1 - Early Days
Jonathan: All right, I think we’re going here. Hey, good morning Mom.
Laura: Good morning.
Jonathan: It’s April 6, 2025. I’m very happy to be talking with you. And it’s a Sunday morning. It’s super rainy here. What’s it like up by you up in Michigan?
Laura: It’s sunshiny and I wish I could show you how high the river is. It’s just really high. And that’s because we’ve had torrential rains
Jonathan: Interesting. Well, I know how high that river can get. So it’s a beautiful spot you’ve got.
Laura: Yep.
Jonathan: So this is the first, this is the first time that we’re doing this or you’ve agreed to have some dialogue and I’m going to ask you a bunch of questions and I’m going to ask you a question and you just tell me, you just go, I’m going to get out of the way and let you talk. Okay.
Laura: Okay.
Jonathan: And if there’s a question you don’t want to answer, that’s fine. And if there’s something that I didn’t ask you that you want to tell me about, that’s fine too. But we’re just going to learn more about Laura Bartleson, right?
Laura: All right.
Jonathan: Good. So tell me your name and when you were born.
Laura: My name is Laura Ruth Jansma Bartleson. And I was born April 14, 1938, which means that next week I will be 87 years old.
Jonathan: That’s wonderful. That’s critical, critical question. So born in April, what is your astrological sign?
Laura: Oh, I don’t know.
Jonathan: That was a, that was a gimme, but so, When you were young, Laura, what did you want to do when you grew up?
Laura: I guess that at the very beginning, after piano lessons, I wanted to be an organist. I wanted to be a choir accompanist and I wanted to make that my career. As it turned out, it was just an addition to my career, but I really enjoyed it. It gave me an income that my teaching at a Christian school was very low. I welcomed church connections. That meant that I played church services, choir accompaniment, and I also played funerals and weddings. And at that time it was about $50 a service.
Jonathan: And that was back. Tell me approximately what year you’re talking about there.
Laura: Okay. Um, I graduated from high school in 58. but I started playing when I was in 10th grade already. And I, my dad’s was minister of eight three formed and the service was on the radio every Sunday morning on WLAV at 10 o’clock. And I was the organist and the choir accompanist at 15 years old.
Jonathan: Starting from the 10th grade.
Laura: Yeah.
Jonathan: That’s amazing. That’s amazing. So there would be a morning service and an evening service.
Laura: Yes, but the morning one was the big one because that was on the radio and the evening service. Sometimes I played and sometimes another lady played.
Jonathan: So to be performing like that at the age of 15, what year did you start practicing? What time do you start taking lessons?
Laura: Well, I was taking piano lessons when I was in New Jersey. And I started organ lessons at age 13 with Alice Lantinga, who was a very famous organist at Le Grave in their old building on their old organ. And she was very demanding. Every lesson would start with choosing a hymn out of the blue. I didn’t know which one she’d choose. And then I was to play it three verses. And each verse I was to add sound. And before the last verse, she would be walking around the auditorium getting a feel for how much loudness I had. And just before I started the last service, she’d say, all right, Laura, make them sing. So I have always played hymns that way, at least the opening hymn. with an interlude just between the second and the third verse or the third and the fourth verse and the audience sense that I was leading into their singing the next verse. But it was an interlude where I added sound and encouraged enthusiastic singing.
Jonathan: That’s great. Mom, that’s amazing to me that at such an early age you were doing that. And Alice Lantinga, did I get the name correct? That’s what she was my teacher. It sounds like she was a pretty important person in your life, maybe.
Laura: Oh yes.
Jonathan: I’ve got a whole series of questions for you about music, because I know music was really important for you. I want to come back to this in one of our next conversations, but we’re talking about 15 years already doing something amazing like that. That’s kind of a, if I can use the where to make a pun here. That’s a prelude to the amazing things you’ve done in your life. But I want to go back before that and ask you a question about what stories have you been told about your birth?
Laura: Well, first of all, my dad was finishing seminary and my mother was teaching, was working for the government in Washington, D.C. when they were married. And this was near the end of his seminary, and although he led a protest group that left the Presbyterian Church, that happened on the campus of Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia, and he There was not a church there. So he was called to a church in Baltimore. And the reason he was called there was because the Machen family went to that church. And J. Gresham Machen was the founder of Westminster Seminary and very, very close friend of Dad’s. So close that his mother, Laura Machen, I was named after. And when they were in Baltimore, this was still a struggling church, I think, a very small salary. And that’s when mom got pregnant with me. I was born in Baltimore.
