Sammy Dyer - They Are My Sisters

THEY ARE MYSISTERS

THEY ARE MYSISTERS

A memoir

by

Sammy Dyer

with Deb Dyer, Linda Hanselland

Mary Dyer Wilkinson

Adelaide Books

New York/Lisbon

2020

THEY ARE MYSISTERS

A memoir

By Sammy Dyer

Copyright by Sammy Dyer

Cover design 2020 AdelaideBooks

Published by Adelaide Books, New York /Lisbon

adelaidebooks.org

Editor-in-Chief

Stevan V. Nikolic

All rights reserved. No part of thisbook may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without writtenpermission from the author except in the case of brief quotationsembodied in critical articles and reviews.

For any information, please addressAdelaide Books

at info@adelaidebooks.org

or write to:

Adelaide Books

244 Fifth Ave. Suite D27

New York, NY, 10001

ISBN-13: 978-1-952570-01-8

To the members of theL.I.F.E. Group, past, present and future: your contribution to MYlife is immeasurable.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

A LIFE-CHANGINGMEETING

It was the pink and white napkins thatdid it.

I was at a PTA meeting atBoulevard Elementary School in Shaker Heights, Ohio, the elementaryschool that all five of my children attended. I had been active inthe PTA at Boulevard for many years. My youngest was now in sixthgrade, and would be moving on to the junior high school thefollowing year. At this particular meeting, we spent forty minutesdebating whether to use pink or white napkins for the annualTeachers Appreciation Luncheon. Forty minutes! I thought, youve got to be kidding me.

I dont want to be criticalof the PTA, but spending so much time on such a trivial detail gotto me. I remember walking home from that meeting down SouthingtonRoad we lived just a block from the schoolthinking there has to be something more meaningful I cando with my time. There just HAS to be . Ididnt know what that something more might be, but I knew I wantedto find it.

Later that day, these thoughts werestill rattling around in my head while I was cleaning the house. Myoldest daughter Margaret was a student at Smith College inNorthampton, Massachusetts at the time. She had recently told me Icould throw out anything she had stored in her room at home. As Ipulled things out from under her bed, I came across a poster for aRunathon Margaret and some of her friends had organized to raisefunds for the battered womens shelter in Northampton. I rememberedthe event, and being surprised that there was a shelter in such asmall and quaint college town. Something made me pause and Iwondered if there was a similar shelter in Cleveland. Almostwithout thinking I found myself looking in the phone book, and Ifound the listing for Women Together, an emergency shelter forbattered women.

I picked up the phone, dialed thenumber and asked if they had any volunteer positions available. Iwas pleased to hear they did and I was able to register on thephone that day for the next training session.

It was 1978. My five children rangedin age from 12 to 21. My husband worked in commercial real estatein Cleveland. As a housewife, I had always volunteered, usually inthe PTA or at Metropolitan General Hospital. But now that my olderchildren were in high school and college and my youngest was aboutto start junior high, I had more time on my hands and I was readyfor a deeper commitment. I hoped the battered womens shelter wouldbe the something more I was looking for.

Soon after my phone call, I startedthe two-week volunteer training workshop for Women Together. Thetraining was held in downtown Cleveland at the YWCA. During thetraining, Janeone of the staff memberstold the assembled four orfive volunteers, We have our own guidelines for handling calls onthe hotline and for our work in the shelter. The most importantthing to remember is that this is totally anonymous. Never giveanyone the address of the shelter, never give anyone your lastname. And no sharing about anything that goes on here with yourfriends, your family, or the bridge club. We keep everythingconfidential, so batterers cant find their victims.

She continued, Use this script to getthrough your first calls. If you take a call from a woman thatwants to come in, you turn it over to me or Nancy and well set upa pick up. We have a few meeting spots around the city, publicplaces like Burger King or a gas station that are easy for quickpick-ups in case the women coming to the shelter are beingfollowed.

Keep in mind, Janecontinued, this work gets pretty intense: you cant getemotionally invested. You need to protect yourself.

At the end of the session I approachedJane and privately said Im not sure how you can do this withoutsome emotional investment some kind of connection to put yourselfin their shoes?

Trust me, Ive been there,done that, and it doesnt work, Jane said. Its much tooexhausting, and its not sustainable.

You mentioned picking upthe women who want to come in. Do volunteers do the pick-ups? Iasked.

Generally not. Janereplied. It can be dangerous if the batterer has followed thewoman.

As I absorbed Janes words, I feltthat this was the type of challenging opportunity I had beenseeking as I left the PTA meeting a few weeks earlier. And that wasthe beginning of what has now been my 41 years of volunteering withbattered women in shelters and in prisons. Eventually I did dopick-ups for the shelter, and I became emotionally invested fromthe start. I understood Janes wise advice, but there just wasntany other way for me.

When I went to the shelter thefollowing week for my first day, I was a nervous wreck. In spite ofthe training I wasnt sure what to expect, but I was willing to dowhatever was needed. When the staff asked, Would you mind cleaningthe kitchen? I replied, Of course I dont mind. Ill do anythingyou need me to do. I wanted to help with something, even if it wasdoing the breakfast dishes or scrubbing the bathroom. I didnt carewhat I did. I just wanted to be of help in some way.

I knew I would have to answer thehotline at some point, and I was anxious about it. Luckily, Ididnt have to do it on my first day. But a few days later, I wassitting in the office with one of the advocatesI think it wasJanewhen the hotline rang. They all knew that I was pretty nervousabout answering the hotline. Jane got up and said, Oh Sammy, grabthe phone, would you? Ive gotta run to the kitchen and I said,Oh, uh, um, okay.

I answered the phone and on the otherend of the line was a woman from an East Side Cleveland suburb whowas very well off. She began telling me about her abusive husband.We talked and I told her about the shelter. She wanted to knowwhere it was, whether it was downtown or some other location. Icouldnt tell her the exact location, but gave her an indication ofwhat part of the city it was in. She said shed think about comingto the shelter, and I said, Do think about it. Im here onTuesdays and Fridays, so you can always call. My name is Sammy. Youcan ask for me and we can talk again. You dont have to give meyour address or name. This is all confidential. It does not gobeyond this phone call. She called every week for a few months,and we would talk. But she never did come to theshelter.

My interest in volunteering grew, inlarge part, due to the young staff advocates working at the WomenTogether shelterJane Donnell, Mistinguette Smith, Nancy Olin, andothers. I was in awe of their dedication to helping women, andinspired to be working with these young women who were the ages ofmy daughters. I tried very hard to suppress my urge to say, Oh,Jane, honey, like I might say to one of my daughters. I wasgrateful that they didnt treat me like their mother orgrandmother. I was accepted as a peer, and that was wonderful forme. I learned a great deal from these advocates about deeplistening, the needs and challenges of battered women, and themethods that have proved successful in helping them. It was likegetting another college education.