The Roots Of The Issue

The father of Kathleen Gaddis gave her this advice: “Do the best you can in everything you do, or don’t bother doing it. Respect is earned not given.”

Gaddis is The Spokesman-Review’s first woman press operator. Being the first woman in any job, and a rolemodel for other young women, is not always easy. But Gaddis has her father’s wise words to help her clear this new path.

Gaddis recently shared her background at a Spokesman-Review Diversity Committee meeting. The building wide committee is a relatively new one. The 27-person committee helps tackle tough issues that confront our newspaper concerning diversity. And members plan and organize events, activities and training around diversity, both inside and outside the newsroom. For example, committee members will staff a resource booth Tuesday at the daylong Congress on Race Relations at the Ag Trade Center.

To better get to know each other, committee members wrote essays about their own ethnic origins and then shared these essays in committee meetings. The project highlighted both our differences and similarities.

Many committee members grew up engulfed in ethnic identity - Irish, Italian, African American, Japanese American. Others knew almost nothing about their ethnic backgrounds. As committee member Scott Sines wrote: “No one ever talked about ethnicity in my family. I know that my grandparents on my mother’s side were Irish, but I don’t know a thing about the harrowing voyage of their ancestors to America.”

Three essays by committee members appear on this page today. Others will be printed in our company newsletter, SCOOP. If your company has a diversity committee, or plans to start one soon, try the ethnic origin essay exercise. You’ll be surprised how much variety and richness exist in your personal histories. And how the information can help you find the common ground to do important work in your organization and community.

By Vince Grippi

I always hated spaghetti. When I was growing up, our house was a small province of Sicily in Southern California. Most days it even smelled like Italy as my dad puttered around in the kitchen making his (in)famous spaghetti sauce. It didn’t matter that my mother was of Irish/Scotch descent. My dad was Sicilian (as opposed to Italian) and that was our identity. I hated it.

I hated the long rides to the desert to visit my dad’s godfather, who, according to my dad, had been shot some 25 times by the Mafia in downtown L.A. and had driven the 50 miles to his ranch in Fontana, never to leave again. I hated the way my dad’s godmother would cut the heads off chickens in the back yard and serve them that night at dinner. I hated the stories my dad would tell about his mother’s three husbands, the first she married at 14 when he was in his 60s, the second murdered after a mob card game, the third, my grandfather, killed in an “industrial accident.”

But most of all I hated spaghetti.

We ate it at least twice a week and all it did was remind me of a Sicilian heritage that I could care less about. I am an American, that’s what I thought, and that’s all that mattered. But as I grew older, and sports took me beyond my immediate home and community, I discovered that being an American meant different things to different people. And their cultural backgrounds defined a majority of their perceptions.

The black kids from Duarte and Monrovia who made up 90 percent of the California youth all-star baseball team I traveled with in high school saw the American experience as a battle for acceptance. And the odds were stacked against them. The Hispanic kids from Riverside who recruited me for their national tournament team in college saw the American experience through the eyes of recent immigrants, as a place of opportunity not afforded them in Mexico. My college roommate, whose parents had emigrated from China in 1949 and opened a restaurant in La Habra, was more like me, a little uncomfortable with his ethnicity. It was a lot harder for him to hide his ethnicity.

But I don’t remember any of them not liking spaghetti.

As I grew older I discovered that being Sicilian wasn’t bad. It was part of who I was - and who I am. Those stories my dad told about growing up now mean something, and I have prserved some of those stories on tape. I gave him a recorder and asked him to just talk. Like me, that’s never been a problem. And I talk to my children about their grandfather’s background (my wife’s family are descendants of Polish immigrants).

But I still don’t like spaghetti.

Vince Grippi is graphics editor of The Spokesman-Review

By Connie Bantz

I am one of six children born to my white mother and black father. My mother is Norwegian (on her mother’s side) and Jewish (on her father’s side). My father’s mother was part (not sure how much) American Indian.

When my parents married in the early ‘50s, it was illegal in Montana for whites and blacks to marry. Ironically, my parents came to Spokane to marry.

I grew up in Billings, Mont., and spent my first five years on our farm. My father’s family were all avid horse riders and we all learned to ride early. My dad often entered us in local rodeos.

My (black) grandfather had a scarred bald head - the result of a severe beating by a group of white farmers who tried to run him out of the area. He didn’t leave. I heard the story later in life and understand that grandma had to nurse him back to health because he wouldn’t have been welcomed into the hospital.

Some of my fondest early memories are of my black grandparents. Grandpa had a wonderful sense of humor and knew EVERYTHING there was to know about farm animals. He loved to tease us and gave freely his affection.

My grandma was the best cook. She made wonderful homemade hot cocoa with milk fresh from the cow and the world’s best toast from homemade bread with homemade butter. She always wore a dress and wrapped her nappy hair in a bun. She had a handsome face and soft, strong hands. She loved my grandpa and he loved her. He called her his “chick” only he pronounced it “shick.”

When I was pregnant with my first child, it became very important to me that I understand more about these people. I put together a form for Grandma to fill out about both her family and my grandfather’s family.

I remember unfolding the returned form and reading this for the first time: “My mother was borned a slave.” It was profound.

Connie Bantz is The Spokesman-Review’s Human Resources administration manager.

By Patti Barnhouse

The ethnic origin of my family is a seldom, if ever, discussed subject. In fact, prior to this essay assignment I had no idea about, nor any great interest in, my origin.

According to my mother, we are a mixture of English, Irish, Scotch and German, on her side, and my father’s best guess is German and English. Apparently the name Barnhouse is an English translation of a German name but we don’t know what that name was.

We have no old family recipes or deep-rooted traditions and are not religious, so most holidays are celebrated differently every year with only a few family members present.

I’ve never attended a family reunion on either of my mother’s or father’s side of the family.

It’s just not a matter of huge importance to me.

Patti Barnhouse is the dispatch coordinator for The Spokesman-Review.

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