Episode 31: Linda Gartz ’70, ’72 MS on a New Career through Hidden Letters
Listen to "Linda Gartz ’70, ’72 MS on Discovering a New Career Through Hidden Family Letters" on Spreaker.
Transcript:
[MUSIC PLAYING] CASSIE PETOSKEY: Welcome to Northwestern Intersections, a Northwestern network podcast where we talk to alumni about their careers. We'll hear what they've done right, what they've done wrong, and the stories behind both.
I'm Cassie Petoskey with Northwestern Alumni Association Career Advancement Team. Today I'm speaking with Linda Gartz. Linda is a former teacher, producer, and now an author of her new book that came out this year, Redlined, a Memoir of Race, Change and Fractured Community in 1960s Chicago. Linda, thanks so much for being here with us today.
LINDA GARTZ: I'm delighted to be here. Thank you for having me.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: Yes. And we're so excited to get into your book and all the great things you've done in your career. But we like to start off our episodes a little lighter and talk about your first job.
LINDA GARTZ: My first job. My very first job, or like as a stock girl at a clothing store, or my first job out of college?
CASSIE PETOSKEY: Both.
LINDA GARTZ: OK. All right. Well, my first job at 16, I lived in West Garfield Park on the west side of Chicago, and there was a clothing store there called Behr Brothers and Prodi. And it was a men and women's clothing store. We had multiple clothing stores. It was a vibrant neighborhood. And I needed a job. And for $1 an hour, I got to be the stock girl at Behr Brothers and Prody, which meant I would take clothes out from the back and put them on the racks.
And at that time, we had something called layaway. I don't know if people do that anymore. But people would come in-- women-- I worked in the women's department. They would buy an outfit by putting maybe $3 down. And then the idea was they were to come in every week to pay off the rest. And in that time maybe a dress might cost $12. So sometimes they'd come back and pay, and sometimes they'd pay most of it and then they never came back. And they lost all their money and the dress was put back on the floor for sale. And I always wondered what happened to those women.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: Oh my goodness. So they didn't get the dress until they--
LINDA GARTZ: You couldn't get the dress into you completely paid it off. And so if for some reason they couldn't make their $2 payment, I mean we were in a lower and lower middle class neighborhood. And people didn't have a lot of money, so sometimes that happened. So that was my first job ever.
I also worked summers at a couple of savings and loans. And when I graduated from Northwestern, I had a degree in German. And I needed to get an apartment pronto, because I was not going to live at home. So I got a job as a secretary to five managers at Arthur Andersen. Now this is back in 1970s so this is like 30 years before Arthur Andersen went under.
And what's interesting about that is I had developed secretarial skills over the summers. My mother had always said to me, in good 1950s fashion, always learn typing and shorthand. That way you will never be dependent on any man.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: And no shorthand, what is that? Note taking? What is the--
LINDA GARTZ: Oh boy. Oh my God. That is so gone now. Shorthand was required for any secretary. So a boss would call you into his office, his, always his, and say take a letter. And then you, with this very trained shorthand that was just little symbols for sounds and common words, would take a letter. Dear Mr. Jackson, I wanted to let you know that we will be meeting with you next Friday, et cetera, but you had to be able to write as fast as this guy spoke.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: Oh my goodness.
LINDA GARTZ: And then you had to take that shorthand and type it up into the letter, which had to be perfect with no mistakes. And that is what shorthand was. And then, of course, that was replaced by first the recording devices and so on.
So that was shorthand. It was required of every secretary. So I did that and I knew that was not my endgame. So then I turned back to Northwestern to get my master's degree in education. And I went back to school and got my MAT and then started teaching.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: Yeah. That's great. And in terms of your first jobs, when you were 16 and then the secretarial work, what were some of the lessons you learned that paid off for you further down in your career?
LINDA GARTZ: Well, you know, I think that-- and this comes under advice too. I was raised in a household where there was no such thing as I can't do it or we're not going to do it. We ran a rooming house. And there was work to be done every single day. And you just persevered.
That was the main advice I remember getting from my parents. And they may not have used that word, but they certainly modeled it. And even though I didn't want to be a stock girl, my hands were filthy every day afterwards, it never occurred to me that I would quit that job because it was not a glamorous job.
Same thing as a secretary. I was not thrilled with that job, although it was a very-- for a secretary, it was a really, really good position. It was a big company. And I just kept at it. But I knew I had a game plan to get out. So that's it. I would say what I learned from that that helped later is you need to always be making a game plan.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: And looking big picture down the road, not just what you're doing now.
LINDA GARTZ: Yeah. Exactly. And I think especially for today's graduates, and even for the last 10, 20 years, I mean the job market is such that people change jobs often.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: Yeah. And it's interesting too, because we'll talk about your career path and the way you moved from one thing to the next, and I'm sure it felt natural to you at the time, but you've done a lot of different things.
