Marsha Anderson

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Could you tell us about who you are and what you do?

I’m a clerk of court for the United States Bankruptcy Court for the western district of Wisconsin, which covers forty- four of the seventy counties in Wisconsin, roughly over half the state. My job as a clerk of court is to manage the court’s business, I have people who do HR from Human Recourses, people who do procurement and finance for me. I have a staff that actually manages and process bankruptcy cases.   I also make sure the judges have everything that they need. As a part time job I’m a Brigadier General in the Army Reserve, I’ve been doing that since 1979 when I graduated from college. It takes a long time to go from Lieutenant to Brigadier General, about 28 years to do that.

Could you tell us about your childhood?

I was born in Beloit and went to Merrill School in Beloit for Kindergarten, I then went to Our Lady of the Assumption for First Grade. My mom then decided we needed to move back to where she grew up in East St. Louis, Illinois. So we moved back there when I was going into Second Grade. We stayed there in that area until I graduated from High School in 1976. I went to Catholic schools the entire time I was there. I went to an all girls High school. That was an experience! It was good though. I credit a lot of what I learned about going to an all girls high school because without boys around, people who act stupid, you can focus on school and you don’t have the distraction. You still have boys around to do our plays and stuff, they’d come in from other schools. It helped me to focus on my schoolwork without worrying about dumbing down. For college I went to Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska, which is also a Catholic university, its run by Jesuits. They had a real strong emphasis there on being a whole person. Not just studying but also doing community service work and trying to have interests outside of school.  That’s where I entered ROTC, which is Reserve Officer Training Corps. People who are thinking about entering the military service enter this, and you get college credits for doing it. At Creighton it counted as a science credit. I didn’t want to cut anything up, but I really hated Biology. The only class I wanted to take was Astronomy, that met at night, but I had a part time job at night. I had to work my way through school. Military Science met at 8:00 Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morning.  I was an early morning person and it was four credit hours and they had these cool posters of people walking through the woods it kinda looked like nature walking and they had people jumping on airplanes it looked kinda like gym I go “so is it like that?’ and this guy said “Sure” so I signed up. I didn’t do any other research I just signed up. And it wasn’t quite like that but it was still a lot of physical things and I learned new skills that’s kinda that in a nutshell. I majored in political science. I started out in business and took accounting and hated it I just didn’t like all of the put stuff in little boxes and keep them on lines and I don’t know how people stand that but it wasn’t for me so after about two semesters I said “This is not fun”. And I didn’t enjoy it so I said “I’m not doing this” and I switched to political science, which I really did enjoy. It was a lot of History components but I also really liked politics, the whole strategies things fascinated. I really enjoyed that.

What were some of the skills you learned from college and ROTC?

Leadership, they focus a lot on leadership. They don’t just talk about it and have you read about it. They give you assignments and responsibilities within the people that you’re going through this with. So you  have to learn how to lead and sometimes tell people what they don’t want to hear. And also try to get them to do things they might not ordinarily want to do.  Some people just don’t want to do certain things and you have to learn how to deal with that. I also learned how to fire a weapon, I’d never held a gun in my entire life. So I followed everything they’d told me precisely, because I didn’t want to hurt anybody. I was like “Now what do I do, now what do I do?”. I got to meet people from different places cause we had to go to training. My school was in Omaha, Nebraska and we had to go travel out to Fort Louis, Washington which is just near Seattle. I‘d never been up there so that was fun. I was up there for six weeks and I got to meet people in ROTC from other schools all over the country. That was really interesting too. It gave me a lot of opportunity to stretch myself a little bit. It was fun.

What are some key memories you have about growing up?

My mother was a single parent, when we moved from Beloit to Illinois my parents had been divorced. So she was raising us and we lived with my grandparents and both my grandmother and mother worked outside the home and they were the sole bread winners for our family. I learned from them about the importance of going to work and making contribution. Taking care of bills and managing all those things. They’d let us sit around and watch while they talked about finances and things like that, they didn’t hide anything from us. My Grandmother worked at a salvage yard which is a nice way to say junk yard, so there were a lot of guys there. She would come home at dinner and talk about things that happened in her day and how she dealt with them. I learned from that, how to handle those kinds of situations. She was a pretty tough cookie.  People didn’t get much by her.  I learned a lot from her and my mother in that way in terms of working outside the home and things that they needed to do in order to be successful in their jobs.

