From the Pews: Janice Harms

By Dale Buchanan

Good afternoon, fellow members of Big Red Church. My name is Jan, and Dale and Gayle have recruited me to tell my story for this week’s “From the Pews” column. We are having lunch at Bobbie Salazar’s. It is hot outside but cool in here. The ambiance is pleasant and the atmosphere is perfect for quiet conversation. 

As we eat our lunch, we chat and that unobtrusively establishes an environment conducive to encouraging me to tell my story. The waitress comes to clear the table, and before I know it Dale is asking me questions, Gayle is taking notes, and I am telling the story of my German Mennonite ancestors. 

All four of my grandparents immigrated from Siberia where they were farmers. Dad’s family left early int the 1920’s before things got too bad. Mom’s family, however, had to escape in the 30’s when Stalin gained power. My grandfather was the village elder and ordered by the ruling class to turn their food over to the Communists. Their choice was to starve or to flee. Mom was one-year-old and her sister three when they, with the rest of the family, escaped across a frozen river into Harbin, China—a city to this day famous for its ice sculptures. There were Mennonites in Harbin, and they were safe there with them for a year until Reedley Mennonites sponsored them to come to the United States.

I was born in Reedley and grew up on a quarter acre lot next to mom’s folks who farmed twenty acres between Reedley and Dinuba. My paternal grandparents were also farmers and lived jut two miles down the road. Isolated in the county with a sister six years younger and a pest as far as I was concerned, playmates were few and far between. Across the ditch were cousins, and we played outdoors all day long. The ditch was a great source of entertainment. We played in it when there was water and when it was dry. We rode bicycles on the deserted country roads and walked the corner store for candy.

My mother was a typical 1950’s housewife. I remember helping her gather eggs, wash clothes with a wringer washing machine and hang them outdoors on the clothesline. Dad and mom left the Mennonite church for the Baptist church when they married figuring it was less strict. Growing up, I could hardly see how one could be more conservative than the other. No-no’s seemed to dominate—no smoking, no drinking, and no dancing were at the top of the list. 

Dad was wounded in Italy during World War II and was handicapped the rest of his life. He was a softy. If mother said, “Wait until your father gets home,” I knew I was home safe. I loved it when we borrowed grandpa’s tractor and I got to ride with him from grandpa’s farm to our place where he plowed the weeds on our quarter acre.

Dad passed away when I was twelve-years-old, and mom remarried just before I graduated from high school. My step-father was in the Air Force and strict. I was eighteen and rebellious. Mom and step-father had a hard time controlling me. I was a war protester, I had long hair, I went barefoot, wore long skirts and was in short a hippy. I was sent to Fresno State and began the nursing program. I did not do well my first year. I married my high school sweetheart who was not a hippy but a serious student at the University of Hawaii on his way to becoming an architect. He wanted me to settle down, be a housewife, and have children. I, on the other hand, went to Hawaii to be a hippy and have fun. In less than a year we were separated and I moved back home.

When school started that fall, I was back to Fresno State and that nursing program. I supported myself with odd jobs until I graduated with my nursing degree. I went to work at Fresno County Hospital and stayed there for twenty years—one year in orthopedic/neurology and nineteen years in the E.R. –a level one trauma and burn center. After this exciting twenty years of hard nursing, I went back to school and became a family nurse practitioner for the next twenty years 

Come this October I will be retired five years—a huge change from full-time challenging work. Retirement was not quite what I envisioned. I need to keep busy. An avid cyclist, I ride with a club three days a week. I volunteer two afternoons a week for three to four hours at Community Neo-Natal ICU as a cuddler of high-risk babies—from premature to drug addicted. Then there are OSHA classes at Fresno State like the Bridge class I am taking now, travel with my sister such as the trip to Egypt we are planning for this October, and group bicycle tours to the four corners.

When I left home at eighteen for college, I left the church. Five years ago, I came to the fall Bachtober concert at Big Red and enjoyed it. I picked up a brochure about the church and read about its being open and affirming which coincided with what the emergency room had taught me about acceptance. And the church is close and convenient. 

I have struggled with relationships. I wanted to settle down and have a family, but that didn’t happen. My joys, on the other hand, run the gamut from nursing to cycling, from greyhound dogs to cuddling. My dream is to stay active as long as I possibly can, and my worry is who will be there for me when I can no longer be independent.