Jack+Bartlett

__Jack Bartlett__ In the fall of 1959, I began work with the Kern County Farm Labor Ministry (KCFLM) an affiliate of the California Migrant Ministry (CMM). KCFLM was located in Carversville-Crystal Heights (C-CH), a grossly misnamed, below poverty level, black community on the southeast edge of Bakersfield. Few, if any, of the homes would have passed the most minimal building code. My first assignment was to recruit sufficient volunteer help to transform half of an old army air force barracks into a community center. With volunteer help, the job was completed. A year later, along with other CMM staff, I received training in community organizing from Fred Ross of the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF). (Fred trained Cesar Chavez.) With help from key residents a community organization was formed. Its actions brought the community self-respect and respect from the broader Bakersfield community. I left Bakersfield with a radically different view of the world and a deepened commitment to social justice. Twenty years after leaving Bakersfield, I returned for a house warming in C-CH. A former teenager, now a broad shouldered, middle-aged man, walked up to me, hugged me and said gratefully: “You were the first white person who ever came into our neighborhood and gave a damn about whether we lived or died.” I will always treasure his words. In November of 1963 I accepted a call to become Associate Minister of the Mill Valley Community Church (MVCC) in Mill Valley. I had done fieldwork there my first two years at PSR. This meant working again with Gordon Foster, whom John Bennett told me he considered the most outstanding example of what a parish minister should be. My responsibilities included youth work, Christian education, calling, occasional preaching, performing weddings, leading a businessmen’s discussion group, and promoting ecumenicity. Six months prior to coming to Mill Valley, I married Faith Whiting, a nursing graduate of Bates College (Maine). After coming to Mill Valley, she earned an M.S. in Nursing from UCSF and chaired two departments at Marin General Hospital. We enjoyed 36 years of an enviably rewarding marriage. We had three children: Jennifer, an insurance underwriter and housewife; Duncan, a tiling contractor; and Gretchen, a high school teacher, who is married to an English professor. Faith died in September of 1999 following successful hip replacement surgery. Two days after the surgery, she lapsed into unconsciousness. My son and I experienced the agony of watching her bleed to death from what her nephew, a Harvard-trained anesthesiologist, described as an inexcusable misdiagnosis. Declining church membership made it apparent that MVCC could no longer afford an associate minister. The UCC conference minister advised me that my involvement in civil rights in Mississippi and the grape strike in Delano, where I was arrested testing a court order along with 47 others, mostly clergy, would severely limit my prospects for a parish position. Unwilling to abandoned my concern for social justice, I decided to leave parish ministry. Thanks to my community organizing training, I was hired as community organizer with the Contra Costa County Office of Economic Opportunity. Later, I moved to the employment and training program and subsequently to the program for the elderly. Along the way, I earned an M.A in public administration, a certificate in training and human resource development, and an M.A. in gerontology. I retired in March of 1995 after 26 years of helping administer federal social programs. I am still active in the MVCC. During the first seven years after retirement, I did ride-alongs with the sheriff’s department as a volunteer chaplain. It provided challenging experiences, such as helping a deputy talk a man into not jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge. My most rewarding activity has been my involvement in the Marin Organizing Committee, an ecumenical effort to organize churches, unions, and non-profits into a broad-based effort that can positively affect public policy. I stay in shape with daily hikes with my 85 lb. black Labrador retriever. I have traveled some and would love to do more.