Shirley Lefever and Gordon Bassham

[00:02] SHIRLEY LEFEVER: Shirley Lefever I am 61 years old. Today's date is Tuesday, April 12, 2022. I am in Wichita, Kansas. My conversation partner is Gordon Bassem, and the relationship is the one small step partner. Gordon's bio. I am a Vietnam veteran who works to help disabled veterans and transitioning service members find employment. I believe constructive dialogue is vital to preserving and advancing our democracy. How we talk with one another about important issues is very important. I believe most problems in our society can be overcome if we're willing to listen to others in order to understand their I positions and not to respond to their words.

[00:59] GORDON BASSHAM: My name is Gordon Bassham I'm 75 years old. Excuse me? I'm Gordon Bassham I'm 75 years old. Today's date is Tuesday, April 12, 2022. I'm in Wichita, Kansas. My conversation partner is Shirley Lefever Is that correct?

[01:18] SHIRLEY LEFEVER: Lefever

[01:19] GORDON BASSHAM: Lefever Sorry, Shirley Lefever And my relationship to her is we're the Storycorps partners here today. Reading Shirley's bio. My father passed away when I was seven years old. My mother, who was 35 at the time, raised seven children, one being I being one of them, the next to the youngest. I'm now nearing the end of my career in higher education, having been a faculty member and then nearly 25 years as an administrator. I attribute my success in academia to my mothers, who never left. Having only a high school education stopped her from providing for her children or advancing in her career. I'm a strong advocate for public education.

[02:26] SHIRLEY LEFEVER: Gordon, why did you want to do this interview?

[02:30] GORDON BASSHAM: I believe that the differences between people should be things of common interests, should be things that we use to get to know not only ourselves, but the people who live amongst us, who live around us in our community. To me, differences are very important, but they should not be things that drive us apart. They should be things that bring us together. If we find interest in other people. It's simply a way of understanding not only ourselves better, but understanding the society around us. I think we should celebrate those differences rather than cause them to be sources of mutual distrust. And what about you, Shirley? Tell me about why you're doing this interview.

[03:21] SHIRLEY LEFEVER: You know, I think really some of the same reasons. I believe in this project because of the desire to bring people with differing backgrounds together in a listening environment. So I think very much what you said, Gordon, that just trying to lift people up and listen.

[03:50] GORDON BASSHAM: So. Excuse me. I'm sorry. I'm fighting sinus infection. I was down in bed all weekend. I'm still trying to get over my apologies for my noises here. So the question, Shirley, is who's been the most influential person in your life? Is it a family member, a friend, a mentor, a guy who's been most influential in helping you become the surely that you are today?

[04:20] SHIRLEY LEFEVER: So I really. It goes back to my bio. I think it's hands down my mother. I think I often think about when I was 35 years old, I had two children, not seven. I had a college education. And I just remember thinking at times how overwhelming being a parent can be. And so I marvel at what my mother was able to do, raising seven children on a high school education. So nothing, you know, when I think about when I have a tough day or I'm faced with a challenge, I think, you know what? I'm just going to put 1ft in front of the other, because nothing that I'm facing is any more difficult than what my mother faced. So how about you?

[05:16] GORDON BASSHAM: Well, excuse me. I think probably there are two people who are most influential in my life. My father, who, in spite of having a third grade education, was a very bright man, very successful in business, and gave me a lot of values. His legacy, his most important legacy to me were his values in valuing other people. And then one of the other people who was most influential for me is a guy that by the name of shorty powers. Shorty Powers was the voice of the mercury astronauts back in the day, when he was the man that coined the phrase a ok. And when he retired from the air force and left NASA, he started a radio station in Clear Lake City, which is Nassau Bay, which is a little community across the street from the manned spacecraft center. And Shorty was the one who gave me an opportunity to become a journalist, and he instilled in me journalistic values and a set of ethics that I still hold very dear today. So those are the two most influential people in my life, and I'm blessed to have been a part of their lives.

