Yes, You Can!: Have a Second Life After 60

By Loretta Land

Land's writing is the story of fourteen years of her life, taking the reader through a time line direct from God. A true story of first the annoyance of seeing her carefully laid-out plan for future years to amazement at how divine wisdom intervened and was perfect as to where the author was to be and when, who she was to meet and why, and how the future would be forever changed even if the yielding of plan A (the author's) to plan B (God's) was done with hesitancy. A life of overseas adventure takes the reader to Armenia, Georgia, Uzbekistan, Ghana, and China. It is interspersed with bits of history, current events, and future opportunities of humans. It gives the reader an opportunity to understand why letting God be in control works best for humanity at any age.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Covenant Books, Inc.
• Release date: Apr 9, 2019
• ISBN: 9781644716489

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Yes, You Can*

*Have a Second Life after Sixty

Loretta Land

ISBN 978-1-64471-647-2 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-64471-648-9 (Digital)

Copyright © 2019 Loretta Land

All rights reserved

First Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Covenant Books, Inc.

11661 Hwy 707

Murrells Inlet, SC 29576

www.covenantbooks.com

I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice—not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my Mother’s death, but because he is the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany.

—John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany

Chapter 1

Introduction

The most important words a person might say in a conversation are what psychologists call the hand-on-the-doorknob words. These are what a person might say on his or her way out the door after having had a lengthy conversation with someone about many topics. These are the important words a person really wants to say but doesn’t have enough nerve until the last minute. This is what I am doing now for you—my children, my grandchildren, my great-grandchildren, and my friends.

My children know parts of this story; my great-grandchildren hardly know me. Thus, I am dedicating these thoughts to my grandchildren: Stephen, Jessica, Jennifer, Samuel, Ben (Wisconsin), Matthew, Madison, Michael, Emily, Natasha, Kyle, Benjamin (Indiana), and Jack. One of them someday might want to take my ashes to the Camino de Santiago in Northern Spain.

Even if you don’t undertake that adventure, I want you (as well as my children, great-grandchildren, my in-law children, my step grand- and great-grandchildren, and my friends) to understand what I did in my overseas work, how important it was for me, and why I want to share these hand-on-the-doorknob words with my readers.

The question is, I suppose, What doorknob is my hand on?

Whatever words end up being written in this book, I believe that they can’t be said orally. I want you to see them visually, and perhaps when you are my age, reread and see them again. The last few years have been so important to me; and before this body, mind, and soul get too old, I want to use the doorknob to tell you what I have experienced in these later years of my life.

When your grandfather died, there was not one thought in my brain that pointed me to the way that would lead me to believe I would ever end up seeing another part of the world. I was going to be a good grandmother to you all. I probably wouldn’t be the baking-cookies person though; I didn’t even do that for your parents. I liked to show you things, to show you the world as we are living in it. Probably, what I had in mind at that time was to show you the Midwest, including, of course, Chicago. Your parents can tell you that I always loved Chicago.

Remember when I moved from Crown Point into Chicago? Then moved from Chicago to Cleveland, Ohio? It seemed like I was moving so far away. Moving to Cleveland was the fulfillment of a goal: getting a job that was worthy of my recently earned master’s degree, going from receptionist to secretary to supervisor, and then finally to management. Receptionist to assistant vice president in ten years. What a life.

I had been living in Cleveland for a month (May 1993) or so, and Memorial Day weekend was coming up. I knew I was coming back to see some of you over the Fourth of July, and so I was looking for something else to do with that long weekend. I hadn’t been living in Cleveland long enough to want to visit any of my new friends or coworkers on what I considered a family type of weekend, but I also knew I didn’t want to stay alone in my apartment. You know me; I will go anywhere on a bus. I made my decision to take a Greyhound Bus to Toronto, Canada, and set some new goals for my life.

You may or may not know that since Grandpa Land died, it was necessary for me to set goals in writing on what and how I was going to survive and accomplish anything. After that first part of putting words to paper is done, then it is necessary to outline what steps must be taken to make sure they would happen. The goal that I had set for myself in May of 1992 when I received my master’s degree at Loyola, had been archived when I took the job in Cleveland.

I knew I had wanted to work overseas in some capacity, so I went off to Toronto to see the sights and to do some serious thinking about this. You know the outcome of that: Peace Corps. What you may not know is how it all came about.

Once I had eliminated all the things I didn’t want to do overseas, Peace Corps was my choice. I was sixty at the time; and my plan was to join when I was sixty-three, finish when I was sixty-five, return to the United States, and then be eligible for both Social Security as well as a small pension from my place of employment. However, joining Peace Corps isn’t that simple. What did I have in skills that made me think they might want me to be part of their organization?

Call the eight-hundred number, Loretta, I said to myself for several weeks.

On one occasion of talking to myself, I did make the call. What was the worst they could say? I supposed it was something like Sorry, you are too old or Sorry, you don’t have the skills that Peace Corps is looking for. Or it could be any other combination of words that would be my rejection.

But that didn’t happen. Laura was the Peace Corps recruiter in Detroit (Cleveland didn’t have an office) who spoke with me. She counseled me on the timing (usually one year) to fill out the application in order to be considered for the time that I wanted to serve. Within days, I had the packet of forms that had to be completed on the selected schedule. I read them through and then dutifully put them away in my tickler file.

My timing didn’t quite work out. God had need of me to go on this adventure earlier than I had planned. I will tell you that story in bits and pieces throughout these writings. It is the reason for my being.

