Park Slope Reader

kathryn krase

You Can Call Me Coach

By Filed Under: Community, Feature Tagged With: , ,

Frances Perkins was the first woman appointed to the cabinet of a US President. In 1933, Franklin Delano Roosevelt appointed Francis Perkins as the Secretary of Labor during the Great Depression. Perkins ushered in massive social reforms, leading the legislative efforts to institute Old Age, Survivors, Disability Insurance (aka “Social Security”), unemployment compensation, and workers compensation. 

The first of her kind, the press was confused about what to call her other than “Secretary Perkins”. The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Henry Thomas Rainey (D-Ill), was called upon to clarify the appropriate honorific to use. 

“When the Secretary of Labor is a lady, she should be addressed with the same general formalities as a secretary who was a gentleman. You call him Mr. Secretary. You will call her Madam Secretary.”

It’s not hard to show respect for women who take on roles that have long been held by men. Most times, you can simply call the woman by the same exact title as a man in the same position, like “Doctor” or “Vice President”. But for some people, finding a way to refer to women in positions that have been long dominated by men seems really difficult. This holds true on the baseball fields of Brooklyn.

In the depths of the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed Perkins as secretary of labor. Against overwhelming odds, she became the driving force behind Social Security, the 40-hour workweek, the eight‐hour workday, minimum wage, and unemployment compensation.

In the spring of 2010, I took to the artificial turf fields at the Dean Street Playground, near what would become the Barclays Center, as the head coach of the SFX Youthsports T-Ball team, the “Beetles”. My three year-old son, Jack, was excited to put on a uniform and enjoy the game that he saw his older cousins playing every spring. There was never a question about who would coach his team. It would be me.

For the five years before our first T-ball season, I served as an assistant coach to my nephews’ SFX recreational baseball teams, led by my brother-in-law, Coach John. In the spring of 2007, you could find me, visibly pregnant with Jack, coaching the runners at first base.  For the first two springs of Jack’s life, a few times a week, he watched his uncle and his mom lead his nephews in practices in Prospect Park, and games all around Brooklyn. His Auntie Kristin, his Nana Sue, and his Daddy would keep an eye on Jack on the sidelines while John and I were busy on the field. I enjoyed my first Mother’s Day at the Parade Grounds, where Coach John helped coordinate coffee and donuts to celebrate the moms, like me, who made it to the game that morning. 

For five years I was taking mental and physical notes about the kind of head coach I wanted to be when it was my turn. First and foremost, I wanted to instill a love of the game in my players. Just like John, it was important to me that the players knew the rules so they could understand the beauty of baseball. There was never a doubt in my mind that if the player could see how intertwined the physical and the psychological parts of the game were, that they would essentially find the spirituality of baseball, and fall in love. 

Of course, this education had to be provided in an age-appropriate manner. Would you try to teach three and four-year-olds how to work a count for their own benefit and the batters behind them? Since there was no pitching in t-ball, such would be unnecessary, but also developmentally impossible. A success to be found in at-ball game was when a player would drop their bat before running, or more importantly, running to first base, instead of third. I’m still interested in the choice made by the baseball founders requiring baserunners to run counter-clockwise around the bases, instead of clockwise.  I guess most three and four-year-olds feel the same way. 

That first year as a head coach for the Beetles I didn’t feel out of place as a woman on the field. There were a few women leading t-ball teams that year, though we were definitely not close to a majority. There were also moms serving as assistant coaches, and moms helping coordinate the line-ups. There were moms helping with after-game snacks. Moms were everywhere. As the years went on, and the players got older, most moms moved back, away from the field, to enjoy their children’s participation on the field as a spectator. But not me. I was still there in the middle of the action, where I wanted to be. 

After years of watching John, I was eager to coordinate my own team’s defense and offense. I was preparing pre-game and post-game team talks as I fell asleep at night. I got the butterflies every game day, out of excited energy. 

This is 2012. That’s me sitting at first base. I generally coached from down there. 1) that way parents on the sidelines wouldn’t be obstructed by me. 2) I was at kid level, and 3) my adrenaline was so high I would shake… but, in this picture, you can also see 2 coaches/Dad’s from the other team behind me…

As we moved past the t-ball stage, and into Prospect Park as the kids turned five, my uniqueness as a female coach became more obvious. There were practically no other women wearing the collared SFX head coach shirt with the color-coordinated baseball cap that I wore each game with great pride. I guess my rarity as a female head coach helps explain why many fellow head coaches, men wearing the same collared shirt and hat as I, would literally miss my physical existence as we prepared for game time. Time and time again the opposing coach would walk up to a father on my team, not wearing a coach’s shirt or cap, to clarify which team was batting first, or what time our game would start. Time and time again the dads on my team would put their hands up and say something like, “oh, no. I’m not a coach. You have to talk to Coach Kathryn. She’s over there.” And there I was, wearing a matching outfit, setting up the field; putting the bases down, measuring the base paths with my retractable measuring tape. I thought I was ultra-visible in my uniqueness, but on those occasions I was invisible; the opposing coaches didn’t even know to look for me, though I was clearly there.