And what I find interesting is that it doesn't seem that common back then to have all these different career paths that you've done. So it's a unique aspect to your career story is that you went from secretarial work into then teaching. And then from there you went into producing and now you're an author.
LINDA GARTZ: Right.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: You just bounce from-- and so now my question for you is did that feel natural to you going from one thing to the next?
LINDA GARTZ: Well, I think, first of all, I had to understand that it was possible. And I think that's what holds a lot of people back is they don't think about what's possible, although I think in today's world, with the internet and being able to look anything up by googling it, you can find advice on any topic.
But at the time I was teaching, I loved teaching. I didn't dislike it in any way. But at one point, I thought, I wonder if I could do something different. And my husband was just opening his law office at the time. And I decided to take a leave of absence for one year from teaching. That way I would be able to help my husband set up his law office, but at the same time search out a new career. And I bought a book called What Color is Your Parachute?
CASSIE PETOSKEY: Oh my gosh. Yeah. Which we're still using.
LINDA GARTZ: Yeah. I mean it opened my eyes to things that had never occurred to me. Like I thought of myself I was a teacher. Well, when you started reading What Color is Your Parachute?, the emphasis there was what are your skills, not what is your title. And so once I started breaking teaching down into my skills, I found out I had 20 to 30 different skills used to be a teacher, from management of large groups of people, albeit little people, to long range planning, short range planning, speaking at meetings, writing curriculum.
It just is really important to look at what you do not just in terms of your title but in terms of your skills. So that was an eye opener for me. So I think What Color is Your Parachute? really opened my eyes to the fact that, wow you don't-- it's not like you're going begging for a job. People should be begging for you if you've got the right skills. Right. So I searched for a long time. It was very frustrating.
And what got me into TV was a video class. Somebody told me, gee, you've gotten background in education. If you'd like to teach in business, they're using a lot of video in business now. So I took a class in video at this place called The Editing Center and immediately discovered that I loved this process.
I found it had all the things I liked about teaching, but in the end I would have a final creative product. I could actually hold and look at the video as opposed to hoping I had done well with my students. And I think I did do very well with my students, but there was always some that you wondered what was going to happen to them.
So that was that. So that one, you say, was it natural? Well, I discovered it. And then I was in TV for a number of years. Moved into documentary producing, which I also loved, because I just got passionate about whatever I did. And so I would really be personally invested in it.
And then my mom died and I found this treasure trove of letters, diaries documents, photos. It filled 25 banker's boxes plus we ended up filling a dumpster. And I started reading through these letters and diaries. And I discovered there was this basically first hand view of the entire 20th century through the eyes of my grandparents, my parents, letters and diaries that they'd written. And then I said there's a story here somewhere. And then the trick was what's the story.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: Yeah. Oh my gosh. And I am so intrigued by how you found these letters. And I'm really excited to hear more about how you uncovered that and how you uncovered this story that you wrote.
And before we get into your book and the great stories in there from your family and also the community in Chicago at the time, I love the insight that you shared about the What Color is Your Parachute? about breaking down your skills. I think that's such an important thing to consider for career changers. Right. What are your skills in this one career to the other?
And so many alumni come back to the Alumni Association for resources when they're looking to make a career change. Very common for them to come back for advice. And I'm wondering if you have any other insights for career changers, things to consider, ways to articulate these skills, because you clearly were able to discover what you enjoyed about one industry and one career to move it into another. I'm wondering if you have other insights for the people who are making those moves.
LINDA GARTZ: Well, again, you know, another thing that came out of that book, and which I think anybody who is in the workforce today knows, is networking. Network, network, network.
Keep in touch with other alumni that you're friends-- that have been friends with or reach out to new alumni. When I was looking to change careers, I had no idea what I wanted to do. So I made this list of all possibilities. I talked to people in banking. I talked to people in public relations. I talked to people in advertising.
And you would just call them up, kind of cold call. And by the way, then you had to use a phone book. So I'm looking up advertising and trying to who's in advertising. And I talked to friends. Like I had a friend who was a banker. And he gave me a tour of Northern Trust. And I decided that was not for me.
So networking is really important and developing social skills beyond just social media and looking at your devices, because what really connects people is a true people connection, which is hard to get if you're only doing it via text, and email, and other social media outlets.
And be flexible. You know, look at your job and what your skills are, and think to yourself what are the types of skills that I most would like to use. In other words, we all might have skills that you think but if I had a job using that skill I think I'd have to just go and bury my head in the sand.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: Yeah. I like how you describe networking, too, because for young people who get turned off by networking, you have to network, right? But it is about your social network and your friends, too. That's part of your networking. That was something I feel like I didn't realize, when I was in college, that my friends were my network.
LINDA GARTZ: Absolutely.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: I was networking, building friendships. And then these friends are in different industries, like you mentioned, and then you can have these conversations with them, informational interviews. But they're conversational because they're your friends.