What is important now is that you know that the phone call to that 800 number was the beginning of my love affair with the village of Zovk, Armenia. I just didn’t know it yet. It is that village and the days that led up to my being introduced to it that has inspired me to tell you this story.

When I listen to my meditation tape, The Images of Peace by Michelle Hartman, there is a sentence that states, When you are ready, think of your loved ones and the strangers you don’t know and love yet. Smile with an open heart and a centered beam. And know the process of healing the world begins with your living consciously.

Zovk were those strangers I didn’t know and love yet.

Zovk is an Armenian village about fifteen kilometers from the capital city of Yerevan. The official population when I first went there was two hundred ninety families, but the official anything isn’t always official or accurate. The family I met was the Pogassian family—grandparents (Seda and Kolia), parents (Suzanne and Anton), and children (Gor, Len, and Nune). The person responsible for this introduction was Aram Tarakhchian. It was his governmental office that I was working in when my Peace Corps training came to an end. Aram was responsible for so many experiences and adventures in my Armenian stay. I am indebted to him forever.

I have copies of many of the letters I wrote to your parents in my stay away from home. Because of a paper shortage, I wrote in one long paragraph. The grammar and sentence structure would make any English teacher frown. And the strange continuity of rambling thoughts caused many sins of writing omissions, and repetitive use of words and phrases is all over the place.

After I had been in Armenia for six months, I wrote to your parents about my first introduction of Zovk. Below is a part of that letter.

22 January 1996

I want to tell you about my day last Saturday. On Friday, Aram—the man I work with in the Ministry of Economy—asked me if I would go to a village with him and his wife, Nune, to visit some friends who raise pigs. I said, Sure. This village was Zovk, and these friends of his are the Pogassians who live in one home, owned by the grandparents. And together they operate a farm including growing crops and raising a few animals. After the economy failed, they lost most everything that had helped sustain not only them but all the other village families. Aram got them restarted in raising pigs by buying them their first four. He thought at least they would have enough meat for themselves. And after a few litters of piglets, if they could even sell one a month, they would have enough money to survive. This farm is totally self-sufficient if the weather cooperates, and if it doesn’t, they go hungry. This is a country where people live off what is in season and/or what has been preserved in the fall to keep for the winter and until the next crop is ready to harvest. This family has three cows to have milk, and they can make their own butter, cheese, sour cream, and yogurt. There is a type of bread that Armenians eat called lavish, sort of a thin wrap bread. Each village family makes their own in a firepit in the ground.

Basically, that is enough to get you started on your learning quest about this country of Armenia as well as all my overseas career. It is important for me to give you an understanding of the people, the work, the life, the loves, the fears, the poverty, the religion, the history, the kindness, and the acceptance of life as it is as I write this dichotomy of your grandmother that not only took me to Armenia and Zovk but also to Georgia, Uzbekistan, Ghana, and China.

Thank you for taking the time to read it. I love you all.

—Grandma, Great-grandma, Mom,

Loretta

Chapter 2

A Letter to My Family

In the spring of 2015, I was in the DePaul University area (Sheffield and Fullerton). I went into the student center to scan the bulletin board to see what was going on in the students’ lives.

A musical concert was coming up with the intention of helping people cope with their emotions. A few examples of who might benefit included those who were undergoing the isolation of aging. That three-word phrase touched me very much.

It has nothing to do with loneliness or being alone; instead, it signifies that each person, at some age, begins to live in isolation. The past is so far past, and no one wants to share with you the memories of that experience mainly because they are only your memories. Probably, they have heard them before. The future means death and all the events leading up to it. For sure, no one wants to talk about that. Beyond death, we don’t have a clue as to what we are talking about, so those conversations don’t go very far.

Thus, the isolation of aging is to me an appropriate term. I am in it.

Why now am I putting words to paper when I have tried so many times in the past twenty years and failed? Why should it be any different this time?

A couple of nights before I started this project, I received a phone call from an Armenian man that I knew during those adventures of my past. He, his wife, two sons, mother-in-law, her other daughter, and two children were going to be in Chicago for two or three days and wanted to visit with me. The wife’s family lives in Windsor, Canada, and they were going to drive to Chicago from there. I was delighted.

Ara Tarakhchyan, known as Araik (meaning little Ara) and as done by all Armenians, is called Araikjan, meaning little Ara dear. It was so nice having him call me Lorettajan! Quickly, the good memories came floating back.

Ara was a teenager when I first met him, and he was driving his father crazy. Since I had no history issues with him, I could view him as he was in the here and now. It was Ara that I used the Junior Achievement book with, and together we went through the aspects of our market economy as opposed to Armenia’s command economy. Armenia was part of the USSR for seventy-two years and now had not a clue in the world how to do anything differently. Their command economy had failed, and no one had told them how they were supposed to build a new one.

Ara is grown-up, married, and the father of three children; and I am in the isolation of aging area of my life. Writing my memories now is a pleasure. I am thankful for the time I have left to complete this book. I am so thankful for his unknowing motivation to make me begin to write.

My adventures began on April 24, 1984, the day of my husband’s death. For me and for my children, our lives forever changed on that day.

My memories before and after his death were, indeed, a pleasure to live even with all the agony that life and death brings.

I hope you will find this small segment of words something to think about as you live your lives one day at a time.

Chapter 3

Never Underestimate Education

Education allowed me to have doors open that I never even knew existed.

