8 - RCB and Wedding
Jonathan: Well, it is June 14 and talking with Laura Bartleson again. Laura, mom, how are you? I’m all right, just old. Okay. Well, Saturday afternoon and nice to be talking with you. Let me toggle this tile. All right. So, Mom, last time we talked, we talked a lot about your first year in college and dating life with Bob. And we’re going to talk a little bit more about that today, if that works.
Laura: Let’s start by saying this. He did not have his own car, neither did I. He was in Holland and I was in Grand Rapids. So dating was very seldom. And communication was by phone. I think I did write a few notes, but I’ve never seen them. I don’t remember his writing me back and I have never found any, but our romance was a distant one that started the summer before he went to college and I went to college. That’s when it became very serious, but we were not engaged yet. Yeah.
Jonathan: So that was, you were both anticipating going off to college. You both graduated from high school. Yes. And he would come to Galewood. He would somehow figure out a way to get to Galewood and you would do things together at the, at Agnes’s or.
Laura: Well, he, when, when we were both still in Grand Rapids, he was allowed to use the family car. It was not his car, but he would pick me up with a car in a car. But I don’t remember going to movies. I don’t remember going to sporting events.
That’s a big zero. And yet I know we dated and I’m not remembering what it is that we did.
Jonathan: Did Bob make you laugh?
Laura: I suppose he did, but I don’t remember how.
Jonathan: I mean, would you have What kinds of things would you talk about? What was the nature of your time spent together?
Laura: Well, because he was thinking about being a minister, I’m sure we talked about things I had observed as my dad being a minister and what that life was like. And when I was dating him, I was anticipating that that was going to be our life. He was, I thought he was dead serious about being a minister. I had no idea that he absolutely did not apply his studies ever. And how he graduated from high school, I do not know. I’ve never saw his report cards, but I know he graduated. But from the time he went to college and I went to college, he partially attended. His attendance record at Hope was poor. And when it came time for tests, I don’t know in that first semester whether he achieved any credits at all. I received a semester of credits because I was taking a full load minus the French. And in those days, Any college course required a couple years of another language. So when I ended up finally going back to finish college, that’s where I had to start. But everything else in my record at that first year, I got A’s and B’s. And I was totally unaware of Bob’s record at Hope. I knew and I was proud of the fact that he was president of his class, that he was president of Christian Endeavor. All of this tells you there was an enigma about him that was charming and he could sell himself well. He sold himself to me, but to large groups, a freshman class at Hope or a Christian Endeavor group of youths from all of the Kent County churches. So you see, he had a following. And when he spoke publicly, he was very good. And he was also very good at covering up what really was going on. When I married him, I simply had no idea that he had not finished his courses at Hope or that he abandoned being a pastor.
So when we lived in that trailer, we had that first baby right away.
Jonathan: Now, hold on a second. I want to ask you because a lot has happened between Hope College and trailer and baby. So at some point, Did Bob come over and have dinner with Agnes and Gazon and you? Do you recall that happening?
Laura: Oh, I’m sure he did. I’m sure he did. And also, we saw Dick and Pauline quite often. And it was with the plans of Dick’s building us a house someday. And Pauline loved Bob. She really admired him. And I think that that was the power behind Dick’s wanting to help us. So our relationship with Dick and Pauline was much stronger than with either my parents or my grandparents.
Jonathan: And your grandparents being Ann Agnes and Grandmama Zahn, okay. Yeah. That’s interesting. So, and I’ve met Dick and Pauline at some point, but I wouldn’t be able to pick them out of the lineup. They were near, physically near where you were in Galewood, or how was that?
Laura: Yes, they lived in Grand Rapids and Dick was a home builder. And he was very close. Of all of the siblings in the Jansma family, my dad and Dick were the closest, although dad and Jack were also close too.
I think that it was probably regular that Bob went to a homemaker’s church with his parents in the morning and went to A3 formed in the evening.
Jonathan: And 834 is where you were still playing Oregon. Yes. Your dad was no longer a pastor there, at least. Yes.
Laura: Dad was a pastor there. OK. Dad was a pastor there.
Jonathan: Yeah. And help me understand, Dick and Pauline are a couple of years older than you and Bob?
Laura: Well, they are uncle and aunt. They’re younger than my father.
Jonathan: Yeah. OK.
Laura: but not nearly the age that Bob and I are.
Jonathan: They were 15 years older than you, maybe.
Laura: Certainly.
Jonathan: Okay.
Laura: Okay.
Jonathan: Good. That’s helpful. At some point we should talk about your memories of the extended Jansma family, because we haven’t really ventured into that at all, but maybe that will serve you up for a future call, but tell me.
