16 - Jansma Family Reflections
Jonathan: All right. I think we’re going here. Good morning, mom. It’s December 13, 2025. How are you?
Laura: I’m old. OK. Still a little in my own house, which that’s a blessing.
Jonathan: Good stuff. Good stuff. Well, yeah, it’s a cold winter morning down here in Georgia, but I bet it’s colder up there. Got a busy week going to see a play this afternoon.
Laura: What’s that about? It’s the book by Louisa May Alcott, Little Women. It’s a story of women living during the Civil War.
Jonathan: And where is the venue? Who are you going with?
Laura: I have I have membership at Master Arts Theatre, which is a small theater that is all local people are in it. It’s always amazing because their shows are as professional as any big theater in a big city, and particularly their musicals. Now, when you consider that, everybody in the show has a job during the day, and does all the rehearsals to get ready and then does three weeks of shows, including matinees on Saturday. And we always do the Saturday matinees. It’s just incredible that such a small organization puts out such marvelous shows. We always love going.
Jonathan: So they’ll do shows on the weekend, but are there performances during the week too?
Laura: Yes, every night of the week.
Jonathan: Wow, that’s a commitment for those part-time people.
Laura: Oh, they’re wonderful. Yeah.
Jonathan: Good. If you hear a background, a noise in the background of a dog barking, that would be Copper. I’ll just apologize beforehand. They’re downstairs and waiting on Leah, who just got back from semester in college to wake up and let the dogs out. So I’ll just try to stay out of that. But today we’ve got a list of questions that I sent you earlier for you to ruminate about, but the general topics are losses, that you’ve experienced in your life and good and bad behaviors. So this is your opportunity to just to tell all, right? Like the Enquirer magazine sort of thing.
Or not. Okay. Well, so first question for you.
Did you experience, like when you were growing up, observing somebody with a terminal illness during your childhood or somebody that went through a significant challenge like that? And what do you remember about it?
Laura: I don’t remember any when I was young, but since I lived in Grand Rapids, I have sat at the bed of two different people and held their hands as they died. One was a cousin, Mary. And the other was my mother-in-law who I dearly loved.
Jonathan: That would be Ida, Ida Bartleson, the letter person you mentioned.
Laura: Yes. And I had been with her for about an hour and I was holding her hand and I was saying Psalm 23 to her when she stopped breathing.
Jonathan: I’m sure that meant a lot to her to have you by her side. When that happened, mom, that’s a.
Laura: Well, in spite of a divorce, she was always my mother-in-law and such a sweet, sweet lady, but she was, it had a hard time being a grandma because grandpa kept her busy. She was typing for him day and night. And so she could not invite the kids over to stay overnight or we would have maybe holiday meals with them. But her time to socialize and be a grandma was very limited.
Jonathan: I have good memories of her, just a boy she donated on us, grandkids and special Sunday meals there were always a treat and a production that was just, yeah, I remember her gravy for some reason, her mashed potatoes and gravy were, yeah, wonderful.
Nice lady. All right, so next question. As an adult, what have some of the most challenging losses been for you? And have they changed the way you live today?
Laura: Well, of course, losing my parents.
I was sitting at my dad’s bedside many, many hours. But the day that he really was starting to fail, we had a bad snowstorm and I could not leave. And my brother Ted was with him when he died. But I remember the visits with him. He was so peaceful and still had humor. And when he was laying there, I didn’t sense that he was suffering, but he had a long history of heart, including heart surgeries, and at the Cleveland Clinic. I was with him when he went down to the Cleveland Clinic. I stayed down there for a couple nights. So I kind of lived through his more dangerous last days.
I guess that losing my mother, my mother was always, always quiet.
She was very shy and I think we talked about this before that the Ruth Gazan of her college days totally changed after she was fired from her teaching job after one year and she left Grand Rapids because she really couldn’t face the Gazans and her history. So when she was in Florida with Uncle Ben and Aunt Jean, I had regular letters that I mailed and she mailed back. And when she moved to Washington and took a government job, she was She had won a state contest in speed and typing and shorthand. So being an employee of the government, she was valuable. Oh dear. Hold on.