LINDA GARTZ: Right, yeah. And I think that's something, especially when you've gone to Northwestern, I mean, most of your classmates and friends are going to be doing well, for the most part, we hope.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: Oh yeah. Northwestern alumni are out there doing really cool things, like writing books.
LINDA GARTZ: Yeah, yeah. So you never know who's going to have an insight into a job opening, or a new way to look at your career, or finding out about symposiums, or webinars, seminars, whatever. So yeah, it's really important to keep up those personal contacts.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: That's great. Great insights and advice from someone who has made multiple career changes, right? You made a career change when you went back to school and got another degree, and then even after that, finding another thing. And now, you're an author. And so now, I want to hear so much more about your book, the process. How long did it take you to uncover these stories? I mean, troves of letters. How long did that take to read through all of that?
LINDA GARTZ: Well, it took, actually, years. But it's a little hard to talk about writing this book in a linear fashion because it really didn't come about in a linear fashion. We had no idea that my parents had saved all these letters and diaries over the years, and they were very particular themselves. My mom had her and my dad's letters wrapped up in parchment and tied with a pink bow. I mean, she was obviously in love with my dad and wanted to do that.
Yeah, so first, there was the discovery, the organization into these 25 banker's boxes. Then I put them on a shelf in my garage for a while because I was raising my two sons. And then, around 2002, I started thinking-- maybe some of your listeners weren't born in 2002. But I started thinking, I wonder what's in those letters? So I started out with the World War II letters. We had about 300 letters that were written back and forth between my uncle, who was training to be a navigator, and his friends and family.
And I had never met this Uncle Frank Gartz. Everybody called him by his middle name, Abner, which was my grandmother's maiden name. But anyway, so all these letters revealed to me this young man's personality and everything about him. So I felt like I'd gotten to know him through his letters, so then I was hooked. So then I started pulling out more things, like my mom's diaries. And I discovered she had started a diary at age 10 in 1928.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: Oh my gosh. How crazy is that to read your mom's thoughts before you were even in the picture?
LINDA GARTZ: I mean, years before, before my dad was in the picture. I mean, she was 10 years old, and she always had this drive to write. I mean, she never became a professional writer, but she's a very good writer. And she started out, like a 10-year-old, telling us what the weather is and what she made in home ec. But then as time goes by, I mean, it really is very revealing and very cute. I mean, a lot of them were just adorable.
And then my dad wrote letters, and he was a wonderful writer. And he traveled for 13 years. So I have their letters back and forth to each other from 1949 to 1963. And then when the first African American moved onto our block in the summer of 1963, my mom wrote about that in her diary. And she continued to write about the changing neighborhood, how quickly it changed. And then we had riots in my neighborhood and she wrote about that.
And she started just keeping track of everything that went on as they continued to take care of their buildings in that neighborhood, really, for the next 30 years. I sold the building that I was born in, or my very first place I lived when I was two months old, in 1994. So my mom took care of that building till she died.
So we had a presence in that neighborhood from 1912, when my grandfather settled in West Garfield Park, until 1994. So basically, the whole 20th century. And the letters and diaries were a window into another time. It's like watching a movie unspool before your eyes.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: And so your book is a combination of a lot of these different stories, right? It's part of the personal aspect of what it's like, for you, getting to know your family through these letters and diaries, but also about the community at the time.
LINDA GARTZ: Yes. Now, that was the tricky part because I had such a vast amount of material. I had to try to figure out a way to remember. If I read a quote that I thought was important, out of all the thousands of pages I read, how was I going to remember where that was and easily find it.
So I started making spreadsheets with columns with different subject matter, and I would just put a blurb, a little quick blurb, that would remind me what it was. But in the beginning, because I had so much information, I really kind of wrote us a sprawling family saga, including the changes in the neighborhood. But then it was too long. I mean, it was 135,000 words, and a typical 300 page book is about 80,000 words.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: Oh my gosh. So wait, say that--
LINDA GARTZ: OK. So 35 and 20 is-- I had to cut 55,000 words, which is the length of many books. Because I just decided the only way to get this done was to write everything I thought was important, start to finish. And then take a look at it and actually have someone else take a look at it. And then that's when I realized that if I wanted to create a book that other people would read, I had to focus on something that was relevant to people today, and that was the subject I chose, the redlining.
I did research into why neighborhoods changed so rapidly from white to black in the 1960s. It happened in cities throughout the country. It wasn't just Chicago. Basically, the story would apply to any big city in the entire country because every city was redlined. This was a national federal policy that refused to give mortgages to any neighborhood if there was a single black person in that neighborhood.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: OK. So explain this redlining policy, when it came into being, and then we'll get into how it influenced these cities.
LINDA GARTZ: In 1933, under the Roosevelt administration, he was trying to jump start the economy with housing because it was in the middle of the Depression. And they created what was called the Home Owners Loan Corporation, HOLC, H-O-L-C for short. And also the FHA, the Federal Housing Authority, that we all know now. It backs mortgages with federal insurance. And they decided to have cities across the country mapped and color coded by where it was safest for banks to give a loan.
