My McLean History: 2016

Transcription of my Mom’s Funeral - Julia McLean Brossman Thanks to Mary Alice for here editing help.

Officiating Moravian Minister: Today's service is in celebration for the life of Julia McLean Brossman who was born on October 4th 1925 and died September 4th 2016. Jesus said “I am the resurrection and life, he who believe in me though he die yet shall he live. And whoever learns and believes in me shall never die". The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear. The Lord is the stronghold of my life and whom shall I be afraid. Let us pray: Almighty God and our father, from whom we come and to whom our spirits return. You’ve been… by a long generation, You’re our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Grant us Your blessing in this hour and enable us to put our trust in You that our spirits may grow calm and our hearts be comforted. Put their lives beyond the shadows of earth and help us to see the light of eternity, so that we find grace and strength for this and every time of need through Jesus Christ our Lord.

As I read the 23rd Psalm, you’re welcome to follow along and share whatever you remember about yourself. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down beside the still waters, He restoreth my soul. He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake. Yeah though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. For thou are with me, thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. Thou prepareth a table before me in the presence of mine enemies, and anointeth my head with oil, my cup runneth over. Surely, goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord, forever.

Get His words from the gospel of John, the 14th chapter “let not your heart be troubled; ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my father’s house are many rooms, if it were not so would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And I go and prepare a place for you; I will come again and take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. And you know the way where I’m going. Thomas said; Lord we do not know where you are going, how can we know the way? Jesus said to them; I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the father but by me. If you’d have known me you’d have known my father also. Henceforth you know Him and you see Him.

If you love me you will keep my commandment, and I will pray to the Father and He will send you another counselor to be with you forever. Even the spirit of truth though the world cannot receive because if they see Him they will know it’s Him. You know for He dwells with you and will be in you. Peace I leave with you, my peace I give you, not as the world gives, though I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid”. And these words from Paul’s letter to the Romans, the 8th chapter: “All who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God, but you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear. But you have received the spirit of adoption, where we cry, Abba, father. Or just the Spirit Himself bearing witness with our spirit, that we are children of God. And if children, then heirs, heirs of God, and fellow heirs with Christ; provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.

I considered that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory which is to be revealed to us. We’ve known that in everything God works for good with those who love Him, who are called according to His purpose. What then shall we say to this; if God is for us, who is against us, who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation or distress, persecution, famine or nakedness, peril or sword? Now in all these things we are more than conquerors of Him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor power, nor height nor depth nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ our lord.”

Martin would like to share some things with you this morning.

Martin: I want to take a moment and go over a few stories of my mother’s life. She told me once I don’t want a formal funeral, I want a party, so I encourage laughter while we’re here and others in remembering her because she wanted us to celebrate her life. But the one thing I remember the most is when I was about 9 years old she was in the living room and she pointed to the floor and said I want to die in my home, and that’s your job to make sure I can pass at my home.

When I was 20 years old she pointed to the same area of the floor and said the same thing, when I was 40 years old she repeated it. and so every time we went to the hospital, I was praying that she get home in case something didn’t work out and I’m so pleased to say thanks to the great care of the caregivers, Bridget’s good work, she passed peacefully in her room in her bed upstairs but, it wasn’t on the floor in the living room where I expected.

Many people didn’t realize that, including me, what a unique mother I truly had. So I want to share a few stories about her life to kind of bring it to our consciousness to remember her with the goal of embracing and rejoicing her life. When we came here to get the grave site my dad didn’t want me to be burdened as their only child, so he pre-paid and setup the gravesite. Of course I was a little surprised when he surprised me and said I got a site for you and your wife too, so you’ll see your stone up there with me as well. But he was effective in that my mother approved to set when she sold on one of the gravesites, one of the women said “‘the name’ and ‘beloved wife’” and she went “none of that”, not because she didn’t respect my father or appreciate it but because she was determined in the end to be seen as an equal--she was such an advocate for women being seen as an equal in her life, and I just got a chuckle thinking about that when we got the stones done, you know because it was important to her that her legacy was respected.

