I Survived Storytellers
...keywords, Basu, astrology, Harkin, Register
Last Tuesday, I was on the Hoyt Sherman stage, telling a story. Rekha Basu asked me to be a ‘teller’ for The Des Moines Register’s Storyteller Project last June, to which I said ‘no thank you.’ Nevertheless, she persisted, reminding me that we ALWAYS do what the other asks. And it has been ever so for the 30 years we’ve known each other. After all, she will be a speaker for my upcoming Okoboji Writers’ Retreat, so I wasn’t in a good position to decline. Come to think of it; I thought I could promote the retreat (which I forgot to mention on stage).
The Storyteller Project is a wonderful event. I was finally able to attend one this past year and had two reactions. First, what a great way to bring the stories of real people to life, and the second was that I could never get up on that stage in front of a packed auditorium and tell a memorized story for 10 minutes.
As the saying goes, never say never. Especially to Rekha.
Each storyteller event has a theme, and this one was to tell about a time we were given bad advice. I had an issue with this from the get-go. I’m not much of an advice-taker. But the first thing that popped into my head is what I went with Tuesday night. It involves an astrologer and leaving my job as a Register columnist.
Thanks to Kim Norvell, the project lead, Rekha, my fellow storytellers, and especially those who showed up and laughed WITH me, not AT me. I had been convinced the reaction would be the other way around.
Thirty years ago, I made the toughest decision of my life.
I walked away from one of the best jobs in the world as a columnist for The Des Moines Register.
Everyone said, 'don't do it.'
So much for their advice.
A columnist job for The Register is glamorous.
For example, we participate in the Celebrity Cow Chip Throwing contest at the Iowa State Fair to see how far we can throw a dried disk of cow shit. I never won, but I'll bet I could fling a cow pie as far as the third row.
There's a skill.
I was a legacy hire at the paper. My dad, Gordon Gammack, had been a war correspondent and daily columnist for the Des Moines Register and Tribune for decades. My first job at 16 was as a copy kid in the old building at 8th and Locust.
I didn't plan to work for The Register partly because I had two phobias' growing up. Writing and public speaking.
But in 1985, I persuaded the managing editor to give me a weekly column for the grand sum of $50 apiece. He agreed to give me a tryout.
Two years later, I became a full-time daily columnist with a paycheck, healthcare, and 401K.
I loved the newsroom and the people in it. AND Still do.
So who walks away from something like that?
Me.
Why?
I had turned 40 in 1990, and I thought:
Will I do the same thing every day for the next 25 years?
Was I grown up? With a steady job? An adult? It wasn't an easy job, but it had become routine.
I was 40; Midlife.
Then Iowa's Senator Tom Harkin decided to run for president in 1992. The same year Bill Clinton ran.
I'd worked on Harkin's congressional campaign in 1974, and he won, so we went to Washington.
Now, I am not a detail person.
And members of congress need to have the time, date, and location of their committee meetings correct on their schedule cards.
I realized I was not a fit.
I returned home to Iowa and lurched from one thing to another before landing a job in talk radio and The Register.
So when the call came to ask if I'd work on his presidential campaign, I was stunned. How could I not??? How many times does one KNOW someone who runs for president?
My heart said ABSOLUTELY.
My head said, are you CRAZY?
I started asking a few close friends what they thought.
Everyone, even my freest of free spirit friends, said:
DON'T DO IT.'
My mother thought it must be another nervous breakdown, mania. She was distraught.
So, I called Dorothy Cunningham.
Dorothy was an astrologer and card reader. And an insightful coach. I knew her reaction would be right on target.
She lived over a garage in a one-bedroom apartment on 39th Street, north of Ingersoll. Her walls were hand-painted with purple swirls, and she looked like a white-haired little elf. Who occasionally smoked a doobie.
She called marijuana 'medicinal' before 'medicinal' was a thing.
The old steps creaked, walking the flight up to her one-bedroom, magical apartment. Her bookcases and tables were filled with objects representing the sun, moon, and stars.
I told her about my decision, and she said, "Let's see what the cards say."