So if the housing stock was really good and the neighborhood was typically all white, they would color that area green. Go, give it alone. Blue was good, but not perfect. Yellow was called definitely declining. And red was labeled hazardous, and no loans at all were recommended for red areas. And a red area could be because of dilapidation in housing.
They even included Italians. Like if Italians were moving in, they would make a note of that, as if those were foreigners you didn't want. But for sure, if one African American moved into a neighborhood, that neighborhood was then redlined.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: So then no one could buy.
LINDA GARTZ: Nobody could get a mortgage, not whites or blacks. OK, so the whites were very fearful of African Americans moving into their neighborhoods because they knew their property values would drop. Its gets a little long-winded here, but then there came in these unscrupulous real estate agents called blockbusters. And they knew there was this racial fear so they fed on it.
And they would leave notes in the hallway like, you better get out before it's too late. Or call you on the phone at night and say, they're coming. Sometimes they'd hire a black woman to walk down the sidewalk with a baby carriage who didn't live there, just to make the white people believe the neighborhood was having more color come into it, as they used the term at the time. They said color. They didn't say black.
So then whites would flee because they wanted to get as much money as they could. It would be paid for in cash by these unscrupulous real estate agents. And then they would turn around and sell the same house to a black family for two to three times its value. But they couldn't get a mortgage, so they'd sell it what was called "on contract." Remember how I described earlier about putting money down on address.
This was the same idea. This was kind of buying on time. You'd put down some money, you'd get a loan, but you didn't have any equity in the house. So you continued to pay towards your interest and the mortgage-- well, mortgage is the wrong word-- pay off this contract.
And if the African American family missed one payment, even if they paid for half the house, 75% of the house, they'd be evicted, and then the blockbusters could resell it. So they were really taken advantage of and were not able to invest in property the way whites could. And one of the reasons that blacks today have about 6% to 7% the wealth that whites have is primarily because they could never invest in property.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: So this policy, basically, was systemic racism.
LINDA GARTZ: Yes.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: And created all of these challenges for communities, even today.
LINDA GARTZ: Yes. I mean today, if you look at the most segregated communities in the country, you will find that they were redlined. And the redlining became officially unlawful, the policy became unlawful, in 1968, 50 years ago. Because of the Fair Housing Act was passed in April of 1968, the same month that Martin Luther King was murdered.
And I think Lyndon Johnson was able to get that passed through because he knew of the anger in the black community because of Martin Luther King's assassination. Otherwise, he might not have been able to get it passed. And remember, Martin Luther King was called the most dangerous person in America because he could gather the strength of African Americans behind him to demand that they be treated fairly, as if that were some sort of a crime.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: And peacefully, mind you.
LINDA GARTZ: Yes. He was doing it peacefully. Then along came Malcolm X who was saying, we're done with this peaceful business. It's not working. But King kept to that. And of course, he was murdered. And that's when our neighborhood just exploded in devastating riots, as did cities across the country.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: Right.
LINDA GARTZ: And of course, we have to remember, not everybody riot. My parent's tenants didn't riot. Probably most people didn't riot. But it just took a handful of people to be rioting to cause major destruction.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: And so I can't imagine tackling these years of history in one book. Like you said, you wrote so many pages. You basically wrote two books on this story and had to cut it down to one book. And so how did you use the skills you had picked up from the various things you've done through your career-- teaching, secretarial work, producing-- to successfully conceptualize this book?
LINDA GARTZ: Well, it was a process, like so many things. I was actually, even though I had written television scripts, they were documentary scripts, which really entails figuring out the story. But the writing is more like, OK, I'm going to use all of these interview bytes and write transitions to make the story flow. So I thought I was a writer, because I'd done that. So in 2002, after I'd read a few letters, started trying to write something.
And I thought, this is terrible. I don't know how to write. And I realized I did not know how to write. But again, going back to the concept of advice that I'd learned since childhood of perseverance, I thought, OK, if I want to write a book and I don't know how to write, then I guess I have to learn how to write. So I started taking classes at Northwestern again.
And that's where Northwestern came into play. I took a couple of classes in creative nonfiction in your studies, your evening studies, program. They were excellent. They really showed me how much I did not know how to write. And then I just kept at it. I bought books about writing. I bought memoirs. I read dozens of memoirs. I read lots of books on how to write a memoir. And I really faced a lot of frustration.
So as far as my previous careers, I guess I'd say that I just approached this in the same way that I approached each one of those. Because when I started teaching, I didn't know how to teach. I mean, I really didn't learn how to teach in school. Most teachers will tell you that. And I didn't know how to do TV. I was thrown into my first production and was figuring out the day before what I had to do the next day. And then guess being a mom, too. We figure that out as we go along.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: Yeah. I guess you had a little bit of raising children in there, which seems like such a huge challenge. I'm not a parent myself, but it seems like it takes up so much of your personal strength.
