Jessie spoke about this period of her life with her typical enthusiasm and relentless curiosity. And also some sadness. During this time she traveled across country, and on to Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, where she stayed for over 2 years. She then lived in Seattle, still thousands of miles from the Yiddish NY “village” of her childhood. She had two kids. She was in love. She endured a tough divorce.
It is another enormous achievement of hers that she managed, through all of it to focus on what was best for her children, and continued to live out her life spreading good humor and optimism – in celebration of love, though LOVE itself remained elusive and complicated for her.
In 1953 she was just 20 years old and newly married. She studied history at City College of NY, one of the first women to break the gender barrier there. She interrupted her studies to follow Mike to his Army posting in Ft. Lee, Virginia. The South was like a foreign country to her. Later she spoke of the shameful realization that their landlord wouldn’t allow a black friend to visit them in the apartment they had rented.
She learned shorthand and secretarial skills and worked for the Army. When Mike got discharged she followed him to Seattle (about 1955) and continued her education, getting her BA from the University of Washington in 1957. Mike started his PhD program there, receiving a Ford Foundation grant which sent them to Taiwan from 1957 to 1959. They boarded a freighter which stopped first in Korea:
This began an enormous adventure which introduced her to a completely different part of the world.
Jessie worked in the International School as a teacher and administrator up to the birth of their first child. The many little photos from the time show how they must have sent pictures constantly back and forth to the family in NY.
In 1959 the family of three moved back to Seattle where Michael finished his PhD and Josh was born. There followed stints in Princeton in New Jersey and GW in Washington, DC and then a return to Seattle where in 1966 the marriage finally ended in divorce.
Click here for more pictures from these years. Or here to go on to the next section.