Laura: I hardly knew the Jansmas. My dad went to see his parents particularly regularly, but not always did he take us. And that was when none of his siblings would be living home anymore. And I don’t think he had a relationship very much with Sid or with the women, Catherine.
I remember he had a sister, and I can’t even think of her name, who was very poor. She was the one who came to the States already pregnant and never was very wealthy, always a needy mother of a large family. And every once in a while, my dad would take me to visit them, particularly her and her husband. I hardly knew even the names of all of the children that she had. But they lived in a rural area, maybe Byron Center or something like that going west. And so my dad kept in touch with her sort of out of sympathy, I think. And he was a very close touch with Jack. And Jack was building houses on Clyde Park very close to where our house was. So dad would go and see him on the job quite often.
Jonathan: Jack being, Jack being grandpa’s brother?
Laura: Jack was, was grandpa’s brother. And he was the one who had saved grandpa’s life when they lived in Holland and grandpa fell into the channel.
Jonathan: Okay.
Laura: So they were always close and they were very close in age too. So Jack, Ted and Dick were the youngest boys of a sibling group that was nine, I think.
I don’t even remember the number of brothers and sisters together.
Jonathan: All right, so I’m gonna pivot a little bit to you Do you recall having double dates or introducing Bob to your friends?
Laura: I don’t remember ever a double date.
I think that my girlfriends were in admiration that I had linked up with this leader
who was going to college, a different college, and who had seemed to have a reputation as being in having power in wherever he lived with the groups he entertained or socialized with. And so they knew that about him, but I never double dated with them or their boyfriends. And all of their boyfriends were classmates of mine. So I was the only one who was dating someone that none of us had gone to school with.
Jonathan: I was going to ask you, Calvin, was it just an easy choice for you or was it the school that you knew all through high school you wanted to go to? How was that you decided to go there?
Laura: I don’t think it was even a decision. I think it was a silent assumption. that it was the closest college. It was the college that both my parents went to. It was the college that I got a sort of a break being Christian Reformed. And there was some kind of a membership.
I don’t want to call it a scholarship. but it was a number that was automatically deducted from my total tuition bill because of either my parents’ history or some support that our family connected Calvin and us together with. At any rate, for Calvin, I don’t remember a huge debt in the way of tuition. I don’t even remember paying it, but I’m sure there was. And all of my girlfriends ended up going there. I had nobody that I can remember who went somewhere else, although two of the girls started at Calvin. with only one year before they went into nursing.
Jonathan: Which would be at a different school?
Laura: No, that would be attached to a hospital after the first year of science required courses. OK. And so after that first year, I would not have been going to school with any of my friends anymore. But it was at that point when I was I don’t remember how many months I worked for AT&T. When I stopped going to college, it was with the intent that someday I’d go back, but that I needed money for the wedding and for my plans. And I, because of the failure in French, I really wasn’t comfortable going back at that point. And so I went to work I looked for a job and ended up on the telephone for AT&T for a very short amount of time before a job opened up at Walker Christian School. So I was probably 18 years old when I began teaching mid-year after probably at the most seven months employed by AT&T. I began teaching at Walker. Now I was not married yet when I started teaching.
And I remember talking about my plans, wedding plans in the teacher’s lounge at Walker.
And the principal there really liked me. And so he gave me favors in different ways.
So when I was married, I was a teacher. We were living in a trailer in Granville. And Bob was not in college. He was working for a grocery store.
Jonathan: Yeah, yeah. So you were at Calvin. He was at Hope for a while. At a certain point you, the two, you decided you were going to get married and you would have phoned your parents who were in New Jersey or was that a conversation you had in person to share the news?
Laura: I’m sure both ways. I wrote to them regularly and I’m sure that I spoke with them too. And I think that when they went to New Jersey, they knew that I was dead serious about Bob.
Jonathan: Yeah, okay. Huh. Well, there are other things that we haven’t talked about during this period that seem important?
Laura: I was invited to Bob’s family Sunday meals. And there was an attempt then for me to attach myself to his two sisters.
Jonathan: And when you say there was an effort, who instigated that?
Laura: Well, I intended, when I went there to have dinner, I intended to count them as friends.
However, Judy was always at arm’s length. And Laura Lee was apologetic and very shy. And she showed a friendship and a welcome that Judy never did.
So Laura, I felt admiration from her.
I felt competition and criticism from Judy, not always mentioned, but it just seemed like there was an attitude there where she questioned who I was and what I was doing.
And any meals that I would have there, always his mother would reach out to me. I think she was very happy that we were planning to get married. Whereas his dad was at arm’s length, never showed love or interest or admiration of any kind.
And his mother was the opposite.
Jonathan: Yeah. I can reflect on that and know the people that they were. The aloofness that Corny had, I can imagine that was, Yeah, you were not the only recipient of that sort of attachment or emotion.