LINDA GARTZ: Yeah. Well, it really is all your psychic energy is in raising kids, because you care about them. You love them so much so you put everything into it.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: You have two, right?
LINDA GARTZ: I have two sons, yeah. Yeah, so that's what I'd say, is I just kind of used the same approach. And I have to tell you, and I will tell this to all people listening, is that each of these steps were very frustrating. It wasn't like, go from point A to point B and it's a nice smooth ride.
It was like, am I on the right path? Should I be doing this? I can't find the focus of this book. Am I being stupid and should I just give up and go on and do something else? Or should I stick with it, not knowing how long it will take?
So I think if you're passionate about wanting to do something, one has to realize that it's really a road and a path and it's not instant.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: It's not straight and it's not always easy. I love how you are so authentic and saying you were so frustrated at times.
LINDA GARTZ: Oh yeah. I mean, if one could do that today, I was ready to pull my hair out kind of frustration. And feeling bad about oneself because you're thinking, why can't I figure this out? Why am I not getting this?
And so that's the other thing I would just say as piece of advice, is that whatever you do, especially if you're changing careers, you're going to go through periods of frustration. I see this even with my own son, all the different jobs that millennials have today, much more so than in our generation. So you have to be kind of flexible.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: That's true. But with people who are younger who are changing jobs more frequently, you're going through those periods of frustration more frequently when you're making those transitions.
LINDA GARTZ: Right. And what I hear from so many millennials is that they have to have multiple resumes ready at any time. What if the job seeks these kinds of skills? Well, I'm going to focus on that. What if the job seeks these kinds of skills? I'm going to focus on that. And so that is something that just seems to be part of life today. And I feel bad for millennials because I think it's really rough to have to be changing jobs all the time.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: Right, and going through those-- you know what it feels like to feel the frustration of a change and the ups and downs of that.
LINDA GARTZ: Right. And you go to work all day, and then at night, you have to work on your resume and you know scour the sites for jobs, or network.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: Right. It's a constant thing. If I'm not networking, I should be looking for jobs. If I'm not looking for jobs, I should be out there networking.
LINDA GARTZ: Right.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: Constant back and forth.
LINDA GARTZ: Yeah. I think today's young people have a harder time even than we did 20, 30 years ago, 40 years ago.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: It's a totally different landscape for careers.
LINDA GARTZ: Yeah, completely.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: And it's constantly changing, which is another thing that career changers and job seekers are looking at, is that it's new every time they're looking for another job.
LINDA GARTZ: Yeah. And the world changes so quickly. Kids who are in school today may have a job when they grow up that doesn't even exist today. I mean, you think about social media. Now there are all these people who are social media experts. Well, Facebook came about in 2004.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: Oh my gosh, yeah. It's so true. How do you know what you want to be when don't those jobs aren't even--
LINDA GARTZ: Don't even exist.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: Yeah.
LINDA GARTZ: So that's why it's important, I think, to get a good, well-rounded education. But on the other hand, then there's also people who know they're good in math or science and they stick with something, like engineering, and those STEM fields usually have pretty good job prospects. So there's that, if you're good in that. That would not have been a good choice for me.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: Right. Well, and then you get the personality, right? You talked about your skills but then you also clearly talked a lot, throughout our conversation, about what you enjoyed most about each different role. And then you tried to find things that fit those things you enjoyed doing.
LINDA GARTZ: Yeah.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: And another thing I love that's kind of intersected throughout our conversation is coming back to Northwestern. It seems like you came back a number of times throughout your career for resources, and education, and whatnot, and networking and whatnot. But I want to hear more about the most special Northwestern connections that you feel you have, because I know you mentioned your husband is a Northwestern alumnus. Did you meet in undergrad when you were here, or how did that--
LINDA GARTZ: Actually, we met when I was in high school. Oh
CASSIE PETOSKEY: My gosh.
LINDA GARTZ: But he was at Northwestern. He ended up coming to a party, a high school party, because his boss's son went to my high school. And it's a long story, but I'll just get into it and say we met at this party. And I was just 16 and we started dating. And then I went to Northwestern. I didn't choose Northwestern because he went here, but because I wanted to come to Northwestern.
But we were both commuters. I was a commuter my freshman year and he commuted, which as you know, is very unusual at Northwestern. So he would drive me to school sometimes and hang out and wait for me at Scott Hall, because there was no student union. That was our student union. So yeah. So I met him.
And then as a German major-- why did I choose German? I just liked German. I mean, I wasn't thinking at all of a career. But I met my dear friend, Katie, who is still my dear friend today. And she ended up going to Northwestern Law School, and we've stayed friends ever since. And so it was because of Katie, who is also a German major, that I applied to the junior year abroad program, even though I was a senior.
Because I've never heard of it. As a commuter, I was sort of out of it. And so once I heard of it from Katie, I thought, wow, I wonder if I could go. Anyway, so we had a ball. We went and spent a year in Germany.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: Oh my gosh. That sounds amazing.
