Raised by Feminists

Growing up as the daughter of a female naval officer, my parents raised me to believe I could do anything; I just had to decide what I wanted. But I had little understanding of the historical weight of my reality. When my mother, then Lynne Ulmer, swore the oath to our country in 1970, she did so by being commissioned as an “officer and a gentleman” in defense of the U.S. Constitution. That phrase always confused me, since it never occurred to me that the term would refer to only one person at a time — in my house the officer and gentleman were my mother and father. Growing up, I was often asked what it was like to have a mom in the Navy, to which I could never answer because it always felt like asking: “What’s it like to see the world through brown eyes?” Having never seen the world through blue eyes, I have no idea. It wasn’t until I started to examine the world my grandmothers and great-grandmothers grew up in that the differences started to become clearer.

My great-grandmother, Mary Ella “Mamie” (Vest) Ulmer, was born on March 21, 1892, and in her 89 years of life, she bore witness to the invention of the car, sliced bread, the space race, and women gaining the right to vote. To me, she has only ever been a blurry photograph of a woman standing in the snow, but I sometimes try to imagine what that fundamental change must have felt like to a 28-year-old woman. From my perspective now, the idea of having to spend my formative years turning to some else to voice my political perspective feels decidedly un-American. I can only imagine that those sweeping changes across the country were both overwhelming and exhilarating.

Mamie Ulmer’s daughter-in-law and my maternal grandmother, Erna (Borngraeber) Ulmer, was six years old when the 19th Amendment was ratified. It is likely she grew up not having a memory of a time before woman suffrage existed — a marked change from the generation of women who preceded her. She moved to Oregon with her husband, Edgar Ulmer, after meeting in Chicago, and being stationed with the Navy in Corpus Christi, Texas. After Edgar left the Navy, they relocated to the Portland area, where he found work in the shipyards. They lived in Vanport, which is where my mother was born and lived until she was six months old. Ultimately, they relocated to the Cottage Grove area in April 1947, less than a year before the Vanport Flood would remove the entire area from the map.

The person who has influenced my views the most, including my strong convictions and feminism, is my paternal grandmother, Hazel (Misckot) Hanel. She was born a short seven years after many women gained the right to vote, and grew up on a small farm near Butte, Montana. As the first generation in the family born in the United States, voting and participation in the democratic process was always non-negotiable. Her father insisted she and her siblings speak English instead of German outside the house and demanded they fully participate as American citizens. On the farm, all seven kids helped with chores alongside their mother and father. My grandmother was the only one in the family who understood how the car worked, which was a skill she used to her advantage — when coming home after curfew she would pull out the spark plugs and push the car up the driveway claiming car trouble. She taught my father and his brothers and sisters about the joy she felt from running a household. She got satisfaction from doing “women’s work,” and would tell me: “Nothing like drinking a Coors while getting the ironing done.” The joy she found in running the house and becoming a teacher, despite her lack of a formal education, instilled in me the belief that feminism isn’t just about having the chance to do whatever I want; it is also about not being ashamed of what I love, no matter what societal impressions are placed on those things.

These women and their lived experiences, in many small and large ways, have shaped who I am and affected the way my voice is heard today. My mother’s, grandmothers’, and great-grandmothers’ stories, like the women highlighted in Nevertheless, They Persisted, are also part of the complex history of democracy in the United States. As visitors exit the exhibit, they will see a digital slideshow featuring pictures and stories of mothers, grandmothers, daughters, aunts, sisters, mentors, and history makers as part of our “In Their Honor” campaign (PDF). These women who came before us exercised their voting rights to help shape our nation and our world. These tributes are so personal and touching that we have decided to also share them here.