was to be an artist.
“I had gone to night school at the Cleveland School of Art,” Wyner said. “I’d work all day and go to school at night. Then they passed a rule that there would be no nighttime or part-time classes anymore for anybody but full-timers. So I attacked it from a different angle by going to all of the museum’s art appreciation classes.”
Once her youngest son left for college, Wyner sold the family house, paid off her children’s student loans and earned a BA in communications at age 57 from Cleveland State University. She had been enrolled in higher education since the 1930s.
“One of my sisters told me I’d better take commercial-type courses instead of art courses so I could get a job,” she said. “The Depression was going on then. I was always upset that I couldn’t go into the arts, but I had to support myself.”
With all of her children grown, Wyner’s original plan was to go to Florida. But one of her older sisters was moving to San Diego and talked her into going there instead. One summer shortly thereafter, she took a job house-sitting in Los Angeles and fell in love with the city. Soon she had an apartment in the Fairfax district and was working as a substitute teacher in Los Angeles Unified School District high schools.
But a decade later, Wyner had to move to Houston to help her daughter-in-law, who was experiencing prolonged post-partum depression. She remained there for three years. While taking an art history course at the local college, she and a classmate commiserated over their dislike for Houston. The friend gave Wyner the phone number for the Peace Corps.
“The Peace Corps was on my mind because I was thinking of all of these things that I could do,” Wyner said. “I’ve always been interested in other people. I keep a pile of cards on which I’ve typed philosophical sayings from different people to help motivate me.”
Getting accepted to the Peace Corps was no easy task. After a partial interview in which they tried to talk Wyner out of joining, they sent her a lengthy application.
“First they try to discourage you, because they think you’re just inquiring and not interested enough to do it,” she said. “Then they ask for references from eight people who know you quite well. They’re very strict.”
Wyner wanted to go to Africa. She had studied French and requested an assignment in any French-speaking country on the continent. A year later there was still no response to Wyner’s application. Frustrated with the delays, Wyner finally called and asked.
“They said, ‘Well if you want to go, we have a group going to Jamaica,’ and I thought, I better go while the gettin’s good.”
So at 74 years old, she set off alone for the Caribbean nation of Jamaica, to live as a local in the rural community of Brownstown, 20 miles from Jamaica’s capital city of Kingston.
Wyner talked to the Daily Press in her apartment on Fifth Street in downtown Santa Monica.
What made you want to join the Peace Corps?
“I always admired people who helped others. I didn’t have an exact plan. I mean, I didn’t even know what volunteer organization to join, whether I’d help kids learn to read or some little thing. But I wanted to move away from Houston, and it seemed like the time was right for me. Then my classmate at the school I was attending gave me the phone number, so I called them. The Peace Corps needed people who could teach a craft or help build houses. Even though I had an education didn’t mean I had the type of skill they needed.”
How did you get accepted? “I had been a teacher, so that’s what they used. Although they didn’t want you to teach in the country per se, having some teaching experience helped me. And I knew a lot of other things. They kept sending the application back asking what else I could do. Do you know anything about quilting? Planting? I’d check off the things I was sort of familiar with. Then they’d ask for more details. They’d finally zoom in on something.
“For example, one man said he once learned something about bee keeping. I mean, enough to fill a thimble, and they took him. So he did some research, and now he still lives in Jamaica teaching farmers how to make their own hives. He loved it.
“You see, it works something like an employment agency. The Peace Corps gets requests from different countries for a certain type of skill, and they look to see what skills they have listed, and pass you on.”
What was your experience like? “I was there for two years, and I was placed in a school in Brownstown, which was out in the country — I call it the bush. It was a school for girls who had been kicked out of regular school because they were pregnant. In Jamaica, the minute a girl is found to be pregnant, they are asked to leave school immediately. They teach the girls some skills, like how to be housewives and how to take care of a baby. I taught sewing.
“I had culture shock when I went to Jamaica. One time this teacher who was supposed to teach the history class after my class didn’t show up. I thought maybe he was sick. It was raining, and he lived across the street. So I called him, and he said he was waiting until the rain stopped because he had lost his umbrella. Here he was a bona fide teacher, and he didn’t want to cross the street in the rain.
“But I began to learn that most people had that philosophy. Time just means very little to the people of Jamaica.”
Did they educate you before you went?