LINDA GARTZ: Yeah. And so Katie has stayed my friend for all these years. And then another woman who is in German with me, she was a German minor, English major. Went on to get her MBA from Kellogg. And she became a marketing maven, expert.
Susan Beck has helped me tremendously with thinking about ideas for marketing my book. So I mean, all of those connections that I did not think would matter in the way they have mattered. I mean, they were always my friends, but I never thought of, oh, someday Susan Beck is going to help me with my marketing ideas.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: Right, because who knew you were going to write a book and discover this trove of letters and history?
LINDA GARTZ: Yeah. So each of these connections-- those were my two special most special ones-- stayed with me for decades.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: Yeah.
LINDA GARTZ: Yeah, never underestimate what a friend from Northwestern can do.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: Right, right. That's so interesting, too, that you're talking about how you never would have thought Susan, being a close friend in marketing-- you're in teaching-- who would've thought she could help you in your career? I love those connections, talking about friends, social friends. This is where it began and how they impacted your career down that road.
LINDA GARTZ: That's right. And you don't know, especially in today's world, where people are changing careers so often, or jobs, anyway.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: Yeah. And you've done a lot of really cool things, worked on lots of great projects. I'm curious what you, personally, are most proud of throughout your career.
LINDA GARTZ: That is really hard to say because, basically-- yeah, in terms, obviously, I'm most proud of my sons and my family. But when we talk about career, I was proud of everything I did. I mean, when I was a teacher, I loved being a teacher. I thought it was the most important job in the world. And then when I got into TV production and I produced documentaries, I got very involved with the people that we portrayed in the documentaries and very involved with the subject matter.
And then when I got involved with the schools in my area-- this wasn't really part of my career, but I did a lot of volunteering in Evanston schools. And I ended up writing a grant and starting a tutoring program at one of the schools. And I was very proud of that because we taught 200 at-risk kids to read through this volunteer tutoring program I started.
And then, of course, getting into the book, I always had said the reason it took me so long to get this book done is because I was not going to put a book out there that I was not proud of. So I kept working at this. I could have published it years ago, but I thought, it's not right yet. It's not right yet. And I kept working on it and working on it, and it's I think it's pretty right now.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: And over those years, you probably got better and better at writing.
LINDA GARTZ: Right. I continued to take classes. I joined a writing group, where we would critique each other's work, a very super high quality writing group. The people were excellent, and we had excellent moderators who were all published authors who would give advice. So going through that for over 10 years, I really learned the craft. I mean, I worked at my craft.
There's a joke that somebody's at a party. And one man says, what do you do, to the other. And he says, well I'm a writer. And the other guy says, oh well, I'm a neurosurgeon, but when I retire, I'm going to become a writer. And the writer says, well gee, when I retire, I'm going to become a neurosurgeon. In other words, the idea is people look at writing and they think, oh-- as I do. I thought, I'm going to write this book, no problem. And then I realized, no. I don't know how to write.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: That's so funny hearing you talk about that now, knowing that you're a published author of such an interesting story and an interesting book, to hear you say, oh, I didn't even know how to begin, really, looking back on it. The perseverance you had mentioned sounds a lot like from your family.
LINDA GARTZ: Yes, that was family that persevered, I'll tell you that.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: That's great. And it seems like you've had a lot of really great mentors throughout your life in your family, in these networks you've had from Northwestern and these writing groups. What advice have you received that's really stuck with you?
LINDA GARTZ: Well, I like don't let the perfect get in the way of the good, and I have trouble following that. But one of the things about working in TV, I worked for a while in the 4:30 news. And whatever people can say about TV, it's always on time. So when it was 4:30, you just we're going to go on. That was it.
If it wasn't perfectly done, as my one friend who did a daily talk show said, spilt milk. Move on. Next day. It's like this insatiable beast. So that mistakes, of course, are part of life and learning. So I think it's important not to be afraid of making mistakes. It's better to take a risk and make a mistake than not take the risk, because it's risk that moves you along, and a lot of people are afraid of risk.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: And even if it does not always go the right way, it's still progress. You're still learning something from that.
LINDA GARTZ: Right. A perfect example is when I had taken this leave of absence from teaching. There was of a parent in Winnetka, at the time, who was looking for people to become systems analysts. He ran a company and needed systems analysts. And he had found that teachers really became really good systems analysts. So again, from What Color is Your Parachute, they always said, make sure that this is something that you love. But they were so sure that I would do well in this job, I decided to take it, and it was a disaster.
I mean, this was just not my bailiwick at all. I mean, I couldn't learn it, for whatever reason. I'd never had that issue before. And I finally went to the guy after one week and said, I don't think this is the career for me. And he said, you know, I think you're right. And I was devastated because I thought, all these people recommended me for this job. I mean, I really thought the world was going to end. And then the next day, I woke up and the sun is shining and, oh, I guess I've got to move on.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: Right, right. And I mean, that was going to be my next question for you is these career missteps, or lessons learned along the way. I mean, that's a great situation, where, like you said, it wasn't right for you, but you get up and you move on. Were there other situations like that throughout your career, where there was a setback and you overcame it?