Hello, Sandy.
Jonathan: I’m gonna grab some coffee quick.
Laura: Oh, of course. I am on an interview with my son, Jody, right now. But when are you coming?
Well, later. Yeah, 45 minutes or so. OK, that’s better. All right, thank you. Bye.
That was that was Sandy, my wonderful helper. She she’s coming with her granddaughter because her granddaughter made me Christmas cookies. So she wanted to drop them off, but she’s going to come in an hour.
Jonathan: That’s great. How thoughtful. OK, we’re talking about your mom.
Laura: And she was very quiet about her opinions and about her feelings and about her emotions. I think that her whole life changed because of her failure to be a teacher. But she became a valuable government employee and made a decent living and then she moved to Washington to work for the government. When she was mom to us, She had rules, structure about who had which jobs and what the consequence was if you were disobedient.
It was usually not a physical punishment but a chore, some job that she would add to our regular jobs. And if she reported it to dad, when we were young, I remember being spanked by my dad with his hand. Not hard, but he would only do that on the basis of mom’s reports of something we failed to do or did that was bad. And I think that what that amounted to in most cases was our arguing between us kids. We’d have fights and it wouldn’t get physical, but it would be very vocal.
Jonathan: Okay. And we’re going to talk about some of those things. And I think in a minute in the second, second part of this call, but so with your mom though, it’s fascinating to hear about her. You say she would rather than thank you or something, she would give you a job. And I just, I have to ask, did she ever use the phrase two jobs for a half job? Or is that something you initiated?
Laura: No, it’s not from her.
Jonathan: Okay. Just on a, on a, on a whim had to ask, but the idea was the same. Okay. This was the same.
Laura: Yeah. Um, I, now I, if I, when I look back, I hadn’t so many long drives back and forth from grand Haven with, with dad. So I had. unlimited chances to talk with him, but I didn’t with my mother. When I look back, I wish if there’s anything I would like, it would be to just have two days with my mom where I could show her and tell her that I loved her more. I don’t remember doing that often when we were growing up. And I think that being as isolated as she was, she needed that. I was so involved in my father’s church. I really was taking her place. If there was a wedding, they would always invite the minister and his wife after the wedding. Well, if I played for the wedding, dad and I would go to the reception. Mother never went. The role that I played was sort of a substitute for her in many ways.
People accepted the fact that she just didn’t come to things.
But that was such a different Ruth than her college days. She was the only one of her friends that had a car. The Ghazan family was wealthy and she played honky-tonk piano like nobody’s business always by ear. So she was invited to every party and she had a very active dating and social life in her college years. It was the year after college that changed her completely.
Jonathan: It’s fascinating to think of you that you mentioned a two day opportunity to talk to her again. My recollection of her is just she was very quiet. She was kind of hard to to connect with. I mean, as a young kid, particularly, probably what what kind of leading questions do you think you would ask her to get a conversation like a deep conversation started with her?
Laura: I would start with an apology. That I spent so much time with dad that I never talked heart to heart with her often enough. There was probably a lot of times in her life where I should have inquired about how she was feeling, or whether she was sad, just asking her, Mom, are you OK? You’re still quiet. Or inquiring about her job. Um, because that was the one thing she was a librarian in a high school and that valuable to the school. And I think that it would have given her pleasure to talk about that, about how her job at the school is valued. And so is she I don’t ever remember her having occasion to really talk very much about what she did and who she liked there. I’m sure that even at a job, she was at arm’s length, just like she was at church.
Mom was shy and withdrawn.
Jonathan: So you think of Ted, your dad, He surely was a nurturing person and would inquire about her day. And there was that going on for your mom, right? Like he was, that was the kind of person he was, right? He took good care of her. So she had that outlet, right? Yes. Yes.
Laura: Yeah.
Jonathan: It’s just a different side of your mom, like a more compassionate side that you’re getting at, Mom.
My memories of her are very, very old. But I don’t remember her as being very warm to us. But it was just her shyness that was kind of taking control or something. Is that how you think of it?
Laura: I think my mother was at arm’s length with almost every human being in her life.
