several tokes off the joint that he rolled. I didn’t feel anything different. Later when I was driving Billy home, I told him that he seemed to live a long distance considering he was on the west side inner city and I lived on the east side inner city. He said that was the dope. It made time stand still.

One night Jimmy, Billy, and Paul (an older man who also worked in the Model Cities Program in Columbus) came to my house together. They surprised me as I wasn’t expecting anyone but Jimmy. They came in, and I could see that Jimmy had an attitude. I didn’t know why he was angry, but he was very different. He brought in some music and some hand drums (probably bongo drums).

They started grilling me. I wasn’t sure what they wanted, but they kept asking me questions. They made me take all of my clothes off and lay down spread legged on the floor in front of the chair where Paul was sitting. They told me to have sex with Paul. I refused. They did not force me. Jimmy slapped my face, and they left. I asked him why, but he didn’t answer.

During this time, Jimmy had tried to get me to write bad checks and give him the money. We worked together. He was supposed to report to me at the Housing Opportunity Center (HOC), which was a newly established Model Cities Program. My job was to coordinate open housing and substandard housing cases and try to help tenants in substandard housing find new, more acceptable homes.

I had been in a relationship with the director of the program when I started there, but once I was working for him, the relationship fell apart. Then Jimmy had stepped in and started developing a relationship like none I had ever had. It was because of my relationship with him that I left my husband.

The work at the HOC was interesting and meaningful, and I was very committed to it. I met several people who were living in relatively awful conditions. I had never seen anything like that. They had rats biting their children, for example. One blind woman lived in such a terrible place that she could not go out without falling. I was able to help them get public housing and housekeeping support.

I was somewhat disappointed that the number of open housing cases dwindled to none. As I mentioned before, we had filed four class action suits while I was working as a volunteer. These cases came and went without a lot of action taken. However, housing did seem to be opening up for those individuals and families of color who could afford to move to all-white neighborhoods.

There were so many things going on in the substandard housing area that my time was being completely taken up with that work. At one point, I went with a woman whose children had been bitten by rats. She had been given an apartment in public housing that would open up in January.

The landlord, a local lawyer, who owned the terrible housing in which she resided, had been told by the Department of Health three years before that he had to fix up the property or close it down. The landlord was a lawyer who had an office in the area. I made an appointment to see him. When we arrived at his office, he insisted on charging the woman rent for December in spite of the condition of the housing.

I stood up to him and told him I would have a picket line in front of his office that afternoon if he continued to press my client to pay. He did not charge her the rent, but got even with me for the threats. Two days later, I was fired from my job. That started a downhill spiral of experiences and events that were beyond my ability to grasp and understand. Even today I cannot believe that period of my life is real. But real it is!

Chapter 2

Use Wisdom

It was early winter, December. Thanksgiving had past, Christmas had not yet come. A staff member called me out of my office to talk to someone. He’s waiting on the porch, she said. I stepped out and saw Ben. Ben was a sweet, gentle African American man with whom I had developed a special relationship of respect and compassion. We had hashed out this relationship in one of those sensitivity sessions that were designed to bring White and Black Americans closer together.

Ben had an expression of great concern on his face. He spoke with a soft voice, and I had to draw close to hear what he had to say. Be very careful today. I just heard that they are out to fire you, he said.

What? Why would they do that? I responded.

Something that happened, he said. I’m not sure. But I heard them talking about it downtown. They said you’re out of here, and I’m not sure what can be done about it. But I wanted you to know. Just watch out. Be careful.

We said good-bye, and I went back into my office. I was stunned and didn’t know what to think. But I did not have a lot of time to think about it because my intercom buzzed, and I was beckoned upstairs to the director’s office.

Carl had a stern look on his face. He cleared his throat and began to talk. I have to inform you that your position in this organization has been terminated, he said.

I sat there stunned. I think he said something else, but I didn’t take it in. I just got up, went downstairs, picked up some of the stuff from my desk, and started to walk out of the office. My staff kept asking me what had happened. I really could not respond. I got in my car and went home.

When I got home, I could not begin to understand what had just happened. I sat in my chair and stared out into the room. I must have sat there for more than three hours when someone knocked on the door. It was Billy, my next-door neighbor and one of my staff. He came in.

Hi, he said. I heard what happened. You must be blown away. I really couldn’t give him a coherent answer. Jimmy sent me by to pick you up. He wants us to go out to Westland for something.

OK, I said and numbly followed him out to the car. Jimmy was in the driver’s seat of his T-Bird. We took off and drove around the city. Jimmy would stop, and either he or Billy would get out of the car and go in to see someone. When they came out, we would go to the next location.

Jimmy was always talking about the Black Panthers. He also seemed obsessed with getting me to write big checks for things I had no money to pay for. He kept talking to me about that as we drove around. What are you afraid of? he said.

Well, for one thing, they put people in jail for writing checks they can’t cover, don’t they? I said.

You don’t have a record. You’re a white woman. They won’t do anything to you but give you probation, Jimmy reassured. He and Billy started laughing and talking in voices that were supposed to sound like the judge, the lawyers, etc. They mapped out the entire scenario of the arrest, trial, and sentencing if I got caught.

There was a little voice in the back of my head that kept saying, You are crazy if you listen to these guys, but another voice said, I love this man and would do anything for him. It doesn’t matter if I get caught. I have no life anyway. I was going through so much deep shame and guilt for being white, and I was so shocked and depressed because I lost the job that was so important to me, that I just gave up. The next day I started going around Columbus writing checks I had no money to cover for things I would then give to Jimmy.

One night Jimmy knocked on the door. When I answered, he came in with another woman. She was an attractive black woman who lived in the house across the street from the center where we had worked together before I lost my job. He was talking in those authoritative funny voices he used to like to use. He talked about things I didn’t understand and didn’t feel I could question him on. She just sat there for a while and then they left.

About a month after I started writing bad checks, I got a call from my bank. They asked me to come in. I talked with one of the bank officers who told me that he knew I was writing bad checks and that the bank was just sending them back to the stores where they had been cashed. He warned me that if I didn’t do something soon, I would end up in a lot of trouble. He seemed to know what he was talking about.

I called Jimmy, and he came over with Billy. We discussed the meeting and the notices I had received from Lazarus and several other stores. Jimmy said I should call my father and ask him for the money to pay off the bad checks. I resisted with everything that I could muster, but my fear of incarceration and personal humiliation overcame the shame and fear of contacting my father.

When I called Dad he was quiet on the phone for about five minutes and then said that we would have to get a lawyer to help us. We did. One of the lawyers from the ACLU group that had helped us with the open housing cases was