Child of War Works for Peace
November 2023
It’s a cliché that we are formed by our families, but in my case that’s accurate. I am the daughter of a mother who grew up in Nazi Germany and an American father who fought the Nazis. I am also the mother of a son who has autism and other health issues.
Had they not been in my life, I know I would not be the person I am.
Born in Washington DC in 1949, so soon after World War II, some of my earliest memories are visiting my mother’s family in Germany. My grandparents spoke no English, but I had many aunts, uncles and cousins who could. I needed them, because extreme prejudice against Germans was still strong in the U.S. in the 1950s, so my mother refused to teach my sister and me her native language. She didn’t want us to innocently say something in German in the presence of Americans.
As a result, I learned early to say only that my mother was from “Europe” if anyone asked.
Later, I learned about the Holocaust and unimaginable evil in Nazi Germany. I learned about the horrors of violence and war and how they kill and traumatize millions of innocent children. As one example from my own family, my grandmother was almost deaf, making it very hard for her to hear the sirens when Allied bombers approached. My mother’s youngest sister, just a little girl, had to rush to find her and drag her to a shelter whenever they sounded. She was terrified.
I also soon learned that both sides in any war or conflict seek to win by dehumanizing the other. More suffering.
After graduating from college early, I studied for a semester in Germany and decided to leave the German university to spend a summer working on a kibbutz in Israel. I wanted to better understand the horrors of the Holocaust. I talked to Israelis who had fled those horrors, hearing their stories and seeing Nazi numbers tattooed on their arms. It was shattering.
These early experiences ultimately taught me that we have to resist dehumanizing any group while we actively confront prejudice, injustice and violence. That there is no glory in war, only suffering and death. And that peace and justice cannot prevail when we choose to be silent in order to “get along.” That belief was strengthened when I learned about the disappearance of Jewish families in my mother’s hometown. People were afraid to speak out.
So it was inevitable that I would end up in advocacy and lobbying, especially when I became the mother of a son with disabilities. Eric was born in 1977, at a time when there were still many “experts” who believed that autism was caused by cold, “refrigerator” parents. We finally had a law that children with disabilities had a right to a free, appropriate public education, but educators still had a lot to learn about how to properly teach these children. And, of course, the world was full of barriers that kept people with disabilities from being fully included. So much to address.
My professional advocacy trajectory started in the area of education for children with disabilities. I joined advocacy groups, was an advisor to the Fairfax County School Board, and even co-wrote a handbook to help parents navigate a complex system that was supposed to give their children the education they deserved.
In 1995, I was also able to incorporate my faith in my advocacy when I went to work for NETWORK, the Catholic lobby on Capitol Hill. There, I worked on a multi-issue agenda that varied over the years, but which was always rooted in the call of the Gospel to act for justice and peace. Depending mostly on which political party was in power, we experienced big victories (the Affordable Care Act) or major defeats (the war in Iraq).
At NETWORK, I learned the mechanics of lobbying at the federal level, including the importance of personal contact rather than relying exclusively on petitions or other impersonal methods. I also learned that in-depth planning, while important, was not always the reason something succeeded. This was brought home to me when I accidentally named the “Nuns on the Bus” campaign, which caught the attention of a public fascinated by Catholic Sisters traveling in a colorful bus across the country to lobby for healthcare and justice. I had offered “Nuns on the Bus” as a placeholder name when I hired a woman to design the bus. She thought it was the actual name, and it became famous. The bus appeared everywhere, including on 60 Minutes, CNN, and in international media outlets. Needless to say, legislators also noticed.
Another lesson I learned even earlier is that powerful advocacy only results from people acting in solidarity with those experiencing injustice. There is nothing more demeaning than saying we “speak for” someone. As the disability rights community has said, “Nothing about me without me.”
When I retired from NETWORK in 2016, I intended to engage in some kind of direct service work like tutoring or working in a homeless shelter. Once again, the real world intervened. The shocking election that year of Donald Trump convinced me I needed to offer my advocacy and lobbying skills to counter what I knew would be tough times ahead. I ended up working for the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy as part of the Ignatian Volunteer Corps, a Jesuit-inspired program of service and reflection for retired people. There, I experienced the thrill of a successful campaign to abolish the death penalty in Virginia.
I am grateful to have played a very tiny role in efforts to make this a better world. It has been — and continues to be — a deeply satisfying ride.