The Life of Sprout Blanchard

 

When meeting someone new she would stick out her hand and say, “I’m Sprout Blanchard."

Her mother had named her Esperanza. Esperanza, after her great grandmother who’d fled Franco in January 1939 by walking across the Pyrenees from Barcelona.

Her father didn’t like the name. People in their small New England town sometimes had trouble pronouncing it. Was the last syllable spoken as th or za?

Sprout was a perfect nickname because she was small as a baby and stayed that way all her life, never growing beyond five feet. However her personality projected a much bigger person.

As a child, she wanted to control her life. If her mother put pajamas on her, she would climb into her crib refusing bedtime stories. Later as an adult she couldn’t explain why.

In first grade at St. Joseph’s when the nuns called her Esperanza, if she answered at all, it would be to say, “My name’s Sprout.”

Sprout’s mother met with the principal, an embattled nun that would have been great as the head of a penitentiary for violent offenders.

“Esperanza, Maria Esperanza of Jesus, has been beatified. We can’t forget that she founded the Handmaids of Merciful Love and the Sons of Merciful Love. It’s a wonderful name for your daughter,” the nun said in refusing to the use the name Sprout.

Sprout’s mother knew neither the nun’s information of Sprout’s namesake or the romanticism of her great grandmother Esperanza struggling for freedom by walking in blizzards over mountains to France would change her daughter’s mind, but she felt she had to try. Sprout’s father merely shook his head and let his wife try.

When the nuns continued to call Sprout Esperanza and Sprout continued to sit at her desk, her arms folded, refusing to answer, her parents enrolled her in a public school where she excelled at Math and Science and did exceptionally well in other subjects.

As a tenth birthday present, the parents went to court to change her name legally to Sprout.

Sprout didn’t have many friends, in fact she had none claiming the other girls silly. When Mary Lou moved next door and was in the same class they shared the same interests and became besties.

In 1981 Sprout’s mother produced her second child, a daughter. Sprout’s father said he would name “this one” because he wasn’t going through another rebellion. He checked the most popular names in 1980 and they were Jennifer, Amanda and Jessica. He asked Sprout what she thought and she said, “Amanda, but I really don’t care as long as it’s not Esperanza.”

The sisters were nothing alike. As adults Amanda worked for a fashion magazine while Sprout, now Dr. Sprout Blanchard, became an archeologist. Her interest in archeology had been stirred, when at 12 she found an Indian arrowhead in the woods behind their home.

She met her husband Paul Reilly when they shared a grant to excavate a Viking mini settlement in Northern New Hampshire. This opened the door to PBS interviews, magazine articles in professional journals and a tenure track position at the University of Washington’s Seattle campus.

Sprout’s parents were relieved that their different daughter had found her professional and marital comfort zones.

Paul, knowing the story of Sprout's first name, took her to see a university presentation of Romeo and Juliet.

When Juliet asks "What's in a name?" he squeezed  his wife's hand.

"Everything," she whispered. 

 

The Grand Slam

 

Maybe my father loved the ocean and boats because as a little kid he lived on an island in Nova Scotia where his father was the lighthouse keeper.

Maybe he dreamed of owning a boat just because.

Married to my mother, who thought the ocean was something you looked at from one of Gloucester's beaches once or twice during the summer. 

For my mother social life revolved around Meadowbrook Golf Club, a few minutes from our house. Since my father loved golf too, that was not  hardship.

My stepmom was different. She listened and encouraged dreams. 

Although my father made a good living, two step kids, child support, a mortgage was reality that made buying a 28-foot cabin cruiser a dream - so he decided to build one in his Scituate, MA driveway. That he had never done much carpentry nor that he knew nothing about captaining a boat was not a deterrence.

The hull was delivered. The tools were bought. He went to work.

He took courses and read books and learned about engines and currents and whatever else he needed. 

Little by little the dream became reality. His neighbors teased him by calling him Noah. I do know he told me about leaving for work one morning to find stuffed animals lined up two-by-two to the boat. 

And then it was done - The Grand Slam, the name selected because he and my stepmom thought if they moored any port other bridge players might appear for nightly bridge games.

As the eldest child, I was selected to christen it. My then husband and I drove to Scituate where all my aunts and uncles were waiting. I took the champagne bottle and hit The Grand Slam...once...twice...three times before it broke. 