[06:41] SHIRLEY LEFEVER: That's interesting. How do you think your father instilled those values in you?

[06:47] GORDON BASSHAM: I think they came naturally from his parents. He was an old Oklahoma cowboy who, like I said, had only a third grade education and started in the oil business very young. And he got his set of values from his parents. But also, I'm the youngest of three children, so I think a lot of the values he instilled in me were probably the result of trial and error, to be honest with you. He admits to making some mistakes with my brother and my sister. And I'm not saying that I'm the result of his. The perfect result of his mistakes. But I will say that I think he. He was able to develop the ethics and the values that he passed on to me based on not only his values, but a bit of trial and error, to be honest with you. So you mentioned that you're one of seven children. That could not have been easy for your mother, raising all those kids by herself. Tell me about that.

[07:56] SHIRLEY LEFEVER: You know, I think about that a lot, too. And when I went to college, it was the first time that I started to realize we must not have had very much money. And so, to me, that's incredible that I grew up not really realizing how much we didn't have. It was always, if I needed a dress to go to prom or if, you know, whatever we needed, we had it. Whether that meant that she would stay up late at night and sew a new dress, or so I think. And there is a. So shortly after my father died, we lived on a farm, a dairy farm. And so we rented. And so we had to move in town because we weren't going to be able to milk the cows and sell it because it was sort of a sharecropper arrangement sort of thing. And so when we moved into town, the house that we rented had this massive dump pile in the back. My mother was not going to raise her kids in a house that had trash. So we came home every day after school, and we would load up our pickup truck. It probably took us, I'm guessing, two or three months. And I remember the day that we raked up the last pile of trash into the shovel, and we all, all seven of us kids and mom just celebrated just by hooping and hollering. But to me, that pile of trash has been always so symbolic to me that no task is too small and you just take one step at a time. But we had lots of funny stories that we all still remember. I think all of us ended up getting at least one nail in our feet. And so just different things. That experience taught me so just a lot of resilience, I think.

[10:14] GORDON BASSHAM: I think resilience is vastly underrated, to be honest with you. And I kind of liken what you say with your big pile of trash. I've had a lot of significant problems that I've worked on in the course of my career in journalism and as a law enforcement officer. And it's like eating an elephant sometimes. But if you do it one bite at a time, it's an easier task. It's so much easier to accomplish things if you take them in small steps. And I think overcoming obstacles is probably among my most treasured memories, because we all fail from time to time, but it's what we learn from those failures. And then when we finally do succeed, and the obstacle has been great, knowing that that obstacle has been overcome, to me, is a priceless feeling. So I understand where you're coming from.

[11:12] SHIRLEY LEFEVER: I imagine, being a Vietnam vet, that you experienced a few obstacles.

[11:18] GORDON BASSHAM: You know, it was really. Excuse me. It was interesting coming back from Vietnam, because when I got out, I came home on leave once from Vietnam, we had a death in the family, so I was given bereavement leave to come home. And when I landed in San Francisco at the air Force base there and got on a bus outside Travis Air Force base to go over to the international airport in San Francisco, there are people standing outside the gates of the base cursing us and spitting on us and yelling at us. And it wasn't an easy process. And for years and years, I lived in the shadow of that hatred. But it wasn't until later on in life when I began to realize that America had changed its attitude toward veterans and was now welcoming and celebrating the people who served in uniformity, especially after the Gulf War, the first Gulf War, the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, all of a sudden, soldiers, sailors, marines, airmen, and coast guard, they were being celebrated, and they were welcomed once again. And what was interesting was to be able to ride along on those coattails of those young members of the military. I once again felt valued. One of the things that makes me do this job today is because when I got out of the navy, when I landed at home on Christmas Eve in 1968, my last act duty in the navy was to salute the officer of the deck, salute the ins and at the back of the ship, and walk down the gangplank. And there was no transitioning period whatsoever. It was, you're on your own now. I get to help young airmen and retiring airmen find a way to make their life easier in the civilian world, because for them, for many of them, it's like jumping off a cliff. They have no idea what to expect. And I guess, in a way, I'm kind of the. I'm the airbag at the bottom of the cliff, although many people have called me an airbag, I guess, but that's neither here nor there, but it really is. It's much different now than it was more than 50 years ago when I came back from Vietnam.