How do you think the work environment has changed for women or if it’s improved in any areas since then?

I think it’s changed in huge ways, my mother and grandmother wereboth basically secretaries. And even though I think they were smarter than a lot of the men that they worked for they couldn’t be managers. They couldn’t be supervisors cause that just wasn’t the way things were done. I think it added to it that women didn’t need to make as much money because it was more important for men to make more money. After all they were in charge of the families, they took care of the families. I think now there’s really no boundaries, it’s just really a matter of how much you want it and how hard you’re willing to work. I don’t think that mattered in those days, you could work really hard and you could want it really badly but there were gonna be these barriers and these glass ceilings that you just couldn’t break through. For example, I didn’t go to law school because of Sandra Day O’Connor but of course I heard of her as a Supreme Court Justice. I mean she graduated at the top of her law school class and the only job she was offered out of law school was to be a secretary, a legal secretary, not a lawyer. She had done everything she was supposed to do, she was tops in her class and they weren’t going to hire her as a lawyer, they were going to hire her as a legal secretary. So things have come a long, long way. I think if you go to school, get your education, and you do whatever else you need to do to prepare yourself, it’s a level playing field for the most part.  Not in every discipline and every area though, I still think there are some barriers, but just the sheer force of us, we’re all pushing and knocking on the door they have to let us in.

Who or what has inspired you?

My mother and grandmother for sure. There was a legislator in my home district, a state legislator, she just passed away about six months ago. But I thought she was amazing because she was a state legislator, she had five kids, I think one or two of them had special needs, she was a lawyer, and had her own law practice. She did all of these things, and this is back when I was in High school, so this was in the early 70’s. Back then not a lot of women were doing that. She never was on the national stage or anything, but she was an inspiration to me because I thought she juggled family, her own business, she was a state legislator, she did all of those things, and she did them well. She was well respected in the community, and she did really good things for our district. Women like that inspired me. There was this lady that my mother always used to go to her for when we went to the grocery store; she would always go to her for check out. And she was a checker, but they always had the new people train with her and she always had a good attitude she was real positive and she was really fast. This is in the days before scanning, she would stand there and she knew the price of everything and she would just punch it in. and I used to watch her and go “wow, whew”. People like that who take pride in their jobs and they did the best they could at their jobs and they were good. Those kinds of things just to try to do the best you can at whatever it is.

Have you had any major struggles throughout your career or to getting where you are today?