Laura: But that was a very negative influence on Bob as a person growing up being a dad.
And the fact that he attached himself so strongly to my dad and that my dad encouraged it, was trying to fill an emptiness that Bob had from the start. So he had a sister who was in his camp, but very not vocal at all, shy and vocal. Laura was just kind of within herself. A mom who encouraged him, she did in many ways. and another sister who was an enemy, and a father who just was aloof.
So I think Bob, he didn’t have much occasion, but I think he had a desire to connect with my brothers and my sister Connie.
Jonathan: Who were by this time in New Jersey hundreds of miles away.
Laura: No, but in our dating year, high school and our high school senior year, this would be when he would be encountering them regularly.
Jonathan: But not coming over for Sunday dinners. We talked about that last time. What occasions do they have to interact?
Laura: He would just come over to pick me up and sit and talk with everybody.
Jonathan: Yeah. What was your brother’s opinion of Bob?
Laura: I never could tell. I didn’t know.
Jonathan: I mean, it’s fascinating to hear these early memories about this. And I don’t really mean for this process to to emphasize, Bob, this is about you, Mom, but it is definitely a big part of. your life and our family’s life. And there are a lot of mysteries. There’s a lot of unknowns for children about dad. And so if you know or appear to reflect at some point about his family interactions, I think that, you know, I think the relationship with his dad is really important.
Laura: I think that going after I was removed from the whole mess, Looking back, I realized when we were living on Dunham and I kept getting pregnant, we had sex all the time, never with protection. And when we were living there and Bob had already begun, he used my salary to buy the gesture writers were the machine that he did typesetting. And so this was already in place when one day his father came to me and said, is someone here to take care of the kids? I’d like to take you shopping. And I was shocked. I mean, this is a man who didn’t shop it himself. He wanted to he wanted to buy me something. So he took me down to Würzburg and bought me snow boots.
And I think that was at that point, I realized that this was a damaged man. He had a very sad history in his own growing up years where his mother snuck him away. He left unannounced to the horror of his dad. and never fulfilled the hope that his father had for him. And so that relationship was very, very broken.
And then seeing the lack of any endearment between Bob and his father, it was sad because it was sort of a repetition. And then when he took me shopping like that, I thought, Here’s a man who really might be trying. He totally surprised me that he took me and bought me something.
Jonathan: Yeah. Out of the blue.
Laura: Yeah. Yeah. But that’s the only thing I ever remember where his father reached out to me. And it was so unusual just out of the blue that it was unexpected. It was kind. It was something I needed badly. And he observed that financially we were struggling. And so he bought something that he could see I needed.
Jonathan: That’s nice.
Laura: Yeah.
Jonathan: That’s a nice memory.
Laura: Yeah.
But as far as double dating, it didn’t happen. As far as meetings with my girlfriends involved. That didn’t happen.
And whatever connections he had at Hope College, I never knew.
Jonathan: Yeah. That was a long ways away. You don’t have a car. You never really had a chance to go on Hope campus that first year, or did you find some reason to totally afford land?
Laura: I don’t remember. what the campus even looked like. I remember a street where he lived in an apartment was across the street from a city park. And that’s the only thing I remember.
Jonathan: So you were able to go visit him at some point, is that?
Laura: Yeah, whether he took me there, I don’t know how I got there.
Jonathan: Okay. Okay. Would this be a good place to pause our conversation?
Laura: Well, where are we heading after this? College days are over. And we’re planning a wedding. And I’m teaching and he is working.
And the baby is on the way.
Jonathan: Yeah. Yeah. That would be a great place for us to pick up in our next call.
Laura: OK. Yeah.
Jonathan: OK. Let me ask you one question. Because the dynamic with his family is interesting. Laura Lee was a good eight or nine years younger than even Judy, right? I mean, there’s a pretty.
Laura: All right. Well. Not that long, but substantial four or five.
Jonathan: Yeah. So when you were having meals over there, she was in like middle school or just started high school, right?
Laura: Yes. Yes. And no, no, she was well into high school because this is a clear memory in my, in my mind having dinner there. Um, it’s a Friday and there’s a basketball game. And Judy says in front of the whole family, so Laura, who’s taking you to the basketball game? Knowing that Laura didn’t date at all in high school, not at all. And when she started dating, she was in her 30s. She got married. Her wedding was such a blessing to her life. but it didn’t come until mid-life, almost her 40s.
Jonathan: Mid-30s, yeah, mid-late 30s.
Laura: Yeah. So my connection with the family was close with mom and pretty close with Laura.
Jonathan: Yeah. That’s good. Mom, I’m going to stop recording here, OK? Yep.