My husband—God bless him—according to his physician, didn’t die on schedule. The last seven years of his thirteen-year illness he was not to live through the day. His doctor would say to me, He is so bad that if he winks, that is going to be too much for him. His heart will stop. It didn’t.

After a couple of years into that phase of life, money became a critical issue. I knew I was needing employment. I went to St. Anthony’s Hospital and Nursing Home to see if I could get a job working nights. That way, I could be home early in the morning to get the kids off for school, take care of Chuck during the day, prepare supper, and then go back to work. I don’t know when I thought I was going to sleep! Minor detail. Sleep is overrated.

The application was nine pages long. I had none of the skills needed for employment. I was beyond discouraged. As always, God provided an answer. That very day in our mail delivery came a flyer from Indiana Vocational Technical College (Ivy Tech) advertising its new classes. Typing classes were listed. I remembered that typists were needed at St. Anthony’s.

I thought if I could learn to type, I could apply for that job of transcribing during the night the doctor’s notes that were written during the day. I felt better; there was going to be something I was going to be able to do.

I went to Ivy Tech that very afternoon, filled out the application, and applied for a Pell Grant; and my educational ventures were beginning. They almost came to an end before I attended my first class. St. Anthony’s called, and I was offered a nurses’ aid job working nights in the nursing home section. Temptation of immediate money versus long-term money. Thanks be to God, I chose the long term.

I only intended to take classes in the administration secretarial division of Ivy Tech until I learned to type. I started, my body shaking with fear, as I walked into a classroom. I was the most insecure person that I think ever existed.

The second quarter, I was enrolled in an English class taught by an adjunct new to the Ivy Tech staff. She asked me what I thought I could do with this education as I was so old. I was forty-seven. Years later when Ivy Tech was offering classes for mature women, I sent them a letter telling them about this English teacher whose name fortunately I have long forgotten. I included my résumé, which is quite extensive. I encouraged them never to discontinue their classes for women of any age.

I found I enjoyed taking classes although I soon realized that typing and shorthand skills were not to be my forte of talents. When I had earned my associate degree, I asked myself, What to do now? God answered.

In the back of our parish church was a notice that Calumet College was offering one scholarship for incoming new students for each of the parishes in the diocese. I found out that no one from our church had ever applied.

Since I already had my associate degree, I didn’t know if I would be eligible for acceptance. I called, and the answer was positive. I could apply and all else being okay, I would be accepted. Icing on the cake would be that for each credit I had earned at Ivy Tech, I would be given three-fourths of a credit at Calumet College.

I supplemented the scholarship money with a grant from a professional women’s group in Lake County, Indiana, and that paid for my books and the odd fees that colleges always seem to have. I also worked as a work-study student in the office of the assistant to the president, as well as writing the alumni newspaper and bringing its mailing list up-to-date.

I decided to major in psychology with dominance in thanatology (death and dying). By taking these classes, I might learn something that would be of help to my husband, to me, and to our kids.

Came time to graduate with my BA degree, and my husband was still living. It was so hard for him to have his wife work at a money-paying job; it was so against his grain. I had gotten into my mindset that I wasn’t ready to quit taking classes. I enjoyed the stimulation.

I was teaching the eighth-grade religion classes at our parish. One of the perks was that the bishop would pay for any teacher to take advanced religion classes that were offered at many sites around the diocese. I asked him if I could take religion classes at Calumet College and have them apply toward a BA degree. His reply was positive.

My concentration in the theology (study of God) classes was the Fathers of the Church, which studied from the birth of Jesus until the year 1054. In those first hundreds of years, the followers of Jesus were governed by five different areas known to the world: Antioch, Alexandria, Constantinople, Jerusalem, and Rome. By the year 1054, only Constantinople and Rome were active sites. It was at that time that the bishop of Rome (Leo IX) decided he wanted to have sole power over the Christian world. He invaded the bishop of Constantinople (Ecumenical Patriarch) and killed him and his followers. He declared that all the Christian churches as belonging to Rome.

Thus, began the Roman Catholic Church and the various Eastern churches. The proper name for those who stayed with Rome is Uniates and the others Orthodox.

What I didn’t study in this degree was that it was Armenia that became the first country to accept Christianity in the year 301, thirteen years before Constantine accepted Christianity for the rest of the world through the Edict of Milan. In bits and pieces, I will tell you this story throughout my writings as the reason for it is what made up my life and the work in this portion of my existence.

Much of my writing centers on religious history in this country of Armenia as well as those twin peaks of majesty that comprise Mount Ararat, Noah’s Ark’s mountain, the first rainbow. There are people who believe the story and of course those who don’t. For me, it was and still is an awesome thing to think about. I invite everyone to read Genesis 8:4 and draw your own conclusions.

If you want to be more intrigued, you can study the first chapter of Ezekiel, the seventh chapter of Deuteronomy, the twenty-eight chapter of Jeremiah, and the tenth chapter of the Book of Revelations. These are all references to rainbows; they must have been important to our earth’s Creator.

I saw a few rainbows in Armenia. Each time, I wondered if I was seeing these bows of color in the same place Noah did.

Chuck died on April 24, 1984. I was very close to finishing my theology degree, so I decided to complete it. That first summer after his death, my kids helped me repair our house, the leaks in the roof, the lack of heat, the chipped paint, the rotting floors, the overgrown garden, and the peeling paint on the siding of our home.