Oh gosh, yes. When I first went into the military in the late 70’s, there were not a lot of women. There were certainly no women at my level, maybe one or two. And there were still males who regarded us as a kind of eye candy for the most part. Even though we were in uniform and we could fire a weapon too, they sometimes would not treat us like full partners and soldiers. And there were times when people would make stupid comments to me. There were a couple times, when someone flat out told me that I was preventing some guy from getting this job and I really didn’t need to be in it. And there was one instance in particular, later on in my career where I took a position in a  military unit that had traditionally been all males. I think I was the one of the first women who had ever been in it. The Captain of that unit had a really old fashioned attitude, and I don’t think he liked me being in that unit. I noticed that after that several of them went out of their way, they invited me to go out to lunch with them. They had asked if I had any questions, they were real helpful. I think they resented what he said to me. First of all, they were like me, they didn’t get why he had this hostility. I was here to do the job. I didn’t see it any other way, but he felt as though he really didn’t want me around and he gave me all the worst soldiers, this is the truth, he gave me all the worst. It was a drill sergeant unit and our job was to go to basic training, like in South Carolina they have a big basic training facility. As a reserve unit we would go in and we would  replace the active duty soldiers that did this. So drill sergeants that you know from watching television are tough and they yell and scream but they don’t really do that anymore. So he gave me all the worst drill sergeants the ones that nobody else wanted cause they were good but they were not the top, the cream of the crop so he deliberately tried to set me up for failure. But that just made me more determined to show him that he was wrong. And one of the first things that I did was I told all the guys exactly what had happened. I said “They think you guys are a bunch of jerks and failures and that’s why they gave you to me”. And they all sat there and looked at me; they couldn’t believe I had said this first of all. And I said “well look around”.  I said “they think that we can’t do this”. I said “now do you want prove them right or do you want to prove them wrong”.  I said “we can do that together”. And that got them on my side. They went out there and they worked their tails off. It was pretty amazing to watch the transformation from “oh we got the girl” to “well, we’re gonna show these guys”.   And they did, and I talked them into. Back in those days they didn’t have integrated basic training, they didn’t have males and females training together. It was male units and female units. And the kiss of death in their mind was to be given the “females” to train. Cause you know girls, they cry and they get that weird. And I sat them down and I explained to them that I said “you know a lot of these young ladies don’t have the tradition behind them like a lot of guys do like, ‘great grandpa served in the Civil War and you’re carrying on the tradition’. Girls don’t get told that stuff. Their boyfriends are like ‘well you’re going where, to do what with a bunch of other guys? Oh you must be gay, or you must be looking for a husband’. Or all kinds of bad, but they never say you’re carrying on a proud tradition in our family and we’re real proud of you for going. So they don’t get that kind of support. So they come in here with that first strike. Then they get you and you have an attitude that they can’t do the job. I’m living proof that they can do the job.” So I had them all pumped up and they actually wanted, they went and told the commander ‘we want to take a female company’ Then they wouldn’t give it to them cause they wanted it too badly. I said “Okay, that’s okay fellas but you watch your counterparts who do get them”. Those guys were, because those girls played them, they’d cry ‘oh I can’t have cramps today I can’t go running’. And they believed it. I said “you gotta be kidding”. So I kinda said “look, we’re just as capable as you are”. And I think sometimes we actually work through pain and physical a lot better sometimes than men do. I mean cause we have babies for heaven sakes, I mean come on.  Just think if guys had babies, oh my gosh they’re whining for days. So they would just be whining. So I said “there’s a lot of strength there it isn’t obvious. Just because we can’t lift a car doesn’t mean we’re not strong in other ways. So I ran into that a couple times, it got less and less as I went on in my career and I think more women entered into the military and they got used to us being around and they began to just see us as partners. And now with what we’re doing in Iraq and Afghanistan, I’ve noticed a lot of the soldiers they, the women and men regard each other as brother and sister. And they would do anything for each other. And it’s not personal, it’s not sexual, it’s just because they see each other as partners, and it’s important to take care of your partner. So they’ve come a long way since I first started.

Did you ever think that you’d be in the military?

No, I needed science credits and I was not going to take Biology, no way. So no I didn’t and I didn’t even know that my dad had been in the Korean War, until several years after I got involved. So, it just wasn’t on my radar anywhere, it just happened by accident and I got into it and I kind of enjoyed the challenge, not just the physical challenge, but the fact that people tried to tell me I couldn’t do something, that would just get me fired up to prove to them that I could cause I’m stubborn that way. So I’m just real hard headed.

How did your family react?

I have an uncle who is a priest, he wasn’t too thrilled. “You did what? You signed up for what? You know they shoot guns”. “Oh yeah but that’s just part of it”. He looked at me like ‘where have you been’. My mother was used to me doing strange things, so she just figured ‘ok fine, she wants to do this’ And nobody else in my family really said anything because I always had a different path that I was going to follow, and it was impossible to talk me out of it. They though just let her find out for herself because she really wants to do this.

How did you transition from the military to what you’re doing now?

Well I’ve been doing them both at the same time now since I graduated. Being in the reserves is always a part time thing, unless they put you in active duty, then it’s a full time thing. But as you can see this follows me wherever I go. I kind of use the same skill sets in both places because I manage people here and I manage people in the military. I’m responsible for resources, like the money and equipment here, like I am in the military. And people are people. Yes we have certain things that we do in the military that we do the same thing every day but you still have to manage people you still have to motivate people. You still have to sometimes discipline people. And you have to plan, you have to think strategically. So I kind of find myself moving easily I think between both worlds, and I kind of automatically go into army speak when I need to when I’m in army or in uniform. But I don’t do it when I’m here though. I don’t talk like that to these guys they would look at me like “Looks like you’ve lost your mind”. So it’s just like learning another language almost, you learn, you know when to use that language and then when not to use that language.