Jonathan: OK. So your dad had just started leading that church, kind of a fledgling experience, it sounds like. Quite a bit of uncertainty maybe around that.
Was that a stressful time for your parents or maybe not so much?
Laura: Well, I think that the Machen’s were really helping them financially. They were very close friends and they ate many meals together and the Machen family adored me.
Jonathan: Okay.
Laura: So I was there probably till I was almost two.
Jonathan: And there being Baltimore?
Laura: Yes. And then my father was called to a church in Philadelphia. And I think my mother must have started working again. I’m not sure because they put me in a daycare and it was a Quaker daycare school. And I don’t know how many days or how long, but I do know that it was a Quaker daycare. And I was there probably at age three, but I never started school in Philadelphia.
Jonathan: Okay. So your mom and dad, their names again are?
Laura: Theodore, John, Jansma, and Ruth. Virginia Gazan Jamsma.
Jonathan: They were they were in Baltimore when you were born, but they had been married for a long time before you were born or oh no, oh no.
Laura: Mother mother was still working in. Washington, I believe when she got pregnant and they would be getting together weekends. And Then when it got close to the birth, then that’s when dad moved to Baltimore and she did too.
Jonathan: Okay. Okay. So do you have any pictures or any understanding of what the, the house that you lived in when you were an infant or it sounds like first two years in Baltimore?
Laura: I’ve seen a picture of a house that is a white siding house that had a little landing on the back and I’m sitting on the landing and there are steps going down to the yard.
Jonathan: OK. Do we have a copy of that picture somewhere, I wonder?
Laura: I’m not sure.
Jonathan: OK.
Laura: But I know the name of the street. It was Bolton. Bolton Street.
Jonathan: In Baltimore?
Laura: Yes.
Jonathan: OK. Can you adjust the camera seems to be sneaking down?
OK. Much better.
Laura: OK.
Jonathan: All right. So you probably have more memories starting in Philadelphia. Can you tell us about any information about your parents or your earliest childhood memories in your home in Philadelphia?
Laura: I don’t. I don’t have any memories. I can’t remember anything. I can’t even picture the house.
Jonathan: Okay. Well, how long were you there in Philadelphia?
Laura: I may have started kindergarten there very shortly, but then my dad was called to teach at Eastern Academy in Patterson, New Jersey. He only taught there a very short time and he was called to 6-3 Forum Church, which was just down the hill. And I don’t know where we lived when he was teaching in the high school, but we quickly moved to a parsonage that was on the corner of Haldane Avenue and 8th Street. And it was in the middle of a hill, so you could climb up Haldane or you could go down Haldane. I and my siblings went to fourth street Christian school, which was down near the bottom of Haldane Avenue. And so we walked down the hill to school and the school was right behind the building that my father was the minister of six three formed.
Jonathan: Okay.
Laura: And I also remember that there was a public school exactly behind, across the street from the Christian school, and that there was a little store between the two schools that was a candy store. And I never, ever had spending money, but the rare, rare occasion that I did for five cents, I could get a bag full of candy. I could get five different things.
Jonathan: So how old were you as you think about that? How old do you think you were walking in with a nickel and coming out with a bag of candy?
Laura: Probably seven or eight. Now I have some very clear memories of that school. The principal was Mr. Boss, and he was short and he was bossy. And when the bell rang, we all had to go down into the basement and line up with our classes. And Mr. Boss sat or stood at the doorway to the janitor’s room, and there was a wooden paddle hanging above the door, right above where he was standing. which was threatening because that told us if we were called to the basement to see Mr. Boss, he might paddle us.
So I have very clear memories of standing in line and watching him till he would give us the signal we could march up to our classrooms. I also have a clear picture of my teacher there.
She had a wooden arm.
So when she walked around the classroom, that arm hung, kind of like a threat.
And I was scared of her. I was afraid of her. I don’t ever remember her punishing me, but I still remember how foreboding that wooden arm was. I had a very good friend. Nancy Rose. And when I touched base with her years later, she said the same thing. She remembered the wooden armed first grade teacher.
Jonathan: Wow. Well, so she must have been intimidating, not so much in terms of someone who hit you, but just her demeanor, I guess. Is that?
Laura: I think so. I think so.
Jonathan: So I’ve never met anybody with a wooden arm before. Was she in an accident or is there probably details you just don’t know about that?