I took only one student loan, for two thousand five hundred dollars. I used it for food for our family and to buy electric blankets for our beds. I took the electric blankets away the first summer after Chuck died when I discovered that some of my offspring were turning on the air-conditioning and at the same time using the electric blankets! The joys of motherhood.

In October of that year, I received a phone call from Andrean High School in Merrillville. It had received my name from Calumet College as a possible theology teacher for its tenth-grade class. I said I wouldn’t have my theology degree until the end of December, but that didn’t seem to bother them. In Indiana, at a private school, teachers didn’t need degrees in anything.

Knowing that it was October, I did wonder why they were looking for an instructor at that time of year. In the first few minutes of the interview, I found the answer. In the school’s first five weeks, this class had had five teachers. They all quit. That intrigued me. I think at that point the principal would have hired anyone that could walk and talk at the same time.

I was now teaching theology in a Catholic high school. After I received my BA degree, I enrolled in an online master’s degree (also in theology) from St. Mary’s of the Woods in Terre Haute, Indiana. At one point in the spring, I had to attend a weekend seminar in Terre Haute. It was while I was there that I found out the entire program was not worth it for me. It wasn’t a study of Christ; it was a study of theologians, most of them very liberal and out of touch with reality. Not for me. I quit.

However, I didn’t make the decision final until the end of the summer when I was in Alaska. I had made plans to take a trip to Alaska many months before I had begun my teaching job; I needed desperately to get out of Indiana for a while. The reality of my husband’s death had overtaken me. The house was falling apart. The kids were being kids. Life was sort of falling apart a day at a time. I knew I had to get away or have a nervous breakdown. I went to plan A.

This was to take the insurance money I had gotten and go away as far from home as I could possibly go but still feel safe and speak English; Alaska was my answer. My youngest, Patrick, was going to go with me via car to Rapid City, South Dakota, and stay with brother Mark for the six weeks that I planned to be away. Peter was going to stay in Crown Point. Rita had gotten married, and all the other ones were living their lives in and/or out of our home.

I left the car and Patrick (and, if I remember correctly, a small TV) in Hill City at Mark’s home. Hill City was outside of Rapid City and right behind Mount Rushmore. I took the Jack Rabbit bus to Winnipeg, Manitoba, then the Canadian train VIA across the country to Prince Rupert, British Columbia.

I stayed a couple of days in that Canadian city until the Alaskan High Way System Ferry was ready to leave for its trip up the inside passage of Alaska. There are no roads, and this boat (or ship) carried freight first and passengers second. It was wonderful if one wasn’t a type-A person, which fortunately I am not. The ship didn’t go through the passage if the weather was a bit inclement, so schedules were always hit-and-miss.

I planned to get off in Ketchikan, Sitka, and Juneau for a few days’ visit in each city. In Ketchikan, I learned about totem poles, Sitka, the Russian influence as well as the puffin birds, and, in Juneau, about the government.

It was in Sitka when I was at the Presbyterian Sheldon Jackson College that I met the author James Mitchener. He was doing some research for his upcoming book, Alaska. I admired his work so much. The story of his death is interesting. He and his wife were aging as we all do, one day at a time. Because of his work, he had made a large sum of money, and because they had no children, they started the search on the best way to give away this money now while they were alive and somewhat healthy. Later, his wife died, and at some point, his own health required that he go onto kidney dialysis. After just a short period of doing this, he asked himself, Why? He never did another treatment; he died within a short period of time.

My master’s degree was officially halted after I returned to Crown Point. It wasn’t long before new doors opened.

I discovered that for a woman with no working experience (it seemed that taking care of all my kids wasn’t work) regardless of how much education I had, jobs were not too plentiful. Lots of taking care of other people’s kids or house cleaning. There were a few minimum-wage jobs offered, but I needed money, real money. I certainly didn’t want to take care of someone else’s kids, and I was a terrible house cleaner.

An employment agency in downtown Chicago advertised in the Lake County Star, the local newspaper for Crown Point. I called them and made an appointment for a few days later. Fortunately, there was a commuter bus going every day from Crown Point to the Loop. Away I went. This agency was extremely helpful to me. The best advice they gave was for me to take any job I was offered. Just get in the door, they told me. Advancing is easy. And it was.

I commuted in for job interviews and finally for a job.

My first job was as the receptionist at the Midwest Stock Exchange (now called the Chicago Stock Exchange). It was looking for a mature person who would be willing to take that job forever. I gave a very good interview of being that person even though I knew that I needed or wanted to advance as quickly as I could.

The employment agency was right; advancing was easy. Especially at the Midwest Stock Exchange where I observed that many of the jobs I wanted were being done by females who were looking for husbands among the rich brokers working on the trading floor. This was more important to them than securing their futures on their own. Great for me who had been there, done that.

Computers were new to the working world. It didn’t take me long to see that the older office staff didn’t want to make the transition from the typewriter to the computer and that the younger employees were only using the computers as an extension of the typewriter. I had taken a couple of computer classes at Ivy Tech, and I knew enough to use the computer to generate the alumni newspaper at Calumet College.

When I saw other staff being given projects that took some computer creativity, I volunteered to help. As the receptionist, my duties were to answer the phones that had already rung in a vice president’s office, bounced to a secretary, and then to me to take a written message. I also greeted guests and made sure they got to the proper office. I wasn’t always busy, and I was told that I could do anything with my free time that I wanted even if it meant something not having anything to do with the Midwest Stock Exchange. I had been given a computer, and I took advantage of the classes offered that were free to me. I was ready. The other staff members were willing to turn over some of their work to me.