I shuffled the deck, we joined hands, and she prayed to 'mother/father god, to reveal his or her will.'
Dorothy told me to pick seven cards and put them face down.
Then, one by one, she turned them over and interpreted what they revealed.
The first card, Bam. Not good.
The second, Bam. "Oh, here's a challenge."
Bam, this is the card of death. But that can mean rebirth, too, she added.
Bam.
Bam.
Bam.
Oooo, Dorothy foresaw a lot of challenges to leaving my job.
Bam. The last card.
"Well, if you do it," she said, "it will all work out... eventually."
And that was all I needed. Just one person to say I wasn't crazy, and it would all work out.
And this is what happened. I took the job with Harkin, and he dropped out of the race six weeks later. BAM
The Register editor would NOT take me back because, she said, politics now tainted me. BAM.
I couldn't afford my son's Montessori tuition and mortgage, so I had to sell my house. Bam.
Bam. Bam. Bam - use your imagination. It wasn't pretty.
I was a struggling entrepreneur, ahead of my time.
I experienced firsthand how having a refrigerator break down while living below the poverty line could be devasting.
Then the year 2000 came—the new Millenium. I reconnected with the man who is now my husband.
Things started LOOKING UP!
Richard believed I could be a Vistage chair coaching CEOs, which I thought was a stretch. How would they feel about me having Dorothy Cunningham on speed dial?
But Richard convinced me to go through chair training, where I learned that asking QUESTIONS was more powerful than having solutions, so I became certified as a chair. I built two groups in Annapolis, MD, then Chicago, where I worked and lived, retiring in 2020, just before Covid hit.
That's when we came back to Iowa. 2020.
Leaving my job 30 years ago led me to Richard Gilbert, the Chesapeake Bay, sailing, painting boats on nautical charts, and then working with business leaders in Annapolis, Baltimore, and Chicago.
Had I heeded the advice of everyone around me back then, I would not have grasped the helm of a 41' sailboat, miles offshore, on a midnight watch. Alone on deck with stars sparkling in a pitch black sky. The only sound was the boat plowing through ocean waves and the flutter of the sails.
I wouldn't have lived in a condo overlooking Lake Michigan.
And I started column writing again on Substack two years ago. I created the Okoboji Writers' Retreat coming up in just a few weeks.
We aren't all risk-takers. And that's ok.
Some only do so under the influence of drugs or alcohol.
Am I right?
When you face tough choices, ask yourself two questions:
What's the worst thing that can happen if you make the riskier choice? And what will you miss if you don't take the uncharted path?
We are more resilient than we know. Sometimes it just takes a detour to realize that. And sometimes, that detour can open up whole new worlds of possibilities.
I wouldn't change a thing about the decision I made 30 years ago. I'd do it again in a heartbeat. In hindsight, the advice was well-meaning, but I made the right call for me.
I've been away from Iowa for 20 years, but coming back, I feel stronger, more grounded, and more clear about my purpose than I thought possible.
The financial struggles made me better understand what way too many of us experience. It was a gift to deepen my empathy.
Those years of reinvention were full. And I don't regret one step of the process.
Thirty years ago, I made a tough decision, not knowing what was ahead.
I guess it was in the cards. Bam.
Thank you.
Des Moines Storytellers Project photos. https://www.desmoinesregister.com/picture-gallery/news/2022/08/31/storytellers-share-tales-bad-advice/7954510001/
Congratulations to Chuck Offenburger and Mary Riche for getting married today, September 2, 2022. Read their columns about finding love as ‘septuagenarians’: www.offenburger.com
We will not hold a Monday Zoom Lunch call next week because of Labor Day. Our guest on September 12 will be Ty Rushing, Iowa Starting Line Senior Editor. Ty will also be a speaker during the Okoboji Writers’ Retreat.
Do you know about the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative? Find some of your favorite writers below!
Larry and I are so sorry to have missed hearing your story last night. Thank you for writing about it for us to read. You are something, Julie Gammack!
Bam. Bam. Bam WOW!!
Dear Julie, Your BEST ever!