[13:42] SHIRLEY LEFEVER: So did you have.

[13:44] GORDON BASSHAM: I'm sorry, go ahead.

[13:47] SHIRLEY LEFEVER: Oh, I'm just. I was just imagining what that must have felt like. And I would think there had to be some feelings of bitterness, maybe initially. And so how did you ride that out? Because it was a number of years that passed before people, people's opinions started to change.

[14:07] GORDON BASSHAM: It was a matter of decades, I think, in some cases, for me, for a long time, admittedly, I was not proud of my service. And now that I look back on that, I think, wow, that's pretty goofy, if you get right down to it. In my family, I come from, one of my ancestors enlisted in the Continental army on Christmas day in 1776. So my family has a long history of service to its country, to this country. But there were many years when I didn't feel like that. I was really ready to celebrate my service. It took me a long time to get beyond some of the feelings that were thrust upon me when I first got back from Vietnam. So when it comes to the lessons of your mother, you talked about resilience and things like that. What other major lessons did you learn, Shirley, from your mom? What are some of the things that you've taken with you throughout your life that have helped you become the person that you are today because of your mother?

[15:27] SHIRLEY LEFEVER: I think a sense of optimism, and, I mean, I tend to probably be optimistic to a fault, and. But I've seen that happen over time, is that if you believe that good things can happen, they do. And so I would say that is probably a huge part of who I am that I attribute to my childhood and upbringing.

[16:02] GORDON BASSHAM: That's really interesting, because I think that we are the sum total of not only our experiences, but also our attitude. If you go through life with a. If you go through life with a bad attitude, chances are you're going to see bad outcomes. I'm not a Pollyanna, any stretch of the imagination. I'm pretty much a realist, having been a cop for years and also having been a journalist for years. But at the same time, I've also seen what having a good attitude, or what an appropriate attitude towards yourself and toward life can do for you. I've interviewed many people, I've arrested many people who have been pretty tough on themselves, and it's shown up in the way they treat other people and vice versa, too. So I think, yeah, I understand what you're saying. Very much so.

[17:04] SHIRLEY LEFEVER: Did you say you taught?

[17:07] GORDON BASSHAM: No, I was. I was a police officer. I was a copy of.

[17:10] SHIRLEY LEFEVER: Okay. Cop. Okay. Yeah, I can. Same difference. Right.

[17:16] GORDON BASSHAM: Yeah, exactly. So how is academia changed you?

[17:30] SHIRLEY LEFEVER: That's an interesting question. You know, I think it has. It has helped me understand how the influence that education has on people's lives. I've been so fortunate to work at two institutions where we've developed degree programs that. That I think have made huge differences in people's lives. One example, just within the last five or six years, was a program for paraeducators to become licensed teachers, and the individuals who have enrolled in that degree program have gone from a paraeducator. It's not uncommon for a paraeducator to get to have be paid $10 an hour ish. And so many of the students in this program are heads of households raising their own kids. And so by them being able to continue working as a paraeducator, but also advance or complete their degree program so that they can become licensed teacher teachers, their income level, even though teachers are not considered highly paid compared to being a paraeducator, that's a huge difference. And so when they come to graduation every year and they'll bring their kids and their family and just this sense of accomplishment and pride that it just exudes from them, it makes you really proud that I've been a part of that. And so I think that's what I tend to have always been extremely humble and downplay any successes or things that I've been engaged in and chalk it up to, well, anybody could do that, and I still am that way. But I, when you see people who've been impacted by your work, it changes you.