What are some things you like about your job, well both of them, and what you don’t like about them?

I love people. I really like meeting new people. I like to try to figure out what makes people tick so I can get them to do things. And I like to just learn from people, I’ve learned from everybody that I’ve ever worked with. I’ve learned something new about myself and I’ve learned just something about people. I went to law school because I really admired Sandra Day O’Connor and that woman that I mentioned in my community, because they were both lawyers and I figured there was something about lawyers, that skill that you learn that’s really useful. I never wanted to be just a lawyer, I never wanted to just practice law, because I like people too much. I did practice for 10 years, but I was always happier when I was talking to people. My husband will tell people that I could talk to a post, and I probably could. But I really just enjoy that aspect of it, so I kind of went from practicing law to doing this because it gave me more of an opportunity to interact with people every day.

What do you actually do on a day to day basis here?

It’s a lot like being a CEO, a Chief Executive Officer. I’m responsible for making sure that the court runs smoothly, that I’m allocated for a budget, to make sure the money that we have is spent properly, and that we don’t break any Federal Laws or treasury regulations when we buy things. I make sure that we have enough staff on hand to do the work. It’s a federal court, there’s a lot of federal rules and statutes and regulations that we have to follow. As I’ve said I try to keep the judges happy, it’s important to keep the judges happy. So it’s just like running a business in a sense or just that it’s a public sector, it’s not a private business. If there is some unusual problem that arises that they can’t figure out that my staff and my managers can’t figure out then they’ll come to me and we’ll talk about it and try to figure out a solution. Of course I deal with the attorney’s, if they have a problem or they’re not happy with the way one of my staff has done something. I make sure that we have a court website, we have all things that basically a business would have, and I’m just responsible overall for all of that.

In this line of work, have you found any setbacks for being a woman?

No, actually. And I don’t know why that is, but maybe it’s just because it’s the public sector as opposed to the private sector, and that may not even be it. I really haven’t found any. I don’t think that I’m being treated any differently by any of the attorneys and certainly not the judges because they hired me. I really like working for the federal courts, it’s a real interesting place to work and we try a lot of different things. We file most of our cases electronically now, only a small amount of people still file them on paper. So we try a lot of those innovations and we used to have tons of those, actually those filing cabinets out there are pretty much empty we just keep them there for show, seriously. If I get rid of them then they want me to put people in those spaces and I like to be spread out so I just leave them there for show. We do everything pretty much paperless. We’ve done a lot of things here that I find pretty exciting.

Do you think the employment between men and women has equaled out more?

No, I think there’s a lot of areas where women are underrepresented and would do just fine. Like construction trains, in the IT area, there’s a lot fewer women doing that than there should be. Things like plumbers and electricians and people like that, they make really good money. Most people would do that, and I don’t think girls or women think about that, think about doing that. Areas like that. Probably to a certain extent, certain areas in the medical profession. I think research and things like that maybe we should have more women interested in science and we don’t. I mean cause there’s so many things that happen to us physically that I think women bring something different to the table. We have a better appreciation. I always tell my doctor when I have to have a mammogram, and he’s a male, I say “hey when are you gonna get one”. Because I know as soon as they do they’re gonna figure out a way to do it so it doesn’t hurt so much, you know things like that. And just things that are creative. I think women are very creative, and I think there are a lot of jobs that we could do really well. Look around the world in general,  I wonder why we don’t have more women as Prime Ministers and Presidents. I think we bring a different attitude to negotiation.  It’s not necessarily about winning, it’s about all of us getting something out of it, instead of just winning. I think women think that way a little bit differently. We want everybody to kind of go away happy. We don’t want to crush everybody.

Do you think that the salaries have become more equal?