Jonathan: Well, two days to spend with her. What other things do you think you would want to talk about?
Do you feel like your mom recognized the big accomplishments in your life? Is that something you would want to talk to her about too?
Laura: I would thank her for her letters of praise when I was teaching and Her letters were always affirming. I think I maybe still have some of them.
Jonathan: Yeah. She empowered you. She encouraged you at critical times, I think is what you’re saying.
Laura: Yes, yes.
Jonathan: Tell me again, you talked about the letters you got from her. During your life, what periods of time would you be receiving letters from your mom?
Laura: Holidays and surely after the birth of any of my children and whenever they came to Michigan, a letter before saying what she hoped we would be able to do and a letter afterwards thanking for hospitality or whatever. She was always taught, she was very close to her mother, but she was always taught there was a proper way to respond to kindness of people. And so she would write a letter um, maybe telling me something that she enjoyed that she saw one of the kids do. Um, but she didn’t write that often, but I knew after she came to visit, I’d always hear from her and holidays. I’d always hear from her. And the other thing is as she sent Connie and Ted to Calvin, she would write me and ask, um,
how they were, how often I saw them, what I saw them doing. She was trying to kind of get a scope of her kids that were not living home anymore.
Jonathan: Sure. You were her eyes and ears on the ground kind of thing. Yeah.
Jonathan: So she, I believe the things you talk about like her shorthand skills, did she have a distinctive handwriting or did she use a stationary? What do you think about those letters?
Laura: What do you remember? It was handwritten.
Yeah. They were handwritten.
Jonathan: Did she have very deliberate penmanship or were there things distinctive about her letters that you remember?
Laura: No. Okay.
Jonathan: Boy, to be able to encounter those, again, would be a real treat, I would think, for anybody in our family, for you for sure.
So any other things that, like if you had this window of time, where would your conversations range to, do you think?
Laura: I can’t think of.
Jonathan: Yeah, sure.
All right.
I think you want to move to the next big topic, which is good and bad behaviors. Yes. Okay. So I’m going to share with you because maybe it’s a segue for bad behaviors and your mom, but I remember going out to their cottage one summer. I think we spent a week there, Bob and I, and We didn’t know any better, but we got in big trouble from her because we were on the deck and we were pushing the little knot holes in the lumber of the deck. You know how it has some imperfections? We were finding them in the deck and we were trying to push them out. Your mom, grandma really got on us about that. So I’m wondering, so this anyway, this little sidebar for you. What is the question to you is what’s the worst thing you did as a child or a teenager and do you regret it?
Laura: Well.
As a child, I can’t remember.
But.
When I was 18 years old, I made the biggest mistake.
Um,
I had been an A and B student all the way through school.
So Bob was at Hope and I was at Calvin. And I was so in love. I would write to him, call him. I was so enveloped in Bob, I flunked French.
Now, if I could have waited a few years, not married so young,
I think that maybe Bob would have been more successful. He was president of his freshman class at Hope. He was very popular, but he never finished any of his classes. He never ever got credit for the first year at Hope and he dropped out and ended up working at Eberhard’s grocery store and we bought a trailer.
Jonathan: And we have talked about some of this before that.
Laura: I was 19 years old. So it was far too young. And I was too enveloped to finish my education. I was must have been a big concern of my parents, although they did not try to squelch it. But right during that time, dad accepted a call to New Jersey. So the six months Prior to my wedding, I lived with an innocent grandpa.
Looking back, I don’t remember my parents ever responding negatively to the news that I failed French, but I think that I was ashamed. the, in the coming years went back to college because I, they expected me to get a college education just like my siblings. And the first thing I had to do was undo that terrible wrong. So I took French French at junior college at night for two years. And I finished the, in those, in those days, There was a requirement of two years of some language. So I got that under my belt before I went on to graduate from Calvin and go on for my master’s degree. But the fact that I had failed the subject, I don’t remember my parents ever talking with me about it. I think that it was a sore topic of conversation and it was something that never happened to any of my other siblings and it happened at a time when I was so in love that I wasn’t sensible about many things.