And not only was she an equal she was a legend, a living legend that existed. As a child I learned that she was interesting: her sister who was older was remembered by her mostly as everyone said how beautiful Mary was, which is really interesting, and then she said “she’s the beautiful one”. And it wasn’t till later in life that I realized her sister was quite a bit older, so of course she would be more attractive at that age, but my mother as you can see from the pictures was incredibly beautiful. But in some ways that led to the decision “I can’t be beautiful, so I will be smart”, and it was the sort of the piece that committed her to being smart.

And not only was she smart, she often intimidated or guessed the game, because we have a nuclear physicist come to visit, might be a friend theirs, she’d be asking him frontier things about his field that he wasn’t aware of, because she had researched before he even came to visit.

I also learned some other things as she aged as well; she told me when she was older that the doctor told her that because of her severe back problem and pain she had, which she had apparently had most of her life and really didn’t talk much about it, that her child, me, was probably going to be born dead. And her being pragmatic made sure that not only they didn’t set up the crib at first because they didn’t know if I would survive but she also was working on a paper folding book and really threw herself into the research for it, in case something didn’t work out.

The touching thing about it is that I asked my mum and that’s the story I never knew before, “what happened”? And she said “well after you were born the pain never occurred”, so I think I could take a little credit here in that. But probably the alignment of her body stopped it, but she had pain so severe that she was crippled a lot, and she never talked about it but really had difficulty fighting it, up until that point in her life.

My parents loved to travel and… but her spot for travel started early in her life when she went on a trip to Norway. While most people from our small town of Winston-Salem didn’t necessarily go on large trips, our aunts did. We had aunts that went there but it still was pretty unusual and she told me a wonderful story about the trip and what occurred is; on the boat, the boats were segregated so the African-Americans and whites were separate, so they were separating people wow! And there was one young girl there that was black and she had no place to stay because there wasn’t another black woman to stay with, and what occurred is my mother volunteered, “well, of course she could stay with me”.

To my mother who saw no color, that was just normal, but to the people on the ship it had such a big effect. She said “you know it’s so strange because I was treated so well after that”, well all the staff that worked there was African-American, so you know, when they saw what she did without even blinking in a time when that behavior was most uncommon... that to me set the tone of much of her life.

She also told me the story of “well I got kind of in trouble on the trail” and she apparently; you know those giant ships that had those giant smokestacks, well she thought it’d be a good view to climb in. So she apparently climbed the smokestack and the captain came out, saw this woman at the top of the smokestacks and I think she was sort of grounded for the rest of the trip. But this act defined her fearlessness and her adventure in life.

What’s really been the cornerstone throughout her life is speaking for those who didn’t have a voice. And I don’t know where that was started: it might have been, maybe it was from the “I’m not beautiful, I’ve got to be smart or something else” that seemed to drive much of her life. Now she came to Washington, we haven’t figured out exactly where, but we know her brother, the late Ed McLean was working there at a neighboring research laboratory, and he had a good friend Martin Brossman, my father, and introduced them.

So apparently that’s how they met. She got a job there as a research analyst and this is very important in her life because she would tell me stories about working as a labor or research analyst that she saw there was a crisis with children being abused in the workplace and she convinced the people in her office to get pictures of the abused children, which she used to create a newsletter, which went to the congressmen of these abused children, which then led to child labor laws, which ultimately led to the labor department writing it.

Now back then I had someone research this to verify it--back then women weren’t given credit for doing work--she did a lot of the core research for the child labor laws, for which she didn’t get credit, but we found evidence that my mother as far as I can see was most likely the primary catalyst for our child labor laws today.

Her activities extended beyond that, another story I remember was; apparently when she was in college she earned the right to go to Raleigh while the legislators were out on leave. What happened is they were doing a re-enactment of the congress and she proposed in this re-enactment simulation that the laws that said African-Americans must sit at the back of the bus should be dropped. Well apparently the Greensboro Times picked it up and the Ku Klux Klan burned a cross in the president’s yard of her college.

And she tells it as; how afraid she was of being thrown out of school, but she had a friend who was very private, someone whom people liked to make fun of, and she had always looked out for that friend and that friend’s father. That friend heard of her concern and she goes “well my father’s a judge. Let me talk to him”, and her father talked to the school: she didn’t get any further trouble as long as she didn’t do more of this.

