Interview with Steven Bennett, History 150, Spring 2020, Conducted by Mary Bennett, March 22, 2020.

 

Steve Bennett is a father of three daughters. He was born in North-East Philadelphia in 1960. He was raised in a row house with two older brothers. He remained in Philadelphia until college. Then, he went to DC and eventually settled down there. He loves going to sporting events, playing guitar, watching movies, and spending time with his family.

This interview had to take place instead of a different one in light of Covid19. Therefore, the research was not connected to this topic. I put the research at the bottom under “Previous Research” of the post as to not seem jarringly irrelevant.

Mary Bennett 0:00

Hi, I’m Mary Bennett. I’m here with Steve Bennett. It is March 22, 2020. Steve grew up during the 60s and 70s, in North-East Philadelphia, went to college in Washington DC, worked in DC and New York City branches, before finally and permanently locating in a suburb of the capitol. Now, some people criticize the west for the opportunistic values over familial values in deciding where to live. Do you agree or disagree with this generalization?

Steve Bennett 0:30
Well, it is a generalization. So, I mean, I don’t know if it’s a West-East issue. Certainly, there’s people in the West who feel one way and people in the East who feel, you know, you have your outliers regardless. I think it is true, at least when I was growing up in the 60s in the mid 1970s; there was definitely a feeling about being an individual. Striking out on your own. Leaving your family. Creating your own life. That was very big in the culture. It’s what I guess I learned by, but by the same token, there was always a tugging to stay in the family, to stay where I grew up. I mean, I grew up in a working class, middle class, non-diverse neighborhood in North-East Philadelphia, which was full of row houses.

And there is definitely a lot of pressure just to stay there. Both culturally with the institutions of church, education, and friends, but mostly the family. My parents, mostly my mother, strongly wanted me to stay in that neighborhood. I was the youngest and my two older brothers both left home and let’s left Philadelphia. So, obviously, for personal, reasonable reasons.

My mother was hoping one person would stay in and help her. I, as a parent, an elderly parent now, I can certainly appreciate it. I think I had appreciated it then but didn’t pay much attention. Because, the music I was listening to, the books I was reading, and the movies I was watching, definitely put an extremely high value on A) youth and B) progress and making something of your own life and creating it yourself. I’ve always been an individual person. So, there’s also my personal psychologies in favor of that. So, I do think there is a Western culture, at least in the 60s and early 70s, of striking out on your own. I mean, in a sense, that’s the American Destiny: always having the person striking out on their own leaving their family.

I’m sure there’s that in the east. So, I don’t know if it’s a cultural thing but more or less, yeah. So, I felt that throughout my entire life. That there was some things trying to keep me in the row. You know, it’s a row house, working class neighborhood. I grew up in or striking out on my own. And, it’s been a push and pull throughout my entire life.

Mary Bennett 3:26
As you put it, the striking out on your own, do you think this sort of motif and value of people has grown diminished or stayed the same within generations?

Steve Bennett 3:40
I don’t know. It’s hard for me to say in the current generation. I guess it always exists to a certain sense. I mean, certainly it was. It was very big in the 60s and 70s. But, there also was a feeling of progress and those days of America always getting better… and the west. There’s always been a feeling of progress in the nation, I think, that has left us in the last two decades where this generation may or may not be. I don’t want to make a grand statement. But, there was always a feeling, growing up post World War Two, that each generation would get better than the succeeding generation. So, there was always a feeling well, “I gotta get a better job than my parents and a better house.” But now, I think people are working hard to maintain what they have.

I’m sure people still want to be independent and all but I think the idea of progress and that “you can be all he can be” is taking a small hit right now. I won’t say it’s gone or anything like that, but I think there is. And, when I was young, there was definitely a feeling that you can create a society that you want with no limits, other than your own imagination and how hard you’re going to work.

But, now, I feel ever since around the 80s, there’s more of a feeling that other countries, and perhaps in the Pacific, are going ahead of us. America may be falling behind. And because of that, there may be less people willing to take risks. That doesn’t mean there isn’t. Certainly, when you go into some technology, like there’s a lot of people moving forward. So, it’s a broad brush, but there is. There’s a different sense than there was in the 60s and early 70s.

Mary Bennett 5:35
Now, you’ve spent a lot of time in North-East Philly and in the suburbs of DC can you compare and contrast the benefits and the disadvantages of those two areas?