Jonathan: Yeah and I may have not understood this when you first explained it to me but You there was a very well established expectation by your parents about grades and performance academically. Is that?
Laura: Absolutely. And I don’t remember when the news came to them. I don’t remember any negative challenges on their part to me. I think that they accept. Well, for one thing, They didn’t realize that Bob wasn’t serious about going to college. And my dad had developed a strong relationship with Bob too. So the fact that we were planning a marriage, a wedding, and that I went to work because I had failed a course in college, What was crazy is that summer I started to work at AT&T.
And then in the fall, a teacher at Walker.
Jonathan: Mom, I’m going to interrupt you a second, because we’ve talked about this one before.
Laura: But just a minute. So that changed our whole um, dialogue between us because you didn’t talk about my failing a subject. We talked about my teaching and they were surprised and they were proud. So I never remember any discussion about why I failed French with my mom or my dad. I know they were very disappointed in me. But I don’t ever remember them confronting me about it. And that’s why I look back on that and think that was a serious mistake on my part. That would be on my record that I flunked a college course.
Jonathan: You know, sometimes we absent those explicit conversations. We in our heads think our parents are more concerned about it than they actually are. Do you think there’s a possibility that they they weren’t they weren’t overly concerned about how you did in a French class? Well, it was more in your in your head that that you were embarrassed and you had let them down. But maybe they weren’t that upset about it.
Laura: But that may be true, but you also have to remember they were in New Jersey and I was in Grand Rapids. So the the opportunity to discuss it didn’t come up. No.
Jonathan: And go ahead.
Laura: But when you ask me about the biggest mistake that I made, that’s it.
Jonathan: So this may not go anywhere. But do you think that your French class and your mom’s first and only teaching assignment, are there very many parallels there? And is that ever something you reflected about? Is it obviously a critical moment in your mom’s life? And it sounds like an important one in yours.
Laura: Well, To go to work at AT&T and not continue in college and know that Bob had no college under his credit and he was working at a job that sure was not going to lead to his being a minister someday, our whole life perspective changed for both of us. And the only thing we could think of was getting married and living in a trailer and paying off the trailer. Then the fact that the job opening came after I was hired by the telephone company and after Bob was working at Everhearts was a big jump in my feeling of success.
Jonathan: that you had dignity, there was pride and absolutely, I could see that.
So yeah, I would just say to you, like our kids, our daughters, girls just turned 21 and these are all experiences that happened now before you were 20 even or 19 or 20 years of age. Am I thinking about the timeline correctly? 19 and and your parents your dad and mom relocated to the other side of the country when you were still in high school and there was no video streaming service like we’re using right now back then there was no email you probably were very phone calls were probably pretty expensive too right yeah that that Go ahead.
Laura: We didn’t follow much at all. It was by letters, by mail. That’s how we communicated.
Jonathan: Yeah. I’m just kind of stitching together that at a very important point in your life, you got, you were let out, right? Like, and Agnes and Mr. Guzzon were there to some extent, but the people you really confided in and trusted up to that point in your life were kind of gone.
Laura: Yeah.
Jonathan: Do you ever sit back and wonder what would have been different if your parents had not, if your dad had not accepted that position and had been in West Michigan during that part of your life?
Laura: No, I’ve never thought about it.
Jonathan: And the other question I have is you talked about this earlier that it was a rare thing for your parents to invite people into their home for meals and that sort of thing. And you don’t have a recollection of Bob coming over for dinner even when you were dating. Is that, am I remembering that correctly?
Laura: Yes, that’s correct.
Jonathan: Okay. So yeah.
Laura: I remember at some point that my parents invited Bob’s parents over and it wasn’t a meal. It was a visit and snacks or whatever. I do remember that happening and it was because I became engaged.
Jonathan: Yeah.
That’s different. I’m just sharing with you like. Yeah, okay. It’s helpful to understand that that that time of your life mom that You are very independent at an early age. You were forced to be.
Laura: That’s right. All right, let’s go.
Jonathan: I’ve got to be off in another 10 or 15. Okay. All right. Well, there’s other topics to cover then. Have you ever been tempted to cheat? These are some funny questions in here. And if you, what stopped you or did you do it?