Laura: I don’t know. I don’t know anything about it.
Jonathan: So you stayed in friendship with a person back to what must have been first or second grade. Nancy Rose, Nancy Rose.
Laura: I stayed a friend of hers. So we were in high school. I was still in touch with her when we moved away from New Jersey. I still wrote letters to her, We were in New Jersey until the end of my sixth grade year. And that’s when my dad accepted a call to A3 formed in Grand Rapids. And that’s when I started going to Grandville Avenue Christian School. But I only went there one year.
Jonathan: I’m going to pause you for just a second here. Can I, before we go to Michigan, can we explore further Patterson, New Jersey?
Laura: Sure.
Jonathan: And just think of the other memories that you have like and even even back. Did you ever hear your parents share stories maybe when you were an adult about things you did as an infant or as a very young child?
Laura: I can’t remember that, but I do remember this. My mother always had cats. And the cats would have kittens. And we, okay, I also remember how I would get nickels.
What happened was during the World War, my father’s church, six reformed, collected boxes of warm clothes to send to the Netherlands.
And after the war, the Netherlands sent back to my father’s church hundreds and hundreds of tulip bulbs. So the janitor of the church planted them all around the church and then all around the parsonage. So my memory as a child was when the janitor would come and maintain the parsonage garden, if I helped him, he’d give me a nickel.
Jonathan: And that would be for an afternoon of work or talk to me about that.
Laura: That would be well, I think what I ended up doing was gathering up the weeds he threw on the sidewalks. He was maintaining the tulip bulbs and I know this that at one time the local Patterson paper came out and took pictures of our yard when the tulips were in full bloom.
Jonathan: Neat, neat. So you would have been five or six years old. Not older than that, is it true?
Laura: Oh, I’d be older than that. We didn’t move to New Jersey until the end of sixth grade. So this would be third, fourth, fifth grade when I remember helping the janitor.
Jonathan: OK, so quickly a timeline. You moved from Baltimore to Philadelphia when you were about two.
Laura: Yeah.
Jonathan: And then you moved to Patterson, New Jersey when you were five.
Laura: Yes, I was. I think I think I had started kindergarten in Philadelphia. OK. And that sounds about right, because I know I was in Fourth Street Christian School by first grade.
Jonathan: OK. And then you stayed in Patterson, New Jersey, you just said, until you were about how old and what grade?
Laura: Beyond six, just at the end of sixth grade.
Jonathan: Okay. By that time you had siblings.
Laura: Yes. I remember there was a very dear friend of the family named Mina Kingma, who was a member of the church. and who babysat for my parents whenever they asked her to. And I remember her coming when my mother was going to go to the hospital to give birth to Paul.
And I remember my dad coming home and telling us that we had a new brother.
Jonathan: And that would have been your last sibling, your youngest sibling, right? So all of you were born before you left Patterson, New Jersey, if I’m understanding this correctly.
Laura: That’s correct.
Jonathan: OK. Good. This is good. So talk to me about your memories of your dad during that time.
Laura: Well, during the war, It was very hard to buy a car.
And I remember the family outings were riding out to the country, just going for a little ride. And all of a sudden we had no car.
And somebody from the church loaned him a Hudson. I remember this kind of looked like a squarish-backed car. And also during the war, they had what amounted to coupons to buy certain like sugar. I don’t remember the list, but there were certain things that were in very short supply and every family got a limited number of what amounted to coupons to allow them to purchase these ingredients. So I remember that about the war. I also remember that there were some deaths in the community, I think in my father’s church from the war. And I remember one of the things my dad and mother did once in a while was take us to New York City to Radio City Music Hall. And the only way we’d go there, they’d never drive a car because it’s so hard to park there. We would go down to Patterson to the Susquehanna Railroad. And we would take that train into Grand Central Station, and we’d walk from there to the theater. And then there was a restaurant, and I don’t remember the name of it, but we always went there for lunch. And I remember very clearly the Rockets dancing. And so my dad was hospitalized with some kind of a, an injury and he was hobbling, but he took me to New York to see a show.
And on the way home, there was some kind of a weather disaster. And we couldn’t, when you got off the train in Patterson, you had to take the bus up the hill to Hale and Avenue and 8th Street. And there was no bus running. And my father was hobbling. And I remember painfully walking up that hill. And when we got to the top of the hill, There was a woman whose car was stuck in our front yard.