I think in certain professions, doctors, I think, are probably paid pretty much the same. Probably lawyers as well. However I think when you get to certain corporations doing such things as like hiding salary information. There’s probably still a lot of disparity, and it’s just not something that’s advertised because it’s hard to find out when somebody actually publishes that information. I make the same as the guy in Milwaukee who’s doing my job, I know that. And also in the military, if I run into another General and we have the same number of years of experience, he’s making the same money I am.

Have you seen any improvements in the way women are treated in the workforce?

A lot, yes, but I think that’s because we’ve had a lot of laws that have made it that way. It’s not a good idea to discriminate against women, or to say things in the workplace that are offensive to people. Yes there has been huge strides. I had things said to me when I was younger that they wouldn’t even think saying to me now, and they wouldn’t get away with it. When I got out of college, before I went to law school, I worked for the Kellogg Corporation. They had a big plant in Omaha. Because of a lawsuit, they finally hired women as supervisors on the plant floor. But people would put cartoons up or say things as you walked by that they would never deal with now, they all resented it. They only felt that we were taking some guys job, we were just wasting people’s money and time. And there wasn’t a lot of emphasis on treating people fairly and equally in the workplace back then. 

Do you think that we still have a far way to go until it gets more equal or do you think we’re pretty equal?

No, I still think we have a long way to go until people just look at people as people. Until they just look at you, and they see a person who’s qualified and they want to make sure you can add value to their business. And that’s the first thing that pops into their mind, not that “oh well she might be having kids in a year or two, then she might be gone for 6 or 8 weeks” I mean they still think like that when they look at people. So until they just look at people and say, “this person is gonna add value to my company and shes got some really super skills and it’s not because it’s a female it’s just because shes got great skills, a great background and I’ve heard good things from her last employer so I definitely want her on my team,” So yes, I still think they don’t see that

How has the family structures and the role of women in the family changed since you grew up?

People share more things. When I first got into the workplace and went someplace to like a party or cocktail hour, it’d be the women talking about the kids. I was at a something for my law firm once and three or four of the young men attorneys were standing together and they were comparing their kids’ naptimes and they were talking about “Oh yeah, so and so got their teeth” and I was thinking, 20 years ago, I never would have heard that. They wouldn’t even have noticed it. So I think that men now are, not more interested, but they certainly are more equal partners, they pay attention to more of those things now, than they did when I first came out of school. They are the ones that are not just changing diapers but paying attention to their kids’ growth and the kind of changes they’re going through personally. And they’re able to have discussions with other men about it. I just think that’s pretty cool.

If you have an opinion, how do you think domestic violence against women has improved or the awareness has improved about it?

I think the awareness has improved. I don’t know that the levels have changed all that much, I kind of wonder about that. I think back in the day, when my mother and grandmother were coming up, it was something that people just didn’t talk about. But I think now we talk about it more. And I don’t know that it’s necessarily decreased, I think we’re more aware of it. And more people are willing to intervene if they see a situation, whether it’s your girlfriend, or it’s your next-door neighbor. You’re more likely to think about, at least think about reporting it, talking to them, or helping them if they need to find someplace else to live. When the whole thing happened with Rihanna and Chris Brown, there were a lot of girls who were mad at Rihanna. And I was like, “Wait a minute. Have you lost your mind”?  I mean this guy has got martial arts experience, he beats up on her, and you’re mad at her?  So I think there’s still a long way to go there if that’s peoples attitude. People think that it was her fault or she must have done something to make him mad. It’s like, well so what if she made him mad. If you’re a couple you’re gonna disagree about stuff. I can’t disagree with you. There’s something wrong there.

It’s not like he didn’t make her mad sometimes.

Exactly, and she didn’t take a hammer to him. If she wanted to, but she didn’t. You’re gonna disagree and not have to get physical about it.

So do you think that’s come further, how guys view women?

Yeah, I don’t know, I’m wondering. And maybe because I hear so much about, because I have nephews that are in high school and they talk about some of their friends and how they talk about girls. And I wonder, well maybe they always talked about girls that way, or maybe now they don’t look at girls the way they should respect them, and say and do things that are just flat out wrong and disrespectful.

Do you have an opinion on women taking their husband’s name in marriage?