The Grand Slam was launched and immediately took on water. The hull was so dry from that the thirsty wood absorbed so much water my father feared his dream would sink. He spent the weekend bailing. It worked.

During the summer my parents lived on the boat. Aunts, uncles, friends took cruises with them up and down the coast.

I only had one ride. A storm came up and gave me the distinction of being the first sea sick passenger. I did enjoy being in port. 

My step sister was an asset. All my father had to do was have her start to tie up the boat in port and every strong young man appeared to help.

My father's dream was smashed literally by the blizzard of '78. Although The Grand Slam was well on dry land for the winter, the sea invaded land. Shards were found.

My father had retired to Florida and he and my stepmom had lived on the boat in the summer. 

No more.

In his late sixties, he wasn't sure that he had the energy to rebuild. It's okay to wake from having had your dream.

 

 

The Ring - Chapter 12

 

BETHANY STEINER

MUTTI IS SO stubborn, Bethany thought as the train with her and her mother left Paris. It was all she could do to convince her to come back to Stuttgart with her rather than fly home alone to the States. She’d need help with that ankle: her mother was feuding with her sister so Heather would be useless as a helper, and it wasn’t fair to burden Henry, especially now that her grandmother was dead.

Only five other people were in the car. Her mother had reminisced how modern trains were more like attached buses not divided into closed compartments for six people.

“How I miss chatting with people in those compartments with people sitting like they were in little rooms. Today’s trains are more like buses.” Margo arranged her crutches so they wouldn’t trip anyone.

Bethany watched them barrel out of the city and through the Parisian suburbs.

Papa would meet them at the Stuttgart train station. Mutti would stay with him not Bethany. “You can’t expect your mother to sleep on your floor,” he said as they were trying to decide what to do with Margo. Margo had not been part of those discussions.

Bethany was always amazed at how well her divorced parents got along despite her mother’s explanation that there was no reason they shouldn’t. They were friends with different passions and a shared daughter. Still, none of her friends with divorced parents on either side of the ocean had such a friendly pair.

Not that she was complaining. No matter which country and which parent she lived with, the annual transitions went smoothly. Because of the distance there was none of this one week here, one week there stuff that her friends with divorced parents suffered. The only thing both insisted on is whenever she changed countries she stay a year, more because of school than any other reason.

She found the changes interesting. The work was harder in Germany. They both started too early but only in the U.S. did she get lunch such as it was. That didn’t matter; it was speed eating. In Germany she had time to go home or to a snack bar with her friends and eat more leisurely.

Bethany suspected her father and mother considered part-time parenthood a bonus. Her mother would get lost in her art and her father could deep dive into his research. During her lifetime he had become a renowned scholar on the Vikings more by accident than career design.

During his year as a guest lecturer at Oxford, somehow, she never knew the how and why it happened, BBC filmed a series with him as the spokesperson which made his first book skyrocket to the best seller list in several countries.

She was proud of her parents and worried that she would never be able to match their accomplishments.

Despite dealing with two languages, two school systems, her marks, especially in the sciences, were always high, if not top next to it. Now she was doing research, granted as a lab assistant allowing her to work on her sub-projects within the overall grant.

There she had met Tobias, another lab assistant. She planned to introduce him to her parents since it was becoming apparent to both of them they were going to be permanent in each other’s lives. His parents lived in Berlin and they would spend Easter with them for the first time.

Tobias called them both Third Culture Kids, a term she’d never heard. Tobias explained they were raised in and outside their parents’ culture, dipping their feet in another culture and thus were never 100% of either, but their own third culture. And usually alone, that is unless they met someone who had the same experiences.

“I play like an American and work like a German,” she warned him, “but I make love like me. You’re a lucky man to have an international lover and a fellow scientist on top of it all.”

It's a Huge Price, Not Small

 

3,863,148 people live in Los Angeles 2026.

3.3 million residents live in San Diego 2026.

San Diego is the principal home port of the U.S. Pacific Fleet. There's 50 ships and 150 tenant commands. 

The president of the United States invited a foreign country to destroy those two cities. A couple of days later he gave a wishy washy comment about his comment.

He said that would be a small price to pay.  