Steve Bennett 5:49
Well, they are two different lives. You’re always living your own life and I like to say the same problems people have, everyone has had since the time of the Bible. If, you read the Bible. The stories are still the same, as far as man’s quest for meaning, man’s quest for community and friendship. I think you always have those. But, a Philadelphia working class neighborhood is much different than, you know, a closed in suburb in Washington DC.

There was much less diversity in the neighborhood I grew up in. It was a white, working class, middle class, Roman Catholic, neighborhood where you had about 100 houses on a block. Most of those houses were filled with families of four or five kids. This was the 60s and was the post World War Two baby boom. But, there was not much diversity. There was a feeling of less willingness, in a sense, to get out and see the rest of the world. I think people were very high bound to traditions of the church, families, and the schools. There was not as much risk taking.

So, there was that. And then, in DC, it is somewhat different. I mean, it’s a more diverse neighborhoods, with people from different countries, different backgrounds, different ethnicities. There’s much more acceptance of different thoughts and different backgrounds than there ever was in my North-East working class neighborhood. I mean, I welcome that, but it’s good and bad. When I was in the neighborhood in Philadelphia, there was always a sense of community, people looking out after you and a good sense of belonging. But, there was less acceptance of diversity, so it was good and bad. There wasn’t a lot of progressive thought in the neighborhood. That’s not to say that of all of the neighbors, I don’t want to give too broad a brush, but I’m just speaking in generalities here.

The working class, we were children of immigrants, either immigrant parents or immigrant grandparents. And ,it was a different feeling than what I get living in DC, or a suburb right next to DC, which is more or less an urban village here in Arlington, Virginia. It’s a lot different to North-East Philadelphia, just the way people view the world the way people view community. But, in Philadelphia, you had a sense of belonging and a sense of family, even with the community. People looked out for each other. But, they didn’t really like people challenging traditions or their thoughts. While in Arlington, people more or less, you know, accept people with different backgrounds, different ideas.

Mary Bennett 9:15
So, you kind of touched on how there was a difference, in sort of the nature of values, which correlates with political positions and… How has moving to different neighborhoods altered your political positions or has it?

Steve Bennett 9:34
I like to think it has not altered mine. I think maybe age does. I have always classed as an individual and I kind of never liked sociology and don’t believe in it. I definitely believe in the individual as opposed to the group, which is a very non working class row house tradition but my politics, I believe, have stayed the same. I’m not sure, I think they may think I’m more liberal. I’ve lived in two different neighborhoods. Most of my life, just comparing the North-East Philadelphia neighborhood.

It has been described in David Broder’s, you know, American politics, whatever that book, I think it’s called the Almanac of American Politics. My, voting district was described there as the district that was probably most similar to the neighborhood of Archie Bunker on All in the Family. This meant it was what it was. But, it was a very conservative but not Republican. I mean, everyone voted democrat because they were working class, at least until Nixon kind of change that, and Reagan certainly did.

But, that neighborhood definitely showed how parties have changed. People used to, you know, if you were white working class, you voted Democrat. But once the Democratic Party got more diverse and taking up social issues, people in working class neighborhoods tend to…I’m not.. I’m painting with a broad brush in generalities, but people didn’t like that. When they take up rights or whatever. So, I was always in Philadelphia, one of the most progressive people. I was considered a radical progressive in Philadelphia. I went to a parochial school. Each year we had to write to our congressmen after the Roe vs Wade decision. I always refused to do them and I would get in trouble with the priest and the priest would mock me A) for actually saying acting like I had a thought on the subject. You were not supposed to. Just, do what the school told you to do. B) for actually saying, I don’t think it’s wrong. So, they would mock me but it didn’t really make any difference. And, I still didn’t write the letters.

I know I supported some minority politicians when all my friends would mock people who did that, which is to say I was considered pretty leftist in North-East Philly. Now that I live in Arlington, Virginia, which is an extremely liberal neighborhood, I’m considered extremely moderate. Because, I still have some of the views of my background as far as people shouldn’t get things for free and if someone has a loan they should pay it. And, I understand there’s different views on things like that.

But I think I still have in me, the same background from North-East Philly of being somewhat somewhat conservative on some issues. But I’m not gonna say conservative on social issues because individually I’m not. I’m extremely liberal on that. But, I have some conservative views about not giving people things for free. So, I almost think my politics have stayed the same. But where I’m viewed by the community where I was viewed once there’s an extreme leftist and now a more on the I’m definitely not conservative, but I’m one of the few moderates in Arlington.