[20:00] GORDON BASSHAM: You know, I can only imagine what that must feel like. And I would think that someone who has worked in the trenches as a paraeducator for, for some time, they understand the real issues that face not only themselves, obviously, but the children that they're around all day, the students that they're around all day. And I can't help but believe that that kind of a background would make them a better teacher. Am I right, or is that.

[20:34] SHIRLEY LEFEVER: I mean, they have, you know, everything we teach in our classes, they apply immediately. And I think you listen differently when you know that you're going to use that information or that that information has direct relevance to something you've either just immediately experienced or, you know, what you will experience. So it does take on a different level of importance. You know, I've been a teacher for a long time, and I think sometimes you wear different hats depending on the situation. I mean, you can be a student and learn, but when you're, when you're an employee and you're having to use that information, you learn it, not as a student so much. But as a user of the information, I don't know if that makes sense.

[21:25] GORDON BASSHAM: Makes a lot of sense. Yeah, it's very easy. Go ahead. I'm sorry.

[21:32] SHIRLEY LEFEVER: No, I was just wondering if I could ask you the same question about how your work with Vietnam vets has changed you. You.

[21:43] GORDON BASSHAM: That's a very good question. It's made me more aware of how short life can be sometimes and how difficult it could be. When I was working at National Public Radio in Washington years ago, one day I got up my courage and I decided to go to the Vietnam wall, the memorial, and I got within about 30 or 40ft of it. That was as close as I could get because I've got quite a few guys that I served with who died in Vietnam and there were all these guys running around there with their old military jackets and their scruffy beards and their long hair, and they looked very homeless. I mean, that's the only way I could describe them. I know that's not fair, but they didn't look like the people that you would see working in an office somewhere. And I really realized that there but for the grace of God I could have been. It took me a while to adjust. Many of them did not appear to have ever adjusted. But the things that I learned helped me today because it made me realize that we're all frail in our own way. Each of us has some frailty that makes us the human being that we are. And to be able to identify those frailties and then help people overcome them, that's been a valuable lesson for me in terms of the way I help veterans and help transitioning service members. We have one category of veterans that we serve which are called special disabled veterans. And these are people who have medical disabilities, who have low income, have no income, have been incarcerated, who have mental illness. And these are the most challenging and difficult veterans to work with because they, for whatever reason, life has not dealt them an even hand. They. They feel and in a lot of reality, they have been subjected to some. Some pretty traumatizing things of their life that have made them who they are. So what I try to do is take who I am and help understand those people and help them move beyond some of these things. And again, these are insurmountable obstacles. In many cases, and in many cases, when trying to help these special disabled veterans, it really is like eating an elephant one bite at a time. Sometimes life is like a junk drawer. You take all your problems and you throw it in the junk drawer and you close it and then pretty soon that junk drawer gets to the point where you can't close it anymore. So you have to start taking things out one at a time and dealing with them. And that's the way I work with disabled veterans that I see.

[24:45] SHIRLEY LEFEVER: It's an interesting analogy. I mean, I see that in the paraeducators that we work with, they have their own junk drawers, right? And so helping them unpack those drawers, or take. Just take one item out at a time so that it's manageable. It's not easy.

[25:12] GORDON BASSHAM: It's not easy. And, you know, one of the things you asked early on or about the values that I learned when I was young from my father. My father had this saying that. Excuse me. My father had this say that you only need a handful of things. Character quality. Character quality of character characteristics. You'll need a handful of characteristics to be successful at anything. You have to have persistence. You have to have a knowledge of your strengths and shortcomings. You have to have a sense of humor. You have to believe in something bigger than you, and that the tenacity that you simply have to have all of those things. And once you have them, you can do anything you want to do. If you're blind, you don't try to be an airline pilot. Do something that you can do that a blind person could do. Know your strengths and shortcomings. If you're tenacious, if you really wanted bad enough, if you really, really want it bad enough, you can accomplish those things. But the one thing that kind of puts everything in perspective is the sense of humor. If you can laugh at yourself, if you can understand sometimes that there's something out there bigger than you, then usually you can accomplish pretty much anything. So it's those values that I try to help with the people. What I'm working with, the veterans and the young airmen who've been in the air force for three or four years, five years, and this is the only career they've ever known. So I get them and I say to them, okay, fine, let's take this one step at a time. What are you gonna do? How are you gonna do it? What do you need to accomplish these goals? And so it really is from time to time. It's a challenging job, but, man, that's why I get up every morning.

