A Charmed Life

An Interview with Barbara Kerr

I can completely lose track of time while sitting and talking to an older adult (which, incidentally, I have to keep redefining the older and older I get!). I don’t know what it is, but I find a lifetime lived with all the experiences and loves and successes and failures and losses and lessons irresistibly interesting. I know a lot of times older people get overlooked and easily dismissed, viewed only through the lens of their current age or limitations or abilities, forgetting a whole life was lived prior to our meeting them. A life just like the one we are living - with hopes and dreams, families and careers, talents and achievements. Sometimes even with significant contributions to our community or to the world. And often they are still making them! We forget that beyond being a wealth of knowledge from lived experience, many have led downright interesting and exciting lives. Some were trailblazers in their field or firsts in their family to do something. Many have stories just waiting to be shared. If only we care enough to ask.

As I was training for the London half marathon last year, one of these intriguing older adults captured my attention. She lives a few streets over and was often out walking while I was running. She was so encouraging, literally stopping and cheering for me as I ran by. From the first time I spoke with her, I could tell from the words she used that she knew something about running. Turns out she used to be in a running club. Hmm…interest piqued. There was something about her. More than the running connection, I was drawn in by her strength and confidence, and this exuberance for life that just seemed to ooze out of her. She was such a part of my training journey, that I couldn’t wait to show her my awesome medal when I got home, and we even brought her back a souvenir from London as a “thanks for your support.” The funny thing is I didn’t even know her name yet. We formally introduced ourselves when I handed her the gift! Barbara. And she is 87 years young.

We continued to talk now and then when we ran into one another in the neighborhood, and I just became more and more intrigued. She was MIA for a while, which worried me, but then she was back at it, telling me she had a hip replacement and now had to rehab. My social work radar was blaring that this was one interesting lady. I finally asked if she would allow me to interview her for my blog, which she graciously agreed to. The friend she was walking with the morning I asked her immediately started gushing about all the things Barbara does and has done, stating that she is “the most interesting person in this neighborhood” and how smart I was to want to interview her. Ok, I added in that last part, but that doesn’t make it untrue. I got a quick tour of Barbara’s home, giving me fodder for my interview questions and solidifying the fact that I had picked the right girl. A few days later I returned to her home and spent an hour learning about her life, being awed by her artistic talents, laughing at her humor, and admiring her outlook on life and aging and living life to the fullest.

Barbara was an only child and grew up in Yosemite National Park, where her father, Ralph Hopewell Anderson, was a ranger and a pretty well-known photographer. In fact, he was a colleague of Ansel Adams, and Barbara said, “The quality of his pictures was every bit as good as Ansel’s.” I found a digitized copy of Yosemite Nature Notes from February 1953, Yosemite Nature Notes, a publication of the National Park Service. In addition to his photos right alongside those of Ansel Adams (Wow, she wasn’t kidding!), her father’s years of service to the park and transfer to Washington, D.C. are highlighted on pages 20-21. I got a particular kick out of the paragraph talking about how her mother and father met, and the fact that they had a “16-year-old photogenic daughter, Barbara Jean” who “has appeared in many park photographs.” Her father passed away at the age of 65 in Isle Royale, Michigan, while touring national parks as a re-employed annuitant. A Google search found the following memorial on the NPS website: 

At his passing, Barbara gave all of his negatives and his papers to the University of New Mexico and her son is writing a book about him. In addition, she said the University of California Merced is putting together a show of his photographs. She reports being especially close to her dad. “My dad never once said ‘I wish I had a boy.’ He exposed me to camping, hiking, fishing… Mom wasn’t into all that stuff, but my dad exposed me to the great outdoors.”

Very interesting, but back to Barbara. She reports having a happy childhood, full of love and support. Her dad was the big encourager in her life, and though she loved her mother, she was closer to her dad. Not only because they shared a love for the great outdoors, but also because her mother had ailing parents in Los Angeles and was gone a lot. Barbara started drawing when she was only three years old, she said, after seeing something her American Indian babysitter drew. She said she would draw the typical things a 3-year-old would draw, and her mother would embroider them onto napkins and give them to her grandmother. This encouragement turned into a life-long love of art, starting out in oils, but quickly moving to watercolor. Her home is a beautiful collection of both her work and some of her favorite artists.

She was sent to a Presbyterian mission school in Utah, which was a school for children from isolated areas, at the age of 12. Knowing she later took up running, I asked about sports in school. She laughed and said, “P.E., for girls, was swinging Indian clubs. Meanwhile the boys did the range of boy things - football, basketball, etc.” (I admit that I had to look up “Indian clubs.” Per Wikipedia, “Club swinging is believed to have originated in Persia and India by soldiers as a method of improving strength, agility, balance, and physical ability.” These wooden clubs were named by 19th-century British colonists and are also referred to as “meels.”) Barbara said she never wondered or asked why the genders were doing different things. “It was not my time to do that,” she said. 