LINDA GARTZ: That was the biggest one that is the most memorable because it was so miserable. I was actually pulling all-nighters, studying these books about systems analysis. And I'm sure other people could have done it just fine and maybe liked it. So the big thing there, I think, is, again, know yourself. Know what you're good at. It's not enough to just take a job because it'll make you a lot of money, because you spend a lot of time at work.
And if you hate your job, even if you're making a boatload of money, that's your life that you're letting slip away. And here, you have all this money but you're miserable. So you've got to have a balance, obviously, especially when we have families. We need resources for all the things that it costs for children and homes, and all that. But I would say, know yourself and try to find something that is in your sweet spot.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: You have lots of great insights that have come out so far. And Linda, I don't want to get into a list of questions that I have that are totally random. And I don't want to think too much about them. I want you to just answer off the top of your head.
LINDA GARTZ: Oh boy.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: And I like this first question for you, as someone who's already done a number of different things. But in another life, what would you want to do or be?
LINDA GARTZ: I will come back as a frivolous person. No, really. I'm thinking when I'm done with this, with the book-- I've just been working so hard for so long, I just really want to just have more fun.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: Yeah, take a break.
LINDA GARTZ: Yeah. And I mean, I don't want to make it sound like this is all I do. I mean, I travel. I see friends. But I'm sort of joking when I say I'd come back as a frivolous person. But frivolous people I meet tell me, oh, I would want to come back as a serious person.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: There you go. Try something different.
LINDA GARTZ: Yeah.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: And what is the funniest thing that has happened to you recently?
LINDA GARTZ: I read a Daily Northwestern article from last May. I read it because it was a coverage of Mary Barr's book, which is about Evanston, called Friends Disappear. And I wanted to find out more about Mary and her book. And this Daily Northwestern reporter had reported on her presentation. And then afterwards, the Daily Northwestern reporter saw a crossing guard and said to an African American woman-- because Mary Barr's book is about what happens to the white kids from ETHS and what happens to the black kids.
And she asked this crossing guard a question about kids not eating together in the cafeteria. And the woman said something like, well, I hope we can get to know each other better in the future. And then she quoted her name. It was Dorothy Headd with two D's. So I go, Dorothy Headd. You were my mother's first tenant on the sixth flat in 1965. Because my mother wrote about you in her diary and I put her in the book.
So I immediately went on Facebook, found Dorothy Headd, sent her a message and said, did you by any chance live at [? Keiler ?] in Washington on the west side of Chicago with Fred and Will Gartz? Yes, it was her. So we got together for lunch, and she came to my book launch and I introduced her to everybody, because how weird is that?
CASSIE PETOSKEY: That's crazy. That's so cool.
LINDA GARTZ: Yeah. And the minute I saw there were two D's in the name, I said, this has got to be the same person.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: Yeah.
LINDA GARTZ: And she's lived in Evanston as long as we have, for like 40 years. And we were like 10 minutes apart, we didn't know it.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: Oh my gosh, and you wrote about her.
LINDA GARTZ: I did, before I knew that she was in Evanston. This is after the book is published and everything.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: Oh my gosh. That's so interesting. I have so many questions about that, but we'll stick with our speed round. That's a great story. If someone gave you a million dollar grant right now to use on something that makes the world better, how would you use that money?
LINDA GARTZ: I think I would like to invest it in the west side of Chicago. I think that that neighborhood has been so beaten down and ignored by the city. I think that there is need for more help in the schools. There is an organization for young people called the Off Street Club, which I actually belong to. It's been around that long, and it's still a very important community meeting place for young kids, and they help kids. So that's another possibility. But if I had that grant, I would like to put it into the west side of Chicago.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: And tell me about your favorite time or place when you ran into a fellow Northwestern alumnus?
LINDA GARTZ: Of course, what keeps coming back and back to my mind is my two friends Katie and Susan. Katie and I, especially, we sail together a lot, and we started racing sailboats before we had kids.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: Wow.
LINDA GARTZ: So her husband is an avid sailor. Katie's become an avid sailor. So it wasn't that we just bumped into them, but we kind of developed these mutual interests that I never would have really pursued as avidly if we hadn't had another couple to pursue them with. So that was cool. Racing sailboats is something that would have never occurred to me. But we did it. And we took lessons in it and went to Key West to learn how to sail in races and had a lot of fun.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: That's awesome.
LINDA GARTZ: Yeah.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: Yeah, developing those common interests together through that Northwestern connection. I like it.
LINDA GARTZ: Yup.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: And if you could be any animal in the world, what animal would you be and why?
