EPISODE 17
"JUST
WORDS"

Welcome to JUST WORDS.  The stories of working people in our community.

I'm Marc Steiner

Becca Stapf is a waitress at my favorite breakfast place. She works there 5 days a week. She is a friendly and outgoing person.

She’s also a mother, a grandmother, and is currently working towards her associate’s degree so she can go to nursing school.

How does she manage it all?

It is kind of hard. The money doesn’t come that often, spare money to go. If I take one class it cost me 500 dollars for the course at a community college plus I have to buy the books.

But right now, Becca is delaying her own schooling so her 22 year old daughter, a mother of two children, can go to school. Someone has to watch the kids, and the care of her grandchildren has become a family affair, with three generations sharing duties so that one person can pursue a degree.

I get up at 3:30 in the morning, I come down, I read, and then I jump into the shower and call my daughter and get her up. And I go and pick up my granddaughter from her, and take her to Waverly, drop my granddaughter off. My mother watches them. And off to work, I start at six, and work till two. And at two I leave work and go pick up my granddaughter and grandson, my mother picks up my grandson from half day school. She leaves for work when I get there. I bring both of them either here or we go to the park. And after they leave I fix dinner and my husband and I sit down and talk about the day and then after that we go upstairs and go to bed and get ready for the next day.

Becca is a waitress, her husband’s a carpenter. Their combined income isn’t princely, but they live in a nice home and with juggling can help their kids and grandchildren out. And Becca’s beliefs have kept her from ever looking for help.

My mother and father taught us that when we were growing up, how you have to work for things. There was 8 of us and my father brought home a paycheck for 70 dollars a week to take care of the family, and that’s pretty hard. I have never gone on social services or food stamps or medical assistance. A lot of people went for government help and once you do that you’re giving the responsibility of what you did to somebody else. And I just, I can’t handle that part of it. I think it is very important to get out there and get a job and take care of it yourself.

Maybe sometimes we forget how patient you have to be to achieve the American dream. Becca has been working on her associate’s degree for over 10 years. She doesn’t seem frustrated or impatient. She can just think of her mother, who was 55 when she graduated from nursing school.

You know if she can do it, anybody can do it. If you can do it with eight kids, you can do it with one or two. Sometimes I look at it like, I should have been done a long time ago, and I should have, but I made sacrifices for my daughter based on what I wanted to do for her. I won’t be 55 when I graduated, but I might be 40 something! (laughs)

Just words is a production of the Center for Emerging Media, produced by Jessica Phillips, through a grant from OSI-Baltimore: investing in solutions to Baltimore’s toughest problems, with audacious thinking for lasting change, on the web at OSI-Baltimore.org.
Visit JUST WORDS on the web at centerforemergingmedia.org, or
email us, at justwords@wypr.org

Music: Donna Summers, She Works Hard for the Money