The one negative I was encountering was that for the jobs I wanted in my advancement level, it was necessary to have more working years than I had on my résumé. Everyone wanted someone with five years’ experience. I read the book What Color Is My Parachute to learn how to transfer life experiences, of which I had many, into business lingo. Didn’t work. I still needed more years.

One of the great advantages of working at the Midwest Stock Exchange was that it paid for not only individual improvement classes but also any BA degree and a MA degree if it was related to business. I thought perhaps if I could get a master’s that might make up for some of the years I was lacking.

It was while I was taking a secretarial advancing class being held at the Knickerbocker Hotel on Walton Street that I spent my lunch hour at the nearby Loyola University getting information on MA degrees in the business faculty. Bingo. Loyola offered a graduate degree in organizational development. I looked through the catalogue and found it was indeed a business degree. All I had to do was convince the Midwest Stock Exchange of that.

I outlined each class in this organizational development faculty with its application not only to the business world but to the Midwest Stock Exchange specifically. Based on that paper, I was given permission to enroll.

I moved into Chicago (1229 S. Michigan) during the week, and I went back to Crown Point on weekends. Patrick had moved to Texas to stay with Chris. Peter was still living in the house and going to Valparaiso University. Rita had moved back with the two grandchildren, and others of my children came and went. Mark had returned from South Dakota and was living next door.

This MA degree had a five-year time span to complete. If a person went full-time, it could be earned in one and a half years. It took me four out of those five years, but I did finish! And with good grades to boot! It was another of those situations where I literally shook when entering a class. Not sure if that ever went away, but it did get better. The night of my first class I had gotten word that I was promoted to my first supervisory job; I felt just a bit better walking into the classroom with so many professional people. Even though I was still technically a secretary, this one had some clout with it as I was responsible for the hiring or firing and supervision of all the office personnel for the trust and clearing departments

I finished. I graduated. I began looking for a new job.

Chapter 4

After My Master’s Degree

My years of being a departmental secretary at the Chicago Stock Exchange gave me the opportunity of meeting many people. Working as a secretary always provides information about a person way beyond general knowledge. One of those persons I was privileged to meet and work with was a territorial salesperson, Michael Kricfalusi, from Little Rock, Arkansas.

He seldom was at the home office where I was located, but I kept track of his work, his budget, his ATM, his expense reports, his sales calls, his successes, his failures, basically his life. Unfortunately, he had his own way of doing things, and at some point, he was politely asked to resign. He went to Cleveland to work for Society Bank.

My job-searching quest had traveled to Cleveland. Fortunate for me that Society Bank had just purchased Ameritrust and had undergone a Regulation 9 audit by the federal government. Ameritrust held a variety of assets within its confines. When the audit was completed, it was discovered that many of those assets were missing. They were not declared as stolen, just misplaced. They didn’t survive the transfer from pen and paper to a line on a computer page. It took over a year to find the last ones, in an Indiana branch secretary’s desk drawer. They were bearer bonds!

The feds’ requirement for the merger to be final was that Society Bank had to install a compliance person in each department. This is where my business education became useful. A secretary would never be hired for this work, but because I had my MA compliments of the Chicago Stock Exchange, I received a phone call from my former coworker asking if I was interested in working for him as the compliance officer of the operations department.

I didn’t have a clue as to what this entailed, but I said sure. I was given a sign-in bonus, double my current salary, paid for housing for six months, and moving expenses. And the Friday before Mother’s Day in May of 1993, off I went to Cleveland, Ohio.

I owned my condo on Chestnut Street at that time. Patrick and then girlfriend, Sue, rented it from me since I still had a mortgage payment.

I liked Cleveland, rented a nice apartment within walking distance of work, and began to explore the city and its activities that centered around the Flats. I learned what it was that I was supposed to be doing at the bank, and there I made one of the best friends I have ever had, Mark Warmouth. He was young enough to be my son, but nevertheless we were kindred spirits from the start. We went for long walks, for rides on his boat, and to the Top of the Town happy-hour bar at one of the nearby hotels. And we talked about Ameritrust, Society Bank, and, later on, Key Bank. We worked in the same department for the same bosses.

Within a few months of my starting at Society Bank, I was promoted to assistant vice president, having the title of bank officer attached to it. This was a very good thing but at the same time a very bad thing. The good thing was the pay increase that came with the title along with the prestige; the bad thing was that I was privy to information concerning upcoming events of the bank. By the end of the first year, I knew about two that were going to affect my life.

The first was that Society Bank was going to have an equal merger with Key Bank of Albany, New York. I was sure those people were way beyond me in knowledge, so would I lose my job? The second one was that there were plans to close the division of the bank where my work was taking place regardless of the merger or not. This was a biggie!

While I had accomplished much in my working career up to that point, I still had the confidence of a church mouse. I knew it was time to develop my next five-year plan. This I hoped would involve somehow overseas work.

I took a long weekend and traveled by bus to Toronto, Canada, via Buffalo, New York. I made a hotel reservation near the bus station and settled in for a few days.

Join Peace Corps. After the process of elimination of things I knew I didn’t want to do, Peace Corps seemed like a good choice of the things I thought I would like to do.

When I returned to Cleveland, I called the Peace Corps office in Detroit, the nearest one to Cleveland. My plan was to join Peace Corps when I was sixty-three, do the required twenty-seven months, and return to the United States when I was sixty-five. Then I would be able to collect Social Security and get the medical benefits that came with it. I was sixty at this planning stage.

