Wednesdays with Dorothy: A Blog Series

My friend Dorothy Faye Burdette was laid to rest in April of 2012. For a life that began in crushing poverty and abuse followed by harsh institutionalization from the age of ten until she was forty-five, she had her own unique style. Because she was willing to tell her story, her memorial service at Glen Iris Baptist Church included some of her own recollections about the struggles she endured. It was a fitting tribute to her life. I am using my blog to tell Dorothy’s story by sharing of some of the conversations I had with her. The series is called "Wednesdays with Dorothy," with a new post to be added each Wednesday.

The following posts may be found by clicking on the title:

1. Wednesdays with Dorothy: How It All Began

2.  The Life Story Project

Early Childhood

3.  Beginnings in Sylacauga

4. Outings, Hysteria, and Prayer Meetings

5.  Finding Family

6. School Days

7. Living Arrangements

Institutionalization: The Partlow Years

8. A Judge's Ruling

9. Eugenics and Misguided Visions for a Better Society

10. Recreation at the Institution

11. Life in the Institution

12. Holidays and Family Visits

13. Religion in the Institution

14. Visits from Dignitaries and News from the Outside

15. "My Escape Attempt"

16. A Brief Reprieve in the Outside World

17. Preparations for Leaving the Institution

Living in the Community

18. Moving into the Community

19. My Arrival at St. Andrew's Foundation

20. Finding My Way in the City

21. Actives in the Community

22. Freedom to Shop

23. Making the Transition from Group Home to Apartment

24. Finding My Own Apartment

26. Finding Domestic Harmony

27. Frustrations in Life

28. Con Artists and Other Dangers

29. Stilling the Anger

30. A Speech about Independent Living

31. With a Little Help from My Friends

32. Matters of Health

33. There's No Place Like Home

34. "I've got myself in a terrible mess"

35. Another Trip to the Hospital

36. Palliative Care

37. Crossing the Threshold

38. My Last Wednesday with Dorothy

39. Epilogue: Remembering Dorothy One Year Later

Addendum:

• An Interview with Francis Walter
• Jean Vanier on Becoming Human, by Pamela Cushing
• Henri Nowen and L'Arche
• Not in My Backyard, by Clarie Andre and Manuel Valasquez

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Wednesdays with Dorothy: Beginnings in Sylacauga

(This is part of a series. For Table of Contents go here)

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On the first day we met to talk about Dorothy’s life story, after we got settled and made some small talk, I just turned on the tape recorder and asked her what she wanted to talk about. I had a micro cassette tape recorder with 90 minute tapes – 45 minutes on each side. Usually 45 minutes was about as long as Dorothy could stay focused on the topic of her life history, and then it was with frequent questions from me to get her to elaborate.  Often she would be talking about something in her past and suddenly think of something else she wanted tell me that happened just yesterday.  Keeping her on track was usually my main task during our sessions with the tape recorder, but not on this first day.

Dorothy immediately began with what was the essential story of her life as she saw it. It defined who she was, where she came from, and what she had endured:

 I lived in Sylacauga, Alabama until I was ten years old, then I was took away. The way they got me there [to Partlow State School] is they told me there was a big shopping mall and we could go anywhere we wanted to and do whatever we wanted to.  When I got there they didn’t do nothin’ but lock us in. We couldn’t even go off the premises.

My daddy was living in Sylacauga, him and my mother. One time there was an old colored man had a little ol’ calf. My daddy went down there and got that calf and killed it, and that colored man didn’t know it. He brought the beef to the house but my mother wouldn’t cook it because she knew he stole it.

The police came and took my daddy down to the jail house and he had to own up to it. Then he had to go to court. I told that colored man that I was sorry that my daddy did so.  The colored man said, “Well it was my calf, and Mr. Burdette got it.” Then they took him down to the jail and the next thing I knew, they sentenced him to prison. He stayed there a good long while then he finally got out.

In 1939 my mother died. Then my daddy and I moved to another part of town.  One day my daddy and I went on a fishing trip. We went off down to the woods and my daddy tried to do something I didn’t want him to do. I hit him with a limb and I got up and ran. He cussed me and he told me if he caught me he’d kill me, so I was really afraid. I ran up to the house and hid under the bed where he couldn’t find me. Then I went to the police after going to a neighbor’s house. They took me down to the police station.

They finally sentenced my daddy after he went to court for the second time. They sent him to Kilby Prison in Montgomery.  He stayed there until he died on July 28, 1944. I didn’t know it until ten years later. My Aunt Gladys came and told me, when she came to see me at Partlow.

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These were the defining moments of her life as she saw it. A little girl with limited coping skills (as we shall see as Dorothy tells more of her childhood) was born into crushing poverty. Her mother died and her abusive father was sent to prison.  After enduring such hardship, she was sent to live in an institution. She was far from family, far from anyone she knew.

Once when Dorothy was visiting at our house for Thanksgiving dinner, she talked briefly about her father. “My daddy could be real mean and hateful, I was scared of him a lot of the time and didn’t like him, but when I think about it there was some part of me that really loved him, somehow.”

I would learn more about her father and her mother through our taped discussions in the weeks ahead.

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Hooray for the Nuns!

Both in my personal encounters and in my reading of what American nuns are doing,  I have seen that the nuns represent what is best about the church as well as what is best about Christianity in general.  They are educating people, helping the needy, ministering to the sick and bringing hope to the hopeless.  On matters of theology, they are never stagnant but always caring and relevant.

One Benedictine nun explained an interesting phenomenon regarding nuns and their theological education. Most priests get all of their theological training in a time frame of four years of seminary. After that they are off to the parish and many get no further education beyond that.  Nuns, on the other hand, are often busy teaching in the schools and to get their theological studies they must go during the summer. The process takes much longer, but as a consequence their education is much more current than that of the typical priest.

Service and Integrity

Nuns have consistently provided much needed service in matters that contribute toward the common good.  They are the most reliable group for distributing charitable funds.  While other charities are sometimes plagued with men at the top embezzling funds or allocating monies away from the needed service and into administrative offices, you never hear of a nun absconding with cash or goods intended for the needy!

These are some of the reasons I applaud the “nuns on the bus” and celebrate their recent statement that they are rejecting the Vatican’s plans for a take-over/conservative make-over.  In these times, we should lament that there are fewer women choosing to be nuns rather than cracking down on the Leadership Conference of Women Religious over a few single-issue rallying points of some stogy old men.

A Witness from the Baptists

In the denomination I grew up in, the Southern Baptist Convention, the Women’s Missionary Union (WMU) was among the strongest and most reasonable voices within the denomination. On top of that they consistently did good work. The beauty of that organization was that it was an “auxiliary organization,” meaning that it was beyond the administrative reach of the denominational leadership. They gave 100 % of their efforts to the denomination, but they were their own separate organization. That arrangement became even more beautiful when the conservative (and fundamentalist) wing of the Southern Baptists took control of the denomination.  The all male leadership that wanted to keep women “in submission” had no way of touching the WMU because it was not a part of the SBC institutional structure. It was self supporting and served to raise money for missions (which the SBC gladly accepted) but the SBC leadership had no means of “reining them in.” They could not fire officers or withhold money they way they were accustomed to operating.

Carry On, Sisters

So to the nuns and all women out there I say, don’t lose heart, keep on doing what you are doing. 
Both the church and the world are better each day because of you!

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