Laura: I don’t recall cheating.
I don’t ever recall recall cheating.
Jonathan: Okay, well, that doesn’t surprise me. Next question. Was there a good child in your family?
Laura: Um, I never I don’t think I ever felt that there were that they played favorites.
I think that they They regarded each of us as good as children they’re happy they had.
My brothers were good athletes and my parents were proud of that and they went to a lot of their games. That was a case of enjoying performance of their sons. I had a couple of piano recitals and that would be an occasion for them to also enjoy the performance of me.
Connie, well, I don’t remember her even taking music lessons.
But she was always beautiful, and I think that my parents were proud of that.
She was queen at high school and queen in college.
I know that when they sent her off to Calvin, my mom was quite emotional about that. See, they didn’t have to send me off to college. They left when I was in, you know. And so college was still a wonderful memory for my mom, and the fact that Connie was going to be so far away going to college, I think was hard for my mom to stomach at first.
Not the boys, because they were expected that the athletic part of both boys was going to happen again.
Jonathan: Connie is trying to think of birth order. Connie is right after you and then Ted, or is it you, Ted, Connie?
Laura: Me, Connie, then the two boys. Paul was the youngest.
Jonathan: That’s interesting. Well, so I’m going to shift topics a little bit on you and back to your parents and kind of the home environment there. Thinking of your parents’ moral code there, what was the worst type of offense in their eyes? Like, what would be of greatest concern to them?
Laura: telling a lie.
Jonathan: Why do you say that?
Laura: Um, I just think that there was never an occasion for them to deal with me or any of my siblings hitting or hurting each other or the kind of physical fighting.
So I just, I can’t recall.
Jonathan: Sure. But there was a very clear expectation. You needed to be candid. You need to be forthright, tell the truth at all times.
Laura: Yes.
Jonathan: Yes. Did you ever, maybe a non-issue, you may not remember, but do you ever remember being a lie or a white lie or something like that?
Laura: I’m sure there were things like why I was late or I don’t remember monumental issues or a single occasion where
I was offensive to the point of breaking the rules in the house.
The only thing was, I think, arguing with my sister. We shared the same room, and I would leave before she left. And so when I was gone, she would get into my clothing, and that made me so angry. Because when I came home from school, and she came home, then I’d see. what she had taken that day. But it would happen only because I would leave first. I would take a bus to Christian high and dad would take the kids to Seymour. Um, so I had, I had serious differences with my sister growing up. I think I felt the competition with her. But I don’t remember details of it all.
Jonathan: But it never came to you throwing coffee mugs at each other, I guess.
Laura: No.
Jonathan: Good. Your home environment and the way you think of it and describe it sounds very structured and peaceful.
Laura: And yeah, that’s good. You’re right.
Jonathan: All right. We’ve got a couple more questions for you. But we’re shifting the topic a little bit. Pranks, practical jokes, and bullying. Have you ever been on the receiving end of something like that? Any thoughts?
Laura: Well, I’ve told you about my room mother’s of pulling a prank on me at Seymour, didn’t I? I was always pulling pranks on the kids, on my class.
Just silly things.
Well, it was my birthday, and I were roller skates the whole day to teach. And Dan Day was the principal. And my teachers all remember that day that I spent the whole day teaching on roller skates to prove that I was still young. So while I was in the teacher’s lounge at lunchtime or at recess time in the morning, and they always would have a birthday celebration. So I would bring snacks. And while that was going on, My room others went into my classroom and went into my person, took my keys and they duplicated the keys exactly like they looked and they put my keys back. So at the end of the, that was a very long recess that day. At the end of the recess, when I went to pick up my children who always had to stand in line at the door to be let in, Lo and behold, there was my own car in the middle of the playground covered. It was full of balloons. You couldn’t open the door without the balloons running out. And my room mother was standing right along the car with a set of keys that looked like mine. They were ones that she had made and they were on a balloon. And as I opened the door and said, how did that happen? Look, look, surprise. She let the keys go. And I thought, how am I ever going to get home now? So they really got me back for all the pranks I had pulled on the kids.