“Yes, but I was not prepared. They gave us a three-day seminar in Florida before we left, but either I wasn’t paying attention or I didn’t believe the man, because I was shocked when I actually experienced the culture. Our teacher drew a square in the middle of the room and told us all to get inside it to show us what the buses are like in Jamaica. And he said, ‘Come on, closer, closer.’ And he had a stick and was herding us into the square. Well, it was exactly like that in Jamaica. But he went on to something else and just didn’t emphasize it enough because those buses were terrible. People were absolutely packed in like sardines. They had a pole that would shove you in, and the Trudi Wyner Age: 87, will be 88 on Halloween. Hobbies: Reading, going to the symphony and the art museum, writing. Education: BA in communications from Cleveland State University, some post-graduate work in accounting and teaching credentials from John Carroll University. Family: Four grown children: three sons, one daughter; a sister, 93, living in Westwood who she visits every week. Residence: Salvation Army residence for seniors in Santa Monica. buses were in terrible condition.
“Another thing they told us was that it was not polite to go through someone’s gate. You were to rattle it, and someone would come out. But they didn’t tell me why. It was because everyone has guard dogs, and one time I was almost attacked by two of them.
“I also learned that if you leave something out, not tied down, it would disappear. It wasn’t considered stealing, it was just borrowing. And if you lent someone something, they’d lend it to someone else, and you’d never see it again. There was a sense that everything was communal property, I guess.”
What was it like to come back to the United States?
“I had no home to come back to. I couldn’t go back to Ohio. I was staying with my son in Nashville, wondering if I was nervy enough to start over again in some strange city. But then he was transferred to Singapore, and I couldn’t follow him there. Here I was in Nashville, my kids are living in different places and independent. They didn’t need me. Who was I? I was just an old woman living in a cheap little apartment. I was feeling a little blue in Nashville. I had been subject to melancholy when I lived in Cleveland, but I had forgotten about it. I remember one time feeling so blue that tears were coming out of my eyes, and I sat there with a pencil and paper trying to write down all of the things that were going through my body and mind. I knew it was not my imagination. I was living all alone in an austere apartment with blue walls and blue drapes.”
Did you experience culture shock when you first moved to LA?
“Oh, yes, a tremendous one. First of all, people dressed differently here. Everyone was wearing sandals with no hose, and they were all laid back. Wherever I went I was over dressed. I couldn’t get used to the fact that I was over dressed.
“And perfect strangers would say hello to me on the street, ask me how I was doing. You didn’t see that in Ohio. One time a woman standing in line with me for something asked if I wanted to go to her party. What a shock. Why would a stranger ask me to their party? I thought maybe she was short on people.
“The social atmosphere was different, too. I was involved a little in politics in Cleveland, but here I just vote and send things to my children if I think it’s important. And I get a lot of things on the e-mail.
“I have a funny feeling my son is a Republican. I never ask because I was afraid of getting an answer. I don’t want to know. My son, a Republican?”
How did you end up in Santa Monica?
“I went to visit a friend in Los Angeles, and I remembered how much I liked it here. And I thought the sun would be good. So I ended up moving out here from Nashville after getting out of the Peace Corps, and I got an apartment in Santa Monica.”
What do you like about Santa Monica?
“I’m very happy with their symphonies, and I go to every single one. And I love the library because I’m a voracious reader. I’m delighted they’re building a new one, but I don’t expect to live that long.
“Another thing I like is the public transportation here. I do drive, but I’ll take the city bus sometimes to better acquaint myself with it. I also like the mixing of older and younger people, and of color here. This Sunday I’m going to a dinner for the Peace Corps members. There are a lot of young people there. In Ohio, people stay in their age group.
“I also like that when I tell people outside of Santa Monica where I live, they rarely ask me what state it’s in. They’ve heard of it already. The only thing I don’t like about this city is the frequency of parking tickets. I think I’ve paid the salary of a few meter maids.”
What is it like to be a senior citizen in Santa Monica?
“I don’t notice much of a difference, maybe because I don’t belong to any senior organizations. I have a lot to do, and I have access to a lot of trips with the Docent Council. I volunteer with at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.”
What keeps you learning and changing?
“Remember, I waited until I was 60 to do it. And at that point I didn’t need to support anybody and was getting social security. Basically I’m a lazy person. I have to push myself. I write a schedule down to do, otherwise I’ll forget or it will be too easy to not do it.
“Mostly I stay involved. You can’t survive if you don’t stay involved. If I had someone supporting me, I’d be a student my whole life long.
“Another thing is I don’t play games. I don’t dislike them, there’s nothing wrong with them, but I just don’t really like them. I think it’s kind of a passive type of recreation, and I don’t do things passively. I do them because I want to. For instance, I don’t watch much TV. Nothing wrong with it, it’s a good time killer. But that’s just it. I don’t want to kill time. I don’t have time for that.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on October 25, 2004. Read the original PDF.