Not being seen is hard to take, but being seen and not respected is more difficult to swallow. A few glaring examples over the past decade come to mind. There was the father of a 5-year-old player on the opposing team who left his spot on the sidelines to tower over me, incensed that I was insisting an umpire apply the appropriate rules to his son’s at-bat. His voice raised, he kept referring to me as “ma’am” at the end of each of his sentences, but the inflection of his tone made it clear that he was not using it as a term of respect, but a reminder that I was the only woman on the field. 

Then there is the use of “lady”. At least with “ma’am” the speaker can feign respect; when a man calls a woman “lady”, as in “what’s your problem, lady?”, it is quite clear that no civility is intended.  I get “what’s your problem, lady?” at least once a year. Most often it comes from the sidelines, uttered by frustrated dads who seem to have trouble accepting their son will lose to a team coached by a woman. Sometimes it comes from opposing coaches, usually when I’ve caught them trying to skip past their weaker batters in the line-up when the score is really close. When Jack was nine, there was the middle-aged umpire, frustrated, and likely embarrassed, with my correcting him and our opposing coach on the rules of our level of play. As I turned away from our meeting behind home plate to return to my team’s dugout, he muttered within earshot, “whatever, lady”.

There is absolutely no reason to use the terms “ma’am” or “lady” on the baseball field. There is one term, and one term alone that should be used to refer to me, or any other woman leading their team on the baseball field, or any other sports field for that matter. You can call me “Coach”.

Nana Rose: Learning About My Grandmother by Living through a Pandemic

By Filed Under: Pandemic Diaries Tagged With: ,

Nana Rose (far left in her black ribbon) stands with Josie and Sal (front middle) and step-sisters Rose and Connie, while Papa holds Baby Ann

If you met my grandmother, “Nana Rose”, chances are you can share a story about the experience. Chances are, she talked about you, too. My Nana had a “personality”, for sure. She appreciated personality in those she interacted with and was dismayed by the lack thereof. Of utmost importance to her was whether her partner in a moment could hold a conversation, keep her entertained, or make her laugh. That one was important. A laugh changed her life; I’ll save that story for another time.

Rose “Cinny” Jordan was born in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, on September 24, 1913, to Filomena Migliore and Anthony Jordan.  Filomena was born in Chicago. Anthony (“Papa”) was born in Brooklyn. Papa was a plumber, who would develop into a political figure with significant influence in the Brooklyn democratic party, largely controlled by Italian-American men, like himself. 

Rose was the eldest born child to her parents. She would soon have a brother, Sal, born in 1915, and a sister, Josie, born in 1917. Her mother died pregnant with Rose’s 3rd sibling that never was. Filomena didn’t perish during childbirth, like so many women of her time (700 women out of every 100,000 who gave birth in 1910 died in childbirth). Filomena succumbed to the Spanish flu in 1919, while pregnant. 

Filomena was a young mother of 3 small children, when her unmarried uncle took ill with the flu and needed someone to tend to his symptoms and keep him comfortable. The responsibility fell on Filomena. She got sick, lost her pregnancy, and she died. She wasn’t alone. Research suggests that nearly ¼ of pregnant women died during the Spanish Flue Pandemic. The uncle lived, as did all three of Filomena’s children. 

Filomena Migliore Jordan holds baby Josie, next to Anthony “Papa” Jordan, and his pals, outside his Brooklyn plumbing business, circa 1918

The loss of her mother was a defining moment in my grandmother’s early life. Papa would quickly remarry a woman, Frances, widowed by the pandemic herself, and with two daughters of her own.  Anthony and Frances would have 3 children together; two more girls, and a son, Anthony. 

Echoing Victorian mourning practice, Nana Rose was required to mark the sorrow of losing her mother by wearing a black ribbon in her hair for a prescribed period of time. (PHOTO) Recalling how this tradition made her feel sad, she would ask: “who would do such a thing to a child?” 

If you had the pleasure of talking to Nana Rose on a handful of occasions, you would likely learn about her love of New York sports teams. She was both a Yankees AND a Mets fan, though you could say she “leaned” towards the Bronx. But in reality, she was an abandoned Dodger’s fan, just trying to fill a void in her heart by their move to L.A. The Dodgers retreat to the west coast was experienced as a personal affront to Nana Rose. The loss of her home-team was just one of many “tragedies” Nana Rose experienced, starting with the death of her mother.  Things seemed to happen to her, specifically, or at least that’s how she experienced it.