Toward the end of our discussion about her childhood she threw out in passing, “Oh, and I was the original Beech-Nut baby. I have a picture of myself on a baby food jar.” Wait, what? I have to admit, when I got home I spent about 30 minutes lost in Google, trying to find a jar with a baby that might be her. I found one jar for sale on eBay that I took a screenshot of to save and ask her about.

 

A week later, she gave me a copy of an old article that had the baby picture used on the jar included and to my astonishment, IT WAS HER ON THE EBAY JAR!

 

Turns out, that baby photo, which her father submitted in a contest held by an advertising firm, was sold to Beech-Nut and used as their trademark for almost 25 years! Yes, I rushed back to eBay to see if it was still available, and yes, I bought it for her and am anxiously awaiting its arrival! I even spoke to the seller and told him I had just interviewed that baby last week, who is now an 87-year-old woman. He found this as incredible as I did and told me his grandfather had kept screws in the jar for years and that he has had it since his grandfather’s death in 1973. According to the article she gave me, Barbara also appeared in a photograph taken by her father and used by the National Geographic Society for a 1948 Christmas card. She said he always wanted a splash of red in his photographs, so he took a picture of her in a red snowsuit in a wintry Yosemite scene and National Geographic bought the rights to it. 

Despite it still being fairly uncommon for women to get a college degree in the 50s, I wasn’t surprised to learn Barbara earned one from the University of Maryland. I asked her what pushed her toward college as a female. “My parents,” she said. “I’m not a big pioneer for women’s rights. I wasn’t aggressive or involved in women’s suffrage or anything. I mean, I voted, but that was it.” It was at this time that her live-in caregiver (an ex-Marine who is also an artist and does the cooking for her – I told you she was interesting!) poked his head around the corner from the kitchen and announced Barbara’s mother earned a degree from California in 1927! So, despite insisting she was not a pioneer or trailblazer, it seems she comes from a line of just that. Her father would have also earned a degree, she said, but he got tuberculosis in his junior year at Ohio State and ended up moving out west, which is where he met her mother, and the rest is history…well and HERstory. 😊

But I digress. At the time Barbara was going to college, the only degree options for women were nursing or elementary education. She knew she definitely didn’t want to be a nurse, so elementary education it was. She graduated in 1958 and taught 2nd grade for a few years. “It was a job. And I did well at it,” she said. However, she then met and married her first husband, Bill Kerr, and set about the business of raising three boys. Sadly, Bill had a brain aneurysm at age of 30 and couldn’t return to work. So, Barbara went to work. “My art has always carried me through," she said, "and I got a job through a sorority sister at the University of Maryland to do training layouts for the phone company.” She said she didn’t make a lot of money, but enough to make a living. Not long after, however, she made a connection through her supervisor that led to a job for one of the intelligence communities (she wouldn’t specify which one, I guess due to the old “I’d tell ya, but then I’d have to kill ya” dilemma). She was initially hired as an illustrator, but by the time she got her clearance, they didn’t need illustrators anymore, so she was switched over to a technical writer. It was a male-dominated field, and she admitted, “I was kind of a pioneer here because the only women in this particular time were secretaries and ladies who worked in association with printing. I was one of the first who had a college degree.”

It was during her government career that she got involved in running, in her late 20s/early 30s. “After I had my babies, I watched my weight and exercised with Jack LaLanne” (I have to admit, I had to look this one up as well! Per Wikipedia: “Jack LaLanne hosted the first and longest running nationally syndicated fitness television program.” It ran from 1951 to 1985.). The running club she joined consisted of her and five men. They ran many 10Ks together and one half-marathon, the Metric Marathon in Columbia, Maryland. She used her artistic talents even here, designing the sweatshirt for the half as well as the badges for many of the 10Ks.

I asked her what obstacles she faced, being a woman involved in sports/running at a time when most women didn’t do these things. “There was a military recruiting station where they changed,” she said, “and the commander told me, ‘Well, we don’t have a room for women.’” She replied to him, “Well, we’ll get around that.” She and her all-male running buddies developed a system for changing and showering that gave her privacy and gave them a little fun. “It worked out beautifully,” she said. “There was no hanky-panky. I had my turn in the shower. They had their turn in the shower. And they took great delight when there was some man in there who didn’t know. I would be coming out of the shower and call out, ‘Is it all clear??’ If the coast wasn’t clear, the poor guy would look so befuddled!” Apparently, her buddies got a real kick out of doing this to poor, unsuspecting men. They even drew her a cartoon of her peeking out of the shower that to this day hangs on her wall. “So, I got around that," she said. "I was assertive in my own way.” I asked her if she ever tried to get any of the other women to run. “No, I was happy with the guys," she said. "I was one of the guys.”