The Peace Corps office person that I was in touch with assured me that I was qualified to be one of its volunteers. She told me she would send me an application to peruse and consider. She also told me that the average time of an application being accepted was a year or so. I put it away in my tickler file to be looked at in the spring when I would be sixty-two.

I wrote out my smart goals. I started preparing my physical body and my mental health. I changed my diet, exercised, developed a financial plan, and continued to work as diligently as possible at my work so I would have as much business knowledge in my brain as I could possibly have.

Peace Corps had told me I was a candidate for its business department. The requirement that these people needed was to have been working for at least five years before they could be considered. Other divisions accepted volunteers right out of college.

The issue this caused for Peace Corps was that by the time a college graduate had worked for five years, she or he was probably married with a baby or two or was starting to climb the corporate ladder. Thus, older persons were filling this division, and I certainly fit in the older category.

When I changed my diet, I stirred up the gallstones my body had been developing over the years; my internal and external fat content had changed, and when those little suckers lost their home, they rebelled and caused me pain.

The doctor suggested (strongly) that I have the gallbladder removed before it became a serious issue. What would happen if I was in some strange and vastly underdeveloped country and one of those stones became lodged somewhere it shouldn’t? Made sense to me. Arrangements were made for surgery.

The week before this was to happen, I received a phone call from the Detroit Peace Corps office asking me if I would consider joining earlier than my planning date. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, many of the republics that made up the USSR were now independent and asking for Peace Corps volunteers to come and work with them.

My first thought was my upcoming surgery, and immediately I surmised that Peace Corps wouldn’t take a person that was undergoing surgery. However, that thinking was wrong. The Detroit representative made a three-way call with the medical office in Washington. I explained my surgery, and the reply was that it was no problem. Unless I had an unforeseen problem with the surgery, I could be cleared to go the following month.

Second and third thoughts were combined. One was that I wasn’t a person who liked her plans disturbed or changed, and accordingly if I gave in to the change, I was opening myself up to financial problems. If I left Key Bank before age sixty-three, I would not be eligible for its retirement plan. If I joined early, I would be completing the assignment when I was sixty-three and returning to the United States without a job and without medical insurance. And if I took early Social Security, I knew it wouldn’t be enough to support me.

This was in November of 1994; the application had to be submitted before December 15 to be considered for the May appointments, which was when Peace Corps wanted me. I had the surgery done by laser, no problems, and a quick recovery.

When I returned to the doctor’s office a week later, I asked him, How was I? since they check every part of the body before they do the surgery. He went through all that information, one by one, and said, Fine. Couldn’t use the surgery for an excuse not to go early.

I began to fill out the application, thinking that if God was going to allow this door to open, he had a better reason for my going than I had for my not going. I found out, yes, indeed, he did.

The application and acceptance of each is in three parts. I finished the first, sent it in, and waited to hear if it was accepted or not. Truly in my mind, I thought I would be rejected at the first weed out time. That never happened; everything seemed to be exactly what someone wanted it to be and moved me along to the next phase.

My Peace Corps recruiter was Laura. She told me on November 11, 1994, to begin a log of my Peace Corps attempt activities. She said things get lost very easily; people change roles, and it is okay to call frequently to see where my file is now.

I needed to have six letters of recommendations that fit into certain categories: Jeff Hammer, a longtime friend; Mark Warmouth, a current coworker; Brenda Long, a newly acquired friend; Peter Townsend, a teacher from Loyola; Robert McGrail, a boss from the working world; and Thomas Cashmer, a person from the volunteer world.

I have a copy of the thank-you letter that I wrote to Jeff Hammer. It was dated June 18, 1995, and started out, Well, I have been in Armenia for sixteen days now.

I told him a bit about my training and my observations about the city, people, and culture. I went to the Armenian Ballet today and sat in front of the Russian ambassador, and I went to a church service at the American Embassy, and our ambassador, Harry Gilmore, played all the old and familiar Bible songs on the piano.

I have a notation on January 21, 1995, that all the reference letters were in, and now we could go on with the legal part. January 23, I had my fingerprints done and filled out the background check form. January 24, I mailed by regular mail (as requested) in a special Peace Corps envelope the fingerprints, background forms, and a pledge form that I had filled out. On February 17 (Friday), I placed a call to the evaluator; my reference code number was 144. Carrie Slade had received everything, including the FBI checklist. I felt so important: the FBI knowing about me! Later on when I got to Armenia, I found out the KGB also knew all about me. Then I really felt important.

A page of notes that survived my many moves include:

March 3, I spoke with Carrie Slade, who reported everything was looking good and that I was going to be recommended to be placed in Fiji.

April 12, 1995, I received a phone call from the Peace Corps. They were extending me an invitation not to go to Fiji but Armenia, exactly on the opposite side of the world from my Chicago home. It was my first choice on the form that I had received of possible places I was being considered for. But then I got the call that I was being sent to Fiji. Fiji was having some kind of political coup, and Peace Corps won’t send its Peace Corps volunteers (PCVs) to a country in turmoil I found out later.

April 14, Friday, Good Friday at that. I gave my notice to Key Bank, through Michael Kricfalusi, my boss, my good friend, my mentor. As I was leaving Mike’s office, the executive vice president, Randy Ripple, walked in. Mike told him what I did. He hugged me and said he wished he could come with me. I then went over and spoke with Mike Sterns (my direct boss) and gave him my resignation news. Mike Kricfalusi came over and joined us. I was officially out of a job? And it felt so good.