LINDA GARTZ: Oh, an animal. Well, of course, you want to be at the top of the food chain. I think I'd like to be an eagle because you can soar, and you're awesome, and you're really alert, and you can see for miles, and you just have to make sure you're not eating pesticides that'll kill you.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: Maybe in a more natural habitat.
LINDA GARTZ: Yes, and they're nicely protected now, so being an eagle at this time is not a bad idea.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: That's a great point. Protected, and I can see that. That's funny. And what do you wish you could tell your 22-year-old self as you graduated from Northwestern? And I guess this is interesting from you because you graduated from Northwestern a couple times.
LINDA GARTZ: Yes, all right. Well, first of all, I never went to the graduation ceremony for my undergrad because I was living in Germany, and German schools didn't get out until the mid-July so I missed the ceremony.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: Oh my gosh.
LINDA GARTZ: But I had to decide. I said, let's see. Do I want to dress up in a cap and gown or do want to live in Europe? Cap and gown, Europe. No contest.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: I'm sure your parents had a different perspective.
LINDA GARTZ: You know what? They were so busy, I don't think it ever even occurred to them. But anyway, I think the advice I'd give to my younger self, and to all young people, is realize you're going to get older. You don't think about that when you're young. You know it intellectually.
And I guess I did a lot of this anyway, but I would do even more, use your bodies in whatever way. If you think you want to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, or you want to do backpacking, or you have this is a dream, if it requires a good, sturdy body, that will eventually deteriorate, whether you believe it or not, no matter how good you take care of yourself. I should say how well you take care of yourself, to be an accurate English person.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: Yeah.
LINDA GARTZ: So yeah, I think that's really important for young people to realize. And then also, many of my classmates never had a chance to get old. Just life and death happens. So I don't want to be morbid, but I think people just all of a sudden, they wake up and say, oh, I'm 65.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: Yeah. You don't want to time travel through your own life. You want to take advantage of those moments.
LINDA GARTZ: So do things. Be young. Be young. Because, of course, if you know everything you know at 65 when you're 22, that's not good, either. Be young. Be frivolous. Have fun. But realize that do those things, especially, that require physical capabilities.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: That's great. And Linda, it's been so great chatting with you about so many different things throughout our conversation and so many great career insights that have come up throughout our conversation. But I definitely want to give you a few minutes if you have any other career advice, life advice that you want to share with the Northwestern network.
LINDA GARTZ: Well, I think I've pretty much covered everything. I would encourage people to buy my book, Redlined, because this is a subject that I have found most people under the age of 40 have never even heard of.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: Yeah.
LINDA GARTZ: What makes this book different from other books on redlining is I have not found another non-academic book on this subject. There are many wonderful academic books, Color of Law, Family Properties, Block by Block. I mean, you just can look them up, many that will give you two inches of footnotes or end notes. But this is a family story. It's about a family that actually lived through the consequences of redlining.
And so I think it's more accessible to people who want to learn about that, but at the same time, have a poignant family story that they could relate to. I think it's important that people know about this topic because it's still with us today. Even though it's not a legal policy anymore, you will find, when there is research done-- which PBS News Hour and Reveal the Center for Investigative Reporting did-- they found that whites still get mortgages at three times the rate of blacks with the same financial profile.
So something's going on there. Whether they look at they know this is an African American person because of the person's name, because of where they live. I don't know the exact reason. But they did a study, as I recall, of about 30 million mortgages, they crunched the data. So this is still going on.
And you read about people in African American communities get parking tickets at greater rates than people in white communities. Bikes are stopped. Bicyclists are stopped more often in African American communities. So there's a lot to understand about where this came from.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: Right, the history that leads into the right challenges we have today with racism, systemic racism.
LINDA GARTZ: Right. And a lot of people don't want to admit that it still exists. It's amazing to me. I think this book gives insight into how this came about, and talks about the great migration of African Americans from the south, and exactly what that looked like in one Chicago neighborhood.
But as I said earlier, this story you can find this in almost any large neighborhood in the country, because every neighborhood of most big cities were mapped. And I would highly recommend a site called mappinginequality.com, and there, you can look up the actual 1940s digitized versions of redlining maps from about 230 cities from the whole Homeowner's Loan Corporation.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: Linda, I found this conversation fascinating, around this concept, like you said, people under 40 didn't even know that this existed, and I didn't before I met you. But I'm glad we're having this conversation and to have the platform of the Northwestern network to hear that there's still work to be done, that we need to face these challenges.
LINDA GARTZ: And be aware of them. I mean, you can't face them until you're aware of them. And it's going to be ongoing, I think, for many, many decades to come.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: Definitely. And Linda, it has been a pleasure chatting with you today. I'm so glad that we were able to get together and have this interview and hear more about your career, your book, your work. Thank you so much for being here with us.
LINDA GARTZ: This was really fun and a real pleasure. Thanks, Cassie.
Thank you for tuning into today's episode of Northwestern Intersections. To find more information about the podcast, please visit northwestern.edu/intersections. Have a great rest of your day, and go Cats.