I asked her what she felt running, or exercise in general, gave her. “Tranquility,” she said. “It was simplification of life. You are running and did so many miles. It wasn’t a crazy obsession or anything. It was simplification and tranquility. And I’m not particularly athletic. Running was just a really cool thing that I did. You do a lot of thinking, you know, you’re just ZEN.” I knew she was a girl after my own heart. Building on that, I asked her what she thinks running/sports gives women, specifically. She thought a little more on this, then said, “It’s an equalizer. You push yourself, and you’re competing. But it’s just in such a glorious setting and you’ve got so much company there. From what I saw in the Metric Marathon and all the 10Ks I ran, if someone falls, there’s a spirit of camaraderie that is just lovely.”

She said when her second husband saw her, he “fell in love with me because I was so wonderful!” His name was Zoltan Adelbert Kuthy (“a fine Hungarian name”) and they remained married until he passed away five years ago. She said she kept her last name of Kerr because she wanted her name to be the same as her boys. She and Bert (short for Adelbert) did not have children together, but she did inherit four stepdaughters in the merger. Barbara’s oldest son lives in Charlotte and is a runner, as is her 9-year-old granddaughter. Her daughter-in-law is a minister at Covenant Presbyterian Church in Charlotte. “It’s a whole new ballgame for women, now,” she said. Her youngest son and his wife are really athletic. She has participated in an Iron Man competition, Barbara said, and their two girls run cross country and play lacrosse and soccer. She said her middle son and his lovely wife live in St. Pete Beach.

Barbara retired in 1998. I asked what her dreams for retirement were. They still lived in Annapolis at the time, and she said, “Nothing. I had no dreams. I didn’t want to come to Florida. It was sort of negative thinking. I was happy in Annapolis and had never really been to Florida. But I respected my Bert’s wishes because he was so sick of working in the cold.” Bert was a builder and wanted to move to Florida (Wow, sounds familiar.). But they were sailors and had a sailboat, and she was happy in Annapolis (Also familiar. Except the sailors and sailboat part.). She said she finally agreed to move, her only stipulation being she would not go until her mother, who had gone into a nursing home with four of her friends at age 82, passed away. Once they moved, Barbara said her art was a catalyst for meeting people and getting involved in the community. One of her favorite pieces is pictured below.

“It’s given me friends. It’s given me challenges," she said. "I have judged a lot of art shows, which I enjoy.” She also runs an open studio in her home every Tuesday afternoon. She has stopped painting and operates more in an advisory role for the studio. She is, however, now making what she calls “silly cards” which are greeting cards she designs and uses to bring joy into people’s lives.

Besides her cards and open studio time, Barbara spends her days exercising in her pool, walking with friends every day, reading, doing sudokus, and playing Words with Friends. Being a nosy social worker and avid (though usually falling asleep in 5 minutes) reader myself, I asked what she likes to read. “Fiction, murder mysteries. I went to a thrift shop today and got the sequel to ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.’ I mean, I’m very… worldly!” 😊

Following that lead, I asked her what advancements she has seen in 87 years that make her proud of humanity? “The computers, of course,” she said. “Though I think that’s a double-edged sword. I was walking the other day and I saw a baby sandhill crane as I walked past a bus stop. And all these kids were just on their phones, and I thought it was very sad. I think the advancements and communications are a double-edged sword. It’s totally diminished people’s communication skills. Kids especially.”

“What about changes that make you fearful for humanity?” I asked.

“The immigration thing; that’s just really gotten skewed,” she said. “I think the conflicts between the Russians and in the world in general. The advancement in weapons is very scary. People have always been nasty to one another, as a group, but now they have just hideous tools to really go crazy.”

Realizing I was doing my usual losing track of time, I shifted to getting some bites of wisdom from her before she kicked me out of her house (which was, by now, smelling wonderful thanks to ex-Marine, live-in chef).

“Is there any specific advice you would give young women today?” I asked.

“Be sensible in your eating,” she replied. “Live a balanced life. I think there are far too many people these days who are workaholics; they work too hard. I think set realistic goals; I think that’s an issue with a lot of people. And be true to yourself. Be happy with yourself.”

“Is there any specific advice you would give older women today?”

“Be careful what you say. Sometimes words can be just hurtful. Think before you speak.”

“Lastly,” I asked, “Over your 87 years, are there things you would have done differently, or ways you would have changed your focus, if you knew then what you know now?”

“No. I would not," she said. "I’ve had a very rich life. I have lived in wonderful environments, and I have taken advantage of them. I treasure my memories. Even around here, I have swum with the manatees, I’ve been scalloping, I know how to scuba dive, I’ve been sailing… And all those things I treasure. And I treasure my friends. The sad part, of course, is losing my friends… But no, I wouldn’t do anything different. Because I’ve had really a charmed life, I think. I’d like to say I’m perfect. But I’m left-handed, so I don’t know about that!”

Left-handed or not, Barbara is a joy to talk with, was as interesting as my social work radar suggested, and gave me yet another example of the kind of older adult I want to be. Someday… when I finally reach that ever-moving goalpost of “older” …