April 15, Saturday, I called all my children; the reactions were varied when I told them it would be Armenia I was going to, not Fiji.

April 17, Monday, I called the Armenia desk and left a message on its voice mail, but I didn’t get a return call.

April 18, 1995, Tuesday. I called the Armenia desk again and left another message but still didn’t get a call.

April 19, 1996, Wednesday. Called Laura in Detroit to ask her why the Armenia desk had not returned my calls. She said they were really busy at this time of year and weren’t too good at returning calls. Do I really want to work for such a group? Well, yes, I do, as I don’t have a job with Key Bank anymore!

April 20, 1995, Thursday. Helen, the Armenian director, left a message on my voice mail at work, telling me to wait until I got the invitation package and then, if I had any questions, to call her.

April 22, 1995, Saturday. I spoke with all the kids again, who had different reactions—some good, some not so good.

April 23, 1995, Sunday. I spoke with Carolyn Ayaro who lives in Denver. She and her husband were with the first group that the Peace Corps had sent. There was a story about them in The Wall Street Journal. Carolyn admitted that there were troubles in the country, but only because they were the first group. Carolyn taught social studies, and her husband Ken was in the business department, but without much success. They thought it was a positive experience but wouldn’t do it again and are now working with International Executive Service Corps (IESC).

April 24, I received an e-mail from Kevin Blakley that read:

Hi, Loretta. This is the third time I have tried to send this message. As you have probably surmised by now, I am not the computer whiz our mutual friend, John, is. Well, I am sorry to hear of your pending departure from Key Corp. Your decision to join the Peace Corps is really not a surprise though, given your quixotic approach to life. I only hope that when my life begins to come to a close, I can look back and say that it has been as interesting as Loretta Land’s. Be proud of yourself, Loretta. You are an extraordinary person. I am glad to be able to say that I had the opportunity to meet such a remarkable woman.

Wow!

When I got to Armenia, I learned about the problems Carolyn mentioned. Remember, theirs was the first volunteer group to enter the country. Volunteer was a word that was unknown to the Communist world; it just wasn’t done as the government was to take care of every person and all their needs. Thus, a volunteer was never needed. Here come thirty plus American men and women who were immediately suspect and so not to be trusted.

The major problem for the A1s (the first group of Peace Corps volunteers for Armenia) was that no one outside of the government officials really wanted them there mainly because they didn’t know what to do with them. Over half of the group left before the end of their term; several of them got married to locals and then left for home. The ones who stayed decided to take on the shoveling of the snow that the city was having way over and beyond its averaged amounts. We heard stories and saw some pictures in the Peace Corps office of them shoveling the snow from the one hundred cascade steps.

The A2s (the second group of Peace Corps volunteers for Armenia) arrived just as the term of the A1s was expiring; this group only had fifteen PCVs and didn’t have too much more success in making inroads than the A1s. Thus, the home office decided to wait a year before sending our group, the A3s (the third group of Peace Corps volunteers for Armenia). By this time, the word had gotten out that we were free labor; we were a bit more accepted. There were thirty-two of us starting, and twenty-nine of us finished. We accomplished a lot.

May 6, 1995. My last day as an employee of Key Corp. The last three weeks have been fun, exciting, and a little nervous. I had an appointment to visit with Bob Cooley, Randy Ripple, Kevin Blakley, and Michael Kricfalusi. I was privileged to have known three very good executive vice presidents and one very good department head and friend. It was amazing how many people said this was something they always wanted to do. Hopefully, what I am doing might be the spark that gets someone else involved in finding a new reason for living.

Rita and Tim are coming tonight but not until very late, so my friend, Mark, and I went out after work. He gave me a very large battery-operated lantern because he knew I liked to read and I was going to a country without electricity. I am going to miss that guy very much. After I had said goodbye to him while we were still in the car, he offered to come up and help me load furniture early in the morning.

May 7, 1995, Rita and Tim arrived at about two thirty in the morning. Natasha was with them. Everyone found a place to sleep for a few hours. We went to the Frontier for breakfast, and I had the opportunity to visit with Nanci and say goodbye to Frank. Mark came around ten, and the moving process was on the way. Had to say goodbye all over again.

Cleveland was history.

I saw my children, even the far-out West ones; I couldn’t find the Texas child as at that time he was in one of his silent moods. I did hear from him eventually. It was Michael who told me that a Buddhist reader who had come into his home a short time before told him two things about me when she came to my picture. First was that this was my last reincarnation time (how many times varies among the different beliefs, something like five hundred fifty-six lives) and the next time my body dies I will go to Nirvana (heaven). That is a good thing.

The second thing Michael was told was that I was never going to come back from Armenia, not necessarily that I was going to die but that I was never going to return. He told me this when I was standing in the boarding line at the Las Vegas airport on my way to Chicago.

It is important to me that I insert a paragraph about that last thought. One of the first days in my Yerevan training, we were asked to write a letter about what we think our last day in Armenia will be like. All I could think about was what Michael told me—that I would never return. Was I going to die? What? I didn’t know what to write. Actually, I was afraid somewhat. I wrote something about what I was told and that I hoped that my ending of this adventure was going to be with a sense of accomplishment and that I would be alive to return to Chicago.

We were asked to turn in these letters and told they would be put in a secure place to be returned to us when we were getting ready to leave twenty-seven months later. However, I didn’t turn my letter in. I didn’t want anyone else to read what I had written just in case I did die.