And my dad, even after a day in, in New York on a bad leg and having to climb the hill in a terrible weather condition, helping her move her car out to the street. So I remember that occasion very clear. Now, by then I must have been a fifth grader, maybe.
Jonathan: And that I’m going to interrupt you just briefly on that specific adventure as a fifth grader, where your siblings in tow with you or was your mom with you? I was the only one. Well, that was the only one that went. That must have been kind of a special experience.
Laura: I don’t know why I was the only one that went, I guess. I don’t think that the younger kids understood some of the shows.
Jonathan: Well, they want a special thing to do to share with your dad, though, that that’s kind of a neat little vignette into the kind of interactions you have. That’s that’s special, Mom.
Laura: Yeah. You know, and you’ve got to realize that dad and I years for years, even when we were at the college, he would not and I would go to church together because I played and he preached many times. The rest of the family didn’t go. And if they did, my mom would sit two rows from the back, always in the same row with the kids, and she would always walk out while they were singing the last hymn. My mother was very shy, and she never shook hands with people. And whenever I played for a wedding, even though both of them were invited, my dad and I were the only ones that ever went. My mom never went to any special occasions that my father was in charge of. And she was very shy with people.
Jonathan: Yeah. I had that sense of her a little bit more introspective and introverted. So. Well, I’ve got a whole bunch of other questions I have for you that I’d like to cover in another call about your family members.
Laura: Go ahead. I want to expand something. There is a reason, looking back, why my mom was the way she was.
When she was in college, she was one of the wealthy girls. She was a Gazan. She had a car. And she played jazz by ear, honky tonk piano. She was so popular at parties. She would always be invited so that she’d play the piano. So that mother is totally different than the mother I remember. And this is because she left college And her mother died. And she was, wait a minute, her mother didn’t die then. She was hired to teach a school of all six grades.
And I think it was in the area of Byron Center. And she taught one year, and they dismissed her. The fact that she failed as a teacher, she could not face the Gazan family. So Uncle Ben and his wife took my mother to Florida.
Jonathan: Uncle Ben being Ben Gazan?
Laura: Gazan, Ben Gazan. And when she got to Florida, that’s when she started working for the government. She never taught again like that.
So,
understanding that that was the trauma in her life that totally changed her personality from being the party girl who was driving a car and invited to all the parties to suddenly not wanting to be in public with people. She felt like a failure. And then the Gazan family, they knew the story of her dismissal. And that’s why Ben tried to save her from living even in that community.
Jonathan: I had never heard of that before.
What a challenge to, I mean, that’s a high bar to clear, teaching six different grade levels is your first teaching assignment.
Laura: Although that was common in those days.
Jonathan: Okay.
Laura: Yeah. But understanding that that was the change, the total change in my mother’s personality. And from then on, for her to be a minister’s wife was a role that was not comfortable for her.
Jonathan: Okay. I had never heard that before. That’s insightful to understand about your mom. All right. I’ve got one last question for you today, and then we’ll pick this up next week. But when you look at your baby pictures, mom, whose family member do you think you most resembled?
Laura: Oh, I can’t answer that.
Jonathan: Then let me ask you.
Laura: OK, go ahead. I have bright blue eyes, which my dad had. OK. And I always considered myself to be Dutch heritage.
Jonathan: Yeah. Appearances aside, in demeanor, Do you have a similar demeanor to either of your parents or other relatives in your immediate family?
Laura: To my dad.
Jonathan: OK. What qualities would you say you have in common?
Laura: Comfortable talking to people. Easily speaking in public.
very social in party settings or just even at church.
Jonathan: Very good.
Is there something that along the lines that we’ve talked about, knowing that we’re gonna have many other opportunities to go and explore other topics, but is there something that we talked about today that you have other things you’d like to share?
Laura: No, I don’t think so, except that I didn’t expect, we didn’t concentrate on early years. We expanded it way up to almost a junior high today.
Jonathan: Right, right. Well, in a future call, maybe we can explore those years in more depth.
Laura: Yeah, but now when you start to ask me questions, it makes me realize how unclear I am about a lot of the things in my childhood.
I can’t picture in my mind places, furniture, people. It’s hard for me. It’s very vague.
Jonathan: Yeah. Well, I think that’s by nature, by experience. That was a couple of years ago.
Laura: Well, anyway, I’ll look forward to doing this again.
Jonathan: Good. All right. Hold. Then I’m going to stop the recording here. Hold on just a second. Let me make sure we do this correctly.