Did Franklin D. Roosevelt invite the Japanese to attack Pearl Harbor?

Did George W. Bush invite people to fly into the World Trade Center? the Pentagon?

If they had, I'm sure they would have been tried for treason as the current president should be. Or he should be hospitalized for insanity. 

 

 

 

The Clergy Join the Abortion Fight

 

Chapter 25

 

The Clergy Join the Fight

 

In every case, once the formation of the chapter was announced in a newspaper and the phone numbers given, they were deluged with calls, usually between 30-75 within 24 hours. Los Angeles received 293 calls in their first 24 hours.

If anyone believes legislation will stop abortion, the Clergy Counseling Service’s (CCS) work might make them think again. In the late 1960s and early 1970s mostly Protestant clergy and rabbis all over the United States formed chapters to help women seeking safe abortions to find them. An estimated 500,000 women took advantage of their help. That is half a million women who broke the law and some 3,000 religious men participated in breaking the law they felt was unjust.

The driving force behind CCS was Rev. Howard Moody of The Judson Memorial Church in New York City. Located in Washington Square, the church looks like any other brown-brick church. In May 2017 the church celebrated the 50^th year anniversary of the founding of the Clergy Counseling Service (CCS). Celebrated is the correct word.

Moody knew he was facing a possible $1,000 fine and a year in jail for his work, but he said, “Some of us feel very strongly and I think we ought to break the law.”

As part of the research in establishing the service, the group talked to women who underwent illegal abortions to determine what they went through. They had a doctor show them how an abortion worked using a medical model.

Twenty-one people met to form CCS. One of them was Lawrence Lader (See Chapter 14). It was Lader, according to Bill Baird, who broke the story to The New York Times before the group planned to announce it. The newspaper published it under the heading: “Clergymen Offer Abortion Advice; 21 Ministers and Rabbis Form New Group—Will Propose Alternatives.” The names of participants were given. 

The Early Days

An answering machine had been set up at Judson Memorial Church. The goal was to change the message weekly, giving the names and phone numbers of two clergy that women in trouble could contact. People who called did not leave messages.

It was up to the women whether to telephone or not. A face-to-face meeting allowed the clergyman to decide how to best help the woman, which included keeping the baby if she wished. For those that were determined to have an abortion, they were given the name and coordinates of the doctor who would do it. There was to be no pressure on the woman to decide one way or the other.

The first day they received 35 calls: four were Catholic, 60% were Jewish.

Moody became the spokesman for the group. He was assisted by Arlene Carmen, who was from a Jewish family. Carmen joined the project in November 1967. She would provide much of the legwork in finding and maintaining a roster of licensed doctors, who would provide the procedures under the right conditions at reasonable prices. If any doctor fell outside the guidelines they were removed from the roster. Carmen was the only person who had direct contact with the doctors.

Although she was afraid to fly, to find qualified, sympathetic and qualified doctors she flew all over: Canada,  England,  Mexico,  Puerto Rico and the  United States   

Standards for doctors included:

        A license

        A medical facility, not a motel room

        Humanitarian attitude

        Used dilation and curettage (with or without anesthetic)

        Experience and limitations (Some doctors had limits on how pregnant the woman was.)

So serious was CCS about maintaining the quality of the service, by 1973 when Roe v.

Wade was passed over 300 doctors were on the banned list for not meeting CCS standards.

The woman needed to bring some proof of the length of her pregnancy. Some of their regular doctors refused to give it. For legal protection for CCS, the women needed to go to another state for the abortion. The women were asked to report their experiences to help CCS maintain the quality and the need for safety.

Carmen ran into some interesting problems. The Mafia, who also operated abortion services in New Jersey, offered her $50 for every woman sent to their New Jersey abortion service. She refused.

Moody and Carmen wrote a book: Abortion Counseling and Social Change, from Illegal Act to Medical Practice: The story of the Clergy Consultation Service on Abortion. Published in 1973, a few copies are available on Amazon (October 2017) for prices starting at $500.

Expansion

Moody found at first that other clergy didn’t know the difficulties women met when faced with an unwanted pregnancy. He comparted it to how clergy in all-white communities didn’t see there was a race problem. He knew that once the service was available, women would come.

He was right.