The Great Depression happened to Nana Rose. She lived the rest of her almost 95 years, all in Brooklyn, clinging to depression-era practices aimed at saving and reusing everything she could. Rubber bands. Tin foil. Parchment paper. Our favorite: the cardboard insert that gave structure to the three-pack of Hostess’s Yankee Doodles. This simple piece of cardboard brought three young girls a lot of joy. It was often populated with a handwritten dinner order, for special nights when our grandparents would take me and my two sisters to the McDonald’s on Fort Hamilton Parkway, across the street from Greenwood Cemetery.

Other events happened to Nana Rose, too. Like Pearl Harbor and World War II, which saw her baby brother, Anthony, and two of her brother-in-laws sent overseas. All returned safely, though it was a scary few years.

JFK’s assassination happened to Nana Rose. She could tell you all about the day he was shot. The desperate minutes between hearing of the shooting and learning of JFK’s death. Keeping her radio on, and at the ready, even as she went food shopping in the neighborhood, Nana Rose didn’t want to miss anything. If you didn’t know, Nana Rose would tell you: JFK was killed in Dallas, Texas. As a result, Nana Rose always rooted against professional sports teams from Texas. When I dated a Cowboys fan, football season was not particularly comfortable.  

My mother, sisters, and I would laugh off Nana Rose’s insistence that these world changing events happened TO HER. She was unable to conceptualize that these events happened, and she was simply in existence when they happened. We could argue that it wasn’t personal, or purposeful, but we found her insistence sort of comical, if not endearing. Until September 11, 2001.

Nana Rose and my grandfather were in their early 90’s and living in the top-floor apartment in my parent’s house Park Slope brownstone on 9/11. That morning, instead of going to work in lower Manhattan, I watched my newborn nephew, so that my sister, Kristin, could bring her 3 year-old to his first day of preschool. By the time I got to Kristin’s house, regular tv programming was interrupted with scenes of fire in the high floors of the North Tower at the World Trade Center. We watched together live on NY1 as Flight 175 hit the South Tower. We, along with the rest of the world, were terrified into silence as the South Tower, and then the North Tower, fell. 

My mother, then an administrator at The Brooklyn Hospital Center in Downtown Brooklyn, would spend that long Tuesday, mobilized and at the ready to receive the overflow of patients from Manhattan that would never come. My father would come join us at Kristin’s, so we could be together for whatever happened next. Before he left his house, my father ascended the stairs to my grandparents’ apartment to close the windows, so that the debris that we so desperately wanted to think of as pieces of paper that were slowly blowing across the East River wouldn’t make it into their space. We asked our father about his decision to leave my grandparents alone. His response was something like: “would you want to spend your last minutes on earth with those two?” We knew what he meant. In her opinion, 9/11 happened to Nana Rose, not to the nearly 3000 people lost that day in New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia, and their surviving families. 

I felt very close to my grandmother throughout our overlapping 35 years.  Not just because we ate dinner with her every Wednesday and Sunday for the first 18 years of my life, and hundreds of other times. Not just because we would call each other after each Mets or Yankees playoff or World Series game, no matter what time it ended. Not just because she sent me three single dollar bills in a greeting card with a note that read “snack time” at least once a semester while I was in college. 

Married women between 15-24 years of age had the highest mortality rate during the second wave of the Spanish Flu in NYC, 1918

I felt very close to my grandmother because I heard all of her stories, more than a few times. I felt close to my grandmother because I lived the most important days of my life with her, and I was there to comfort her after some of the toughest in hers, as she survived the loss of each of her six siblings, and then the loss of my grandfather. 

I felt close to my grandmother. But until the COVID19 pandemic, I didn’t truly understand her. It didn’t take more than pop psychology to connect my grandmother’s unique “personality” to the loss of her mother at a young age. I listened to her stories about losing her mother and the sadness that echoed through black hair ribbons, over and over and over again. I knew that her nickname, “Cinny” came from a shortened version of “Rosanella”, but could just as easily come from the applicability of “Cinderella” to her life story. But, I never, for a moment, considered that the loss of her mother was so much more than that. She didn’t just lose her mother at a young age. She lost her mother during a pandemic. 

Nana Rose’s loss was much larger than her mother’s death. She was a young child, who just lost her mother, as dead bodies lined the streets of NYC. Nana Rose was a young child, who just lost her mother, surrounded by a City full of sadness and uncertainty, beyond her personal loss.  

While I appreciated how my grandmother’s life was impacted by her loss, I focused on that which I could empathize: her mother’s death and her father’s remarriage, specifically. I never considered how her life was impacted by loss, more generally, from living through a pandemic. Now, as I’m living in that same city during this pandemic, I have never felt more close to Nana Rose.