So I really want to set the tone of the time she lived in, thankfully she didn’t stop there. She wrote a book on paper folding before I was born. A copy of it is there. It was a lost art of the manuscript she found that existed, she hadn’t proved it, she tracked it down. There was a congress of people that then found out about it. They were trying to beat her to it and they forced getting the book published. It was in old Japanese that then was translated into newer Japanese, but it was such a bad translation that she had to figure out all the paper folding modes through reverse engineering, so there’s part of her that was an engineer at heart.

In fourth grade I found myself in what was then called “Retarded Class,” and what occurred is I wasn’t able to read like other students. All I knew was, as a fourth grader, I was in the class and we made brutal fun of people. I was worried, and then I remember my mother yelling at the principal saying “have in Washington you seen him talk to adults”? She then forced their hand, to get me into the GW Reading Clinic that had just opened, where I was then diagnosed with dyslexia. They also took some type of IQ, which was like 145, so she went back to the principal and said “he may not read fast but this is him”.

So she was a pioneer in my life as well, and made sure that I was taken care of. Then, I was in Washington, D.C. in school when Martin Luther King was shot. That was the burning of Washington where people may not remember, but Washington almost burned to the ground. I was at a wood-work school for boys downtown and about 95% of the students there were African-Americans. I came out of the building and a gang said “let’s get a honky”. And I was looking for him to get, because my hero has been shot down and I had forgotten the color of my skin, luckily my peers remembered it and a group of young black kids surrounded me. I remember one hitting me on the back and then yelling “run”. We then got safely to the bus and I got home.

When I got home, my mother had bags packed at the front door because we didn’t know if the burning would stop. After the shooting of King we didn’t know if Washington would be still standing, it was a really serious time and my mother’s first concern when I came in the door was to sit down with me and say “these are good people, they’re just very angry”. She was so worried that I’d make a judgment about African-Americans based on the burning of Washington. That was the next priority over safety when I came in the door. Of course the silly thing is she didn’t realize that I wanted to join them because my hero had been cut down, and that I never really explained to her.

Working on an idea one time, I remember I was trying to change, she called and she said “you’re going to get fired! Where did you learn this”? And I said “from you mom, you inspired me”, and she was quiet. At 70 years old, I remember her sitting at the dining room table with a friend and my mother, just like a normal story, said “you know I was driving today and this woman was so recklessly driving that I knew she was going to kill her little child, so I pulled her over, and I scolded her and I told her she had to promise me she would never recklessly drive like that again before I let her get back in the car”. And she said she was a tall woman and she was shaking, think about that folks!

At 70 years old my mother forced this woman off the road in Washington DC, got her out of the car, scolded her that she better be a better parent. And she would have done that when she was 40years old. You know that’s to me the force of who my mother was along the way.

I do have to tell you a little story that happened within recent times; Bridget was at the hospital with my father and they were sitting there and she saw they were ok and they were hungry, so she says “I’m going to get you a snack”, because they said they were hungry. So she goes down to Sibley to get a snack and then when she comes back what she finds out is; my father had noticed her nodding off and said “lie in this empty bed”. I don’t know if you know, in hospitals you don’t get to lie in a sterile bed, so apparently the nurse came in and scolded her. Then as Bridget’s coming back--and hopefully, Bridget, I am as close to the story as possible--Bridget comes back and as she’s coming back in the nurse comes and scolds her a second time. My mother looks at her, slaps her and says “you will never again speak to a woman of my age like that”. And I know the tone of voice of that nurse like I heard it yesterday because she would have slapped her when I was 12 years old too and said the same thing.

So Bridget, who is so concerned, calls me up and tells me; just like that, it’s my mum taking charge here. The hospital calls up in a rage and wearing me out, they were just wailing into me and I said “look I’m the power of attorney here, I’ll apologize to anyone. It’s not acceptable and what do you need me to do”? She wouldn’t stop and I said “wait a second, if you don’t want to stop and work with me, then I will let the Washington Post know that a five foot-one Southern girl with grey eyes is a major threat to Sibley hospital. I’m happy to make that phone call or you walk”.

