We are public servants.

My maternal great grandfather was the director of a welfare agency. As part of his job, he lived with his family in a big house called Hillcrest, a house that would hereafter figure prominently in nearly all of my grandmother’s stories of her childhood. The house was situated on the grounds of a government youth facility, which was under my great grandfather’s jurisdiction, and this facility included an orphanage and two reform schools, one for boys and one for girls. On the grounds there was also a classroom facility where all of those children went to school, and a huge playground where my grandmother and her brothers, and later my mom, her sisters and her cousins would play. There was also an old deserted orchard on the grounds from which my grandmother and her siblings would collect crabapples and other fruits to make preserves. Everyone in the family loved living there, probably for a variety of reasons, and it was really sad when they had to move out because my great grandfather retired. Many years later it was torn down, inducing further fits of nostalgia and sorrow in everyone in the family who had ever visited the place. In family stories it has become this sort of hallowed land of milk and honey, which brought everyone who lived there so much joy and happiness. But one important thing I think it reinforced in everyone who lived there, and in particular the children, was the importance of public service. Living right there at their father’s work place, seeing the work he did to help these people and how much it meant to him no doubt made a huge impression on my grandmother and her siblings, and also reinforced to a great degree the belief in public service and education already running through the family. As a result, all of the children ended up working in public service, and most of the grandchildren as well. I think it is particularly revealing that many of the people who tried to work outside of the public sphere soon gave up. For example, my Great Uncle Johnny is a geologist, and for a time he tried to make a lot of money working for a big oil corporation helping them to find oil deposits all over the US. But after only a few years, he left the job and returned to teaching as a university professor, saying how much he hated working for the corporations. I find this hatred of working in the private sector to be particularly interesting, because I realized recently that the thought of working in the private sector had never really occurred to me, and even now I can’t really imagine working for some company. My mind automatically associates the private sector with instability, corruption and a vague idea of “selling out” .