CCS received calls from all over, showing the need for more chapters. Some of the earliest states to sign on were:

        New Jersey

        Pennsylvania

        California

By the time Roe v. Wade was passed, 38 states had one or more chapters.

In every case, once the formation of the chapter was announced in a newspaper and the phone numbers given, they were deluged with calls, usually between 30-75 within 24 hours. Los Angeles received 293 calls in their first 24 hours.

The New York office created a National CCS which served as an information center. General Motors heir Stewart Mott helped provide funding. Contributions came in from the women who had had the abortions and could afford it.

Rev. Bennett Owens, a Yale Divinity School graduate and an administrator for the Episcopal Church, was given a year’s leave to help CCS recruit new chapters. 

Costs and Travel

Between travel to another country and the abortionist, an abortion could run up to $7,000 ($46,869 in 2018 dollars) which meant it was more accessible to white upper-class women. Cost was not always a blockage. Going to another state was less expensive. Some doctors would provide their service for free to poor black women or at reduced costs.

Carmen monitored the charging closely and did not hesitate to either strike off a doctor charging too much or negotiate smaller fees.

Many of the women had never traveled and needed help with airline reservations, passports and visas. 

A Clinic

Eventually CCS opened their own clinic with Hale Harvey as the doctor to provide care with the goals of being:

        Low cost

        High quality

        Humane treatment

Some of the small touches included colorful decorations, comfortable stirrups, cookies and sodas, and a non-hospital atmosphere

Judson Memorial Church had earlier offered the first drug treatment service in Greenwich Village. Later they would offer help to AIDS patients. 

Legal Issues

CCS fought the legislators who wanted to make a requirement that a woman must have psychological or religious counseling first. Moody told the district attorney who came to him, “No way.” A woman, he said, could always come to clergy if they wanted, but to force her was unacceptable.

In Michigan the clergy went to the state police to help set ground rules. The police helped them avoid certain words. The state attorney general and governor were involved. There was never a problem.

Chapters reported that police often brought wives, daughters, girlfriends and sisters to CCS for help. In one case in Missouri when the CCS member was called by a sheriff’s office, she thought arrest was eminent. What the caller wanted was a referral.

Although CCS had an extremely low death rate, mainly because doctors were struck off the list for the least infraction, there was a referral from the Cleveland chapter to a clinic in England. Their investigation showed that the girl had not had the procedure done by the recommended doctor but another doctor. Moody notified all CCS chapters to safeguard that only the recommended doctor should perform the abortion.

As of 1968, 44 states had laws that clergy could not be forced to reveal what parishioners had told them. Mullen v. United States in 1958 had earlier established that right.

In Cleveland a lawyer told the counselors not to write anything down and instead have the woman write down the information given orally.

Another issue was if a clergy member counsels a person later accused of a crime, prosecuting the clergy member is a threat to church freedom.

Rabbi Max Ticktin was caught up in a police sting in Chicago. Earlier he had counseled conscientious objectors to the Vietnam war. On 23 December 1969, Ticktin was approached by a couple. That the woman wanted to wait a week bothered him, but not enough not to proceed.

During the counseling session, Ticktin said that he did not advocate abortion but was there to explore alternatives. He had lists of doctors in London and Puerto Rico. He did mention a Detroit doctor.

Early the next year, when Ticktin was in Israel, he was told that his office had been raided. The couple who he’d counselled were a policeman and policewoman.

Tiktin was arrested on his return to the U.S.

The charges were dropped. The judge ruled that Michigan law allowed abortion when necessary to preserve life, and that was vague.

There were other “close calls” in Pennsylvania, Kansas, Florida and New York. 

Denominations and Gender

Although Moody was a Baptist and many of the first clergy to join CCS were Baptists, that was partially because of Moody’s connections. There were also Jewish rabbis (61), usually reformed, but a few conservatives. The small number of rabbis annoyed Arlene Carmen, who was Jewish. One of the things that bothered her was that they only had one rabbi a month. Many of the women who called asked for a rabbi.

Other denominations included:

        Congregationalists

        Church of the Brethren

        Disciples of Christ

        Episcopal

        Friends

        Lutherans

        Methodist

        Reformed Church

        Swedenborgian

        Unitarians

In the beginning only men were CCS counselors. However, more women were being ordained in some of the churches and some of them took on the role of CCS counselors.