Jonathan: That’s evil. Who is the mother? Do you remember the name of that?
Laura: I don’t remember. But at any rate, that was a birthday I’ll not forget. And I think that the teachers knew what was going on the whole time because they had to have given, first of all, it took time to duplicate those keys and time to get the balloons and move the car. And ordinarily there would be a 20 minute recess. And I think that it was an extra long recess to accommodate the mothers.
Jonathan: That’s fun. What a, what a great, what a great prank.
Laura: Yeah. But anyway, then I pulled the prank when Mimi was teaching in Oregon.
Um, we had this all planned. She was in the middle of teaching a class and I knock on the door and I say, I’m from the health department. You just go ahead. I’m going to just do my survey. So I got this pen and tablet and I’m walking around the room and I’m saying, oh yeah, there’s one of the problems. Look at that window. I’m talking out loud while she’s trying to teach. Then I stopped this kid and say, can I have your pencil please? And I’m just being a nuisance in the classroom.
So finally, Mimi sends one of the kids to the principal to say, there’s somebody’s in my room and I don’t think they belong here. So while they’re gone, let’s see. I submit a report about the reason for the contagious diseases that are in this classroom, and I sign my name.
Jonathan: Mrs. Bartles. You’re vocalizing this so the students can hear.
Laura: No. Meanwhile, while Mimi had sent somebody to the office, she said, kids, I need to I need to report this accurately. What just happened? Would you all just write down what you saw, what you heard anybody say? So the kids are all busy writing this. And then This thing comes from the office with a report and it’s, and it’s signed by my name and someone says, Oh, Oh, I was, I was ready to leave because of her sending somebody to the office. I, I, I threw the pencil back at the kid. I said, I can’t believe in a Christian school. They don’t even care about the health of their children. And I’m packing up my stuff and ready to walk out. when this report comes that signed Mrs. Bartleson. And then the kids said, who’s that? And then Mimi said, that’s my mom.
So what ended up happening was that whole week that I was in Oregon, anytime we’d go anywhere, we’d run into some parents and they’d say, are you the one that pulled that trick?
Jonathan: Everybody heard about it.
Laura: Yeah.
Jonathan: Now, whose idea was that? Do you remember?
Laura: Mimi and I had planned it the night before.
Jonathan: Oh, what fun. I bet you just enjoyed that immensely.
Laura: I did. I did.
Jonathan: Good. All right. You got time for a couple more questions? Do you want to move these to our next call? What’s your pressure? One more quick one. OK.
Have you ever kept a diary? And if so, what sorts of things did you write in it?
Laura: The only time I did was when we were in Sierra Leone. I wanted to be accurate about things that happened. So I wrote not a diary, but every once in a while something happened I added to a notebook. in handwriting, and I’m glad I did because when I came home and years later I pulled that notebook out and said, oh, I remember that happening. But they were little things, silly things, like the water catcher on the roof tipped over. And that was our only source of water. The people there got water from a lake, but we had to get, and it rained there every day. It would rain really hard early in the morning, and the sun would come out by 10 o’clock. Then you would go up and get… We had some kind of a hose, I think, that fed into the kitchen, but that was our only source of water there.
Jonathan: Yeah, we had, that was a, I forget the name for that. Is it cistern? I may not be using the right word, but when the dry season, we had a helper person, a helper boy go and carry by the five gallon bucket load and climb up and lift it up into the, it was a gravity fed cistern six, eight feet off the ground. And he hefted it up there. And yeah, that was the difference.
Laura: We go through the system. Yes. Yep.
Jonathan: Good.
Laura: Well, let’s get together again next week.
Jonathan: That sounds good. Good catching up with you today, Mom. Have fun at that play tonight.
Laura: Thanks. Thanks. I have to leave at one, but now they’re coming with they made Christmas cookies for me. So she’s going to walk in the door and I better be ready.
Jonathan: That’s really nice. Have fun, Mom.
Laura: Thanks for your time, Jody.
Jonathan: My pleasure.
Laura: Bye.