The woman got very quiet and then said “you know your mother will have to come with a police escort every time she comes to see your dad”. I almost broke out laughing because I knew how this was going to work out. So long story short is; Bridget’s describing it and my mother gets on the phone and she’s escorted by the young policeman under her arm walking down and when she asked me “why did she have the police or escort”, I said “mom because you’re so important now they’ve recognized it too that you get a police escort every single time you visit Dad in the hospital.”

I was awarded a National Science Foundation scholarship in Physics, Electronics, Acoustics and Holography at Ball State University while in high school at the Field School. When I came home from the scholarship program, I talked to my Mom about writing up my notes on Holography because that excited me the most. She said if I researched it and wrote it up long hand she would edit it and type it up. This was another example of her supporting me.

At the time, our rec room had a number of blank walls. I was consumed the for the rest of the summer with research. I ended the summer by filling all our blank wall space with my notes and research. I also was exercising at the Y for a break. Very smart on her part for I realize now that she knew what could happen when young boys have an open summer and I said “I want to write a book on holography”, and she said “you hand write it out I will type it up”. So a copy of the hundred and fifteen page book, which consumed my summer, probably kept me out of trouble, it is over there as well. That’s one of countless things my mother did. (Here is a link to pictures of the final Holography book that I wrote: https://goo.gl/photos/86CzwoydPPWJ1fyZA )

I really want to close with the fact that my mother truly was a living embodiment of the of the Quaker quote “Speak truth to power”, and when I was thinking of it I wrote this phrase down because I’ve met so many people in my life that say “well that’s out of my comfort zone”, and I realize because of my mother, I know if I’m in my comfort zone, then I’m a walking dead. If I’m not pushing the envelope to be outside my comfort zone, then I’m not alive, and I learned that gift from my mother--that not everyone has learned. So the invitation to all of you is: find ways to stand outside your comfort zone, in honoring my mum use good common sense as most of the time she would, and I hope you appreciate and remember her like I did. And thank you so much for coming.

Officiating minister: Does someone else have anything they want to share at this time?

Sandy: I’m Sandy and Julia’s niece Martin: And other daughter Sandy: And I’m just going to comment on Julia’s influence on her nieces. I talk to my two sisters about Julia a lot and she’s had a powerful influence in all of our careers. In fact I’ve got a funny story where I got my first job as a waitress when I was 16, and you know I when I received my first pay check they paid me $2 and 20 cents an hour as minimum wage as a waitress. And then they deducted 80 cents an hour as the breakage fee whether you broke anything or not, and I looked at that and I thought “that doesn’t look right to me”. So I called Julia because I could call her about anything. I told her I talked to another waitress and this happened to everybody, it’s not just me breaking things, and so Julia just said “well that’s not right”. And she said “I’m going to look into this”, so she went and looked into it, and she said “I will call you back”. And so she called me back and she said “this is the person you need to talk to for the wage and hour division of the Department of Labor, and this is how you make your complaint and this is the phone number”. She went over it with me and trained me because she didn’t want to do it herself. Julia wanted to make sure that I was able to do that for myself and advocate for myself. I called them and I did everything she told me I should do and within about a week, it was really fast, the boss came out and he gave every single waitress a check, and each check was in different amounts. I had only been working there a couple of weeks at that point, but I still got my eighty cents an hour back. The boss didn’t tell the truth, he told us that the checks were a gift from himself to each of the waitresses, but the ones who were there the longest got huge checks and they were just so grateful, they didn’t know they should really be grateful to Julia. Julia had a real sense of social justice and she was really pleased that the waitresses got what they were entitled to and were not being cheated. This experience was really what started me thinking about law and how laws could affect people’s lives, and I became a lawyer partially because of that. I talked to my sisters and we all agreed that we were always encouraged in our careers by Julia, and as far as she was concerned there was no limit to what a woman could do. Julia was very political and always tried to be a force for positive change. Now none of us are extremely political but we all benefitted from her encouragement, no matter what we chose to do with our lives. When I got out of law school, there was a freeze on government hiring. I knew I wanted a Federal career and I found that the Navy was hiring. I decided to join the Navy. My father was appalled at my decision and just said “I will support you as long as it takes, please don’t join the military”! No one in our family had ever joined the military. Dad had been in World War II, but that was it. He did not want me to join, and when Julia heard she was so positive and said "that sounds like an adventure, just imagine where you could go”. You know, she was supportive and it did turn out to be an adventure--I was stationed in Spain and San Francisco and Newport, Rhode Island--I had some wonderful years. I had a really informative, good time and it gave me a love of travel that I have to this day. My sisters have that same love of travel. Today I brought a poem to read to you about Julia. One of my sisters, Susan, is a poet and a professor and she wrote this for Aunt Julia; she has published it in a book and it is called “Origami”. To the artist emptiness is potential, she takes the flat sheet of paper and folds it into another dimension, an elegant extraction of something real. The original sheet is still all there, nothing has been cut or taken away, although not all of it is visible. What you can’t see gives depth to what you can; you could unfold it, but the lines are permanent, the sheet will never lie quite flat again. The image is merely paper, flimsy at the mirror and yet it may outlast the hand that made it." And that’s how we feel about Julia, she'll outlast us all.