I did it, both times; I’ve been married twice. I did it because my maiden name was hard to spell more people were misspelling it, so I married one guy whose name was Martin, it’s hard to misspell Martin. It’s hard to misspell Anderson. My father’s name was Mahan, people would spell it Mayhan, Mayhem, I mean they just mangled it. I got tired of it so I thought “you know what, I’ll just take the name”. So it didn’t really matter.  For me it wasn’t really about the whole ‘I’m trying to make him happy’ or it’s an identity thing. It was just the fact that for me it was practical, it was easier to spell.

So it didn’t really matter all that much?

No, no. And when I went to law school, there was a whole big thing about hyphening the names, and I’ve actually run into a good friend of mine who’s a general and he took his wife’s name, so his name is Gordon, Gordon-Brea (sp?). So he took her name. So that is pretty cool. That was their individual decision.

What are some important life lessons that you’ve learned that you would like future generations to hear?

Oh boy, that’s a deep question. I need chocolate. Let’s see. Do something that you really love and care about. It shouldn’t be about the money. Too many people focus on that when you’re in college, ‘oh I need to get this, I need to be an engineer cause they make lots of money’. But it’s important to do things that you like. I like people, I  gravitated towards things like that. Because you spend so much time at work, you almost spend more time at school or at work than you do with your family. And if you don’t like being in those places it can be a miserable and long day. So I just think it’s important to try to find something that you love, you care about, and that you’re good at to do. The rest will follow. There’s money to be had in it, you’ll make it or just being happy because we don’t know how long we’re gonna be here and it’s important to be happy. And then, I was very shy when I was younger. I mean people would do some stuff to me and I wouldn’t speak up. Now I just decided that it’s important to speak up. If somebody does something that I don’t appreciate just say, “you know I really didn’t appreciate that,” that’s all. I’m not going to get into a fight with them, I’m not being confrontational, but I feel it’s important to let them know that they hurt me somehow    So I guess those would really be the two things. And friends are also friends are important. Having good friends people that you can tell anything and you can act any way around. Because you a place where you can kind of blow off steam, whether it’s with a boyfriend or a girlfriend, a husband or a wife, or just some good friends. Somebody who doesn’t judge you when you do something stupid and they care about you and love you at the end of the day no matter what. I was thinking about that yesterday because of that man that went into that health club and killed those three women and then shot the other ones. They were talking about his blog and how he was unhappy and he didn’t have any friends and I thought ‘that’s why he did that, he didn’t have any friends’. He didn’t have anybody he could vent to, talk to, and be himself with. And then he went out and took it out on other people.

What’s your favorite part about being a woman?

Maintenance, getting my nails done. Actually it is, getting pedicures. And I still do that even though we’re in uniform, I still go get my nails done. I get my hair done, I get pedicures. That to me is fun, going to the spa and get a massage, really fun things.

Do you have anything else to add?

I’m really flattered that you guys asked me to do this. Cause I was telling someone here, I said “Oral History, when I think about Oral history project I think about World War II veterans, 80-year-old guys.

It’s definitely a different interview with someone like you versus doing it with an older person because they use different language and you can relate better, plus their experiences are so different, you don’t really understand what they went through.

Yes it’s true. But it’s fascinating to listen to them. When 9/11 happened, my grandmother was still living then and she remembered Pearl Harbor so I asked her I said so “It must have kind of been like Pearl Harbor” and she said first of all that they didn’t even know where Hawaii was and they heard about it, they didn’t see it like we saw it on TV. They just heard about it, they heard about it 24 hours later at least then it was on the radio and it was in the newspaper, they didn’t actually visually see what was happening that day. It was a different feeling for them. They were kind of upset about it but not the way we were upset about this so they had different experiences with tragedies like that.

So is there anything that you’d like to add?

I think this is a great time in our country. There are a lot of opportunities out there for you guys. I think people just are starting to look at people a whole lot differently. I think having Hillary run for president was just huge. Having our current president (Obama) is just awesome and amazing. And it’s getting to the point now where people are just hiring people because they can do a good job, it doesn’t matter what they look like, where they came from. If they can do a good job, let’s hire them and let’s make our business better, our country better, our school better, whatever it is better. That’s really exciting.