[27:10] SHIRLEY LEFEVER: You know, I agree with you on this sense of humor, in not taking yourself so seriously that you can't see others perspectives. I think about, if I were to sum up those things that make you a successful person. I think about grace and grit. You know, the grit is the persistence, the stick with it ness, and not never say never, or never give up. And then grace in terms of yourself and being able to forgive yourself for whatever, you know, not being perfect or whatever, but also being. Seeing the grace and in relationships with others and seeing the value and the contributions that other people bring to any situation, too.

[28:09] GORDON BASSHAM: So this is a conversation that it's to explore issues of other people. Are there things about society today that you feel like? Are that you feel like you have a hard time understanding? Are there attitudes? Are there things in society today that we go through that we endure that make life difficult for you or make life challenging for you?

[28:42] SHIRLEY LEFEVER: You know, I think it's part that the answer to that is part of why I came to this conversation today is that sense of divisiveness that I feel here in the US right now. I have two grandsons, and one of my grandsons is 14 years old, and he's asking a lot of questions about why there's so much hate and why people seem to not like each other very much. And those are really hard questions to answer because, you know, I want to say, oh, everybody really, when you come right down to it, everybody can get along and like each other, but there's not a lot of evidence of that when you turn on the tv. And so, you know, you can't tell a 14 year old the truth that you want to believe because it may not really be reflected in his experiences. So those are the things that I kind of struggle with, is how do you instill in our kids, our grandkids coming up, a sense of hope and believe in others when it doesn't seem to always be reflected in what they see and experience? Does that make sense?

[30:08] GORDON BASSHAM: Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. My daughter, who's 35, got married last August, and they're in the process of starting a family. And I'm at a point in my life I'm old enough. Excuse me, I'm old enough to remember when people got along. And today, for stupid reasons, we just don't seem to be able to get along with each other. There's a lot of misinformation out there. There's a lot of hate, a lot of divisiveness. And quite frankly, I never thought I'd live long enough to see something like that. And now that we've seen this war starting in Ukraine, I lived through the cold war. I was in the navy as a warrior in the cold war. I was a russian translator. And I never thought that I would ever see us go into another ground war in Europe. It's just beyond conception. But the thing that saddens me the most is the fact that we have such divisiveness in our country. I don't know the remedy for that. I do believe that you can't use logic to defeat a visceral argument. You can't use logic to defeat an argument that someone believes in their gut. You have to be able to get down on their level and talk to them and be able to communicate with them to help them overcome their issues and help you overcome yours. So it takes a conversation, and sometimes logic plays nothing, has no role in that conversation. Sadly. Very sadly.

[31:56] SHIRLEY LEFEVER: Yeah. Well, I have enjoyed this conversation. It does give me a sense of hope. And I just. I can't help but think about my grandkids and maybe sharing some of that wisdom with them and just thinking about not trying to take on too much of the elephant at once, but seeing the good where you can see it and celebrating that part.

[32:27] GORDON BASSHAM: Yeah, I agree with you on that. And if there's anything that I really agree with you on, it's that our differences should be sources of mutual interest rather than sources of mutual mistrust. And I think that you can overcome that mistrust by talking. Honestly talking. It's been a pleasure.

[32:50] SHIRLEY LEFEVER: Same to you. It was nice to meet you.

[32:53] GORDON BASSHAM: You too.