Officiating minister: Anyone else? I encourage you guys, since one way of remembering is to share your memories with each other. That’s a beautiful thing I think that helps us all. I never knew her and I can tell you I wished I would have, I read the online biography, I read as much information as Martin has shared, I saw the video. And where the phrases stuck with me, in online biography it said "true to her Moravian roots". I’ve got to tell you, she doesn’t just have a Moravian root, she’s the whole tree! She really is, with some of the principles of the Moravian church are “unity” and “equality”, and it sounds like she embodied that and spoke those.

And another facet of the Moravian church is the lifting up of women. In the 1600s a Bishop Amos Cornelius of the Moravian Church put forth the idea that girls should be educated as well as boys and that influenced the Moravian church--they will never rebuild a community or a house of worship, without building a school that included girls. This is hundreds of years ahead of her time and she embodied all of that, and she lived it out and as Martin said, she raised her voice to bring about equality and unity and what a beautiful thing!

When I think of all that she has done, as her eulogy said, I wonder what she would say to us today. I would think that she would have something to say and my guess would be that she would say "I'm okay don’t worry about me", and I’m pretty sure the other thing she would say was "I have begun a work that’s not complete" and the best we can do is to work for the completion of that unity and equality among all people. Value people; she valued people and then she did something about that.

All of us are in unique positions in our communities and we have certain opportunities where it important that we show we value people, and I think that is a tribute to her legacy and is really meaningful.

So as you share your memories also think; what can I do to continue the things that she began, to find areas where these values still need application today, and there are many. So share your memories, listen to her voice because she’ll speak to you as she speaks to the authorities that she may change.

Let us pray: Oh God, who is the strength of your servant, redeem the soul of your servant, we bless Your Name. For all of those who died in the Lord who now rest from their labors and having received the end of their faith even the salvation of their souls. Especially we call to remember your loving kindness and your tender mercies to Julia Brossman for all your goodness that let her have a larger portion in the joys of earthly life, your Hand guiding the way like her pilgrimage.

We give you thanks and praise, especially thank you for the grace that kindled in her heart and life, the love of your dear name. Enable her to fight a good fight, to endure to the end and to obtain the victory. Yes to be more than conquerors through him who loved us, we magnify your Holy Name for trials and temptations being ended, sickness and death being passed with all the dangers and difficulties of this mortal life, her spirit has a place in your presence.

We pray that we rejoice in the triumph of the saints may profit by their example, that becoming followers of their faith and patience we may also enter with them into an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled, but does not fade away. For the life we have joy at this time and all who have faithfully live and all who peacefully died. We thank you for all the fair memories and all living hope for the sacred ties that bind us to the unseen world of your Holiness that will encompass us like a cloud of witnesses and they did this to having a home for our hearts.

And we be followers of those who now inherit Your promise, Jesus Christ our Lord. And now may the God of Peace, who brought again for the gathering where Jesus Christ, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, equip you with everything good that you may do His will, working in you that which is pleasing in His sight through Jesus Christ whom be glory forever and ever, Amen. The service will continue at the gravesite.