When our tour was over and we were gathered for the last time, we were told that those letters had been lost. No one knows who put them where, but after several searches, they couldn’t be found. But I had mine. I didn’t tell anyone. As I was getting ready for my potlatch party on September 20, 2014, I threw it away without ever opening it. Today as I am writing this, I wish I hadn’t done that, but too late now.

Because this Peace Corps group was going to a hardship country, we could bring three pieces of luggage not weighing more than fifty pounds each. I had three military-style duffle bags, packed and repacked and weighed and reweighed. Finally, I was ready to go. Matthew, Lynn, Patrick, and Sue took me to the airport and waited with me until the plane took off.

Memorial Day weekend of 1995, I left for two days in Washington DC, followed by twenty-seven months in Armenia.

Chapter 5

May 1995 Christmas Card

No, it’s really not the first Christmas card of the year.

Since many of you only hear from me on holidays, you must wonder if I am trying to set a post office record to be the first in sending Christmas cards for 1995. No, that really isn’t the cause of this unusual time of the year letter.

At the end of this year during the real holiday season, I am not sure I will be in an area that will facilitate me in sending of cards. I didn’t want you all to think that I had just dropped off the face of the earth.

On May 31, 1995, I am leaving for the country of Armenia where I will be fulfilling my role as a Peace Corps volunteer. If all goes according to plan, I will be away from our country for twenty-seven months, which is the usual stay of Peace Corps groups no matter what country volunteers are sent.

Armenia is a Christian country that goes back to way before Christ; it is the land of Abraham and of Noah’s Mount Ararat. See Genesis 8:4. Today it is a former Soviet Union republic and is surrounded by the Muslim countries of Iran, Turkey, and Azerbaijan. I have been told that Christmas is not a celebrated season (since basically the country is Communist), and even if it is, there is little to no mail coming in or going out of the country.

I will miss the sending and receiving of greetings and good cheer, and of course if any of you are wondering, yes, I will miss my children and grandchildren very much. We will be in contact via the mails as best we can, and I think they are understanding of my wanting to volunteer before this body and soul get too old to be of service.

So I just wanted to share this news to say hello. Since I don’t know any Russian or Armenian and they won’t know any English, keep me in your prayers. The event should be interesting. After three months of training, I will be on my own.

I will keep my address book handy, and the first holiday I am back in the country, you will hear from me again.

Thanks for being such a terrific group of people. Merry Christmas.

—Loretta

Armenian information on reverse side:

Land mass of thirty thousand square kilometers, comprised of twenty-seven cities, thirty-one towns, and nine hundred twenty-one villages

Bordered on the north by Georgia, the east by Azerbaijan, the west by Turkey, and the south by Iran

Average height above sea level is about one thousand eight hundred meters

13 percent is forests, surrounded by several mountain ranges

Lake Sevan is the country’s largest lake, two thousand meters above sea level

Total population of the country is approximately three point six million

Total population of Yerevan is approximately one point four million

Average life expectancy is 71.9 years

Yerevan, the capital, is a sprawling center of intellectual and cultural life, including medical and scientific institutions. There are one hundred nineteen libraries; the people are educated in its two hundred schools.

It is industrially rich and produce of wide variety of good from electric motors to furniture, cars, clothes, and shoes.

Armenia is basically reliant on its own resources.

Private farmers produce most of the crops.

Fresh fruits and vegetables are abundant.

Armenians preserve and dry many foodstuffs for consumption during the year.

Apricots, apples, and eighty-eight varieties of grapes are produced for jams, cognac, and wines.

The Armenian people are a warm, family-centered people and are known for their generous hospitality. It is not uncommon that, when unexpected guests arrive, a banquet is spread.

Widely accepted as a learned and industrious people.

Armenians, both in Armenia and worldwide, are respected for their diligence, honesty, and untiring aptitude in all areas of technology, medicine, industry, business, and the arts.

Written by Mary Khachikian and Nora Nercessian (written during the USSR times)

***

From Loretta in 2016: Today in the present time, I can attest to that last statement; these were and are the most hardworking and generous people I have ever met. They would go hungry for days to provide a meal fit for royalty. I could knock on any door, and just by being a stranger (especially a woman), I would be welcome into their homes not only for a meal but to spend the night or any length of time necessary.

I have never met people I loved so much, respected so much, or from whom I learned so much. I thank God for the opportunity of having them in my life if even for such a short period of time.

Much of the other information above had changed by the time I arrived in 1995 due to the collapse of the USSR in 1991 and the earthquake in 1988.

Chapter 6

Washington DC, the Republic of Armenia, and Peace Corps Training

It was Memorial Day weekend of 1995 when what was to become known as the A3s arrived in Washington, D.C.

There were thirty-two in our group; nine were business volunteers and the others, English teachers. The latter group could join Peace Corps right out of college; however, the business group required five years’ working time in his or her profession, so our group was a tad older.

Peace Corps has seven major (and many sub) divisions of work categories. It is the government of the receiving country that request the type of workers that it wants. The former USSR republics had to learn English as all international business is done in English.

The training in Washington was mainly administrative, making sure the paperwork was completed, health histories up-to-date, Peace Corps passports in order, and a brief overview of what to expect when we got to Armenia. Almost as a side thought, there were a few words on the penalties of breaking rules once we got in-country. I had never heard that term in-country, but I used it often once it became part of my new life adventure.

Associated Press