Mary Bennett 13:40
Now, you mentioned a lot of differences between those areas. Do you think there are personalities of cities to the point where in a lot of entertainment, it can be seen as almost like a character of an area or are we more similar than we’d like to pretend?

Steve Bennett 13:58
Well, it’s hard to say and things are different nowadays, with technology and everything else. But I’ve lived in three places, I’ve visited places, but they all did have their own personality. I mean, I’ve always, and it’s a lot with the neighborhoods, obviously, when I’m judging from different neighborhoods… but when I’ve lived in Washington, it’s always been a more, I would say, sophisticated, other people could fairly say maybe pretentious places. They put a lot of value on what your job is, how much money you make it, what your education is. While in Philadelphia, I would say, you could call it a much more friendly, fun place. But also it was also you know, in the certain neighborhoods. Tt’s a neighborhood place, much more than DC is, but the neighborhoods won’t always be welcoming of people who are either diverse demographically or diverse as far as their thinking and ideas are concerned.

I lived in New York for times and New York seemed, I love New York, but it was a very stressful fast paced place where everyone seemed to be very competitive. I mean, the streets are just so full of people. I just know things like lunchtime, it seems like you’re just fighting for space to make sure they’re able to get your lunch at some takeout place and then get back to work in time. So, I love New York, I love to visit but I will say when I I lived there on a temporary basis for like months at a time with jobs. I don’t like living there for a long time because I feel it’s a very stressful competitive place.

I always had problems with DC because I never thought was as friendly as Philadelphia was but after living in New York for, say, five months, I then thought DC was a lot friendlier than New York. So, I was willing to do that. So, I do think different places, at different situations, though a lot of it is just the place you’re at that time. Obviously, some people go to say, a college and have a great time and other people go to the same college and have a bad time. So a lot of that just related to who you happen to be roommates with. And that’s just luck of the draw, or whether you enjoy your course, or hate, or failing your course. A lot of that with cities, but I found cities and places to be much different. So I think that’s becoming less so, maybe with the internet. But, at least in my mind, I do think locations have different personalities. I found that to be true in my life.

Mary Bennett 16:57
Um, so you kind of touched this in the end of your answer; From your perspective, has digital media made the locations of people less relevant?

Steve Bennett 17:07
While they may have made them like less, less relevant, less enjoyable, I do worry about the sense of community that’s being lost with digital media, digital technology. A lot of what I’m going to call, cultural places, where people would meet. When I was a teen, and in my 20s, I would always go to, you know, the neighborhood record store and the neighborhood bookstore. I would meet people there just randomly. I mean, that’s how you can meet people and meet people with similar interests, especially me. I listen to a lot of music and like music. So, I would always go to the record store if I was bored, depressed about something.

You would meet and you could talk to other people. You could talk to the salesperson. You could talk to the owner. I always did that. You could meet people of the opposite sex that way, who had similar interests to you. So, it does hurt me. And I think it’s very bad for society when there’s not things like bookstores and record stores. They gave my life a lot of meaning, say, in the early 70s, and throughout the 80s. And then it didn’t even stop when I left. I just always like to go there. You would go there and meet people who had similar interests than you. And I don’t see those places.

I mean, people would go to church. A lot of people don’t go to churches and ones with church services in the old days too. I mean, some people still go to church but church is less relevant nowadays. But I’m not going to speak to churches. I’m not going to say I was the greatest person. I’m just saying that before digital communication digital media, you had centers where people would meet and meet in person. You didn’t have to use dating apps and Facebook and social media to either date or talk to friends. So, I do worry about that. But, I guess everyone worries about that. I mean, in my life, certainly, the disappearance of record stores in bookstores is a major criticism I have from the creation of the internet and technology.

Mary Bennett 19:31
So, you spoke about how the communities of bookstores… let me rephrase that… the bookstores and record stores kind of fostered community. I’ve read a lot of artcles about Americans losing community due to our emphasis on big houses in the suburb and doing your work and then coming straight home. Have you felt that with suburban living? You grew up in a rowhouse. Now, we live in a moderately sized house. Has there been a shift in that?

Steve Bennett 20:05
I think there is. I mean, I do love living in a row house. And, I think it’s very good. Of course, it’s very difficult. I grew up in a family of five and we had one bathroom and people had to share bedrooms and it’s tough. But everyone got by and no one felt like it was a it was a bad situation. And then, because I lived in dorms and dorms are even smaller than that, so I had no problem with that. But, if you can afford a big house, they certainly have big houses in the suburbs. I worry all the time that that has an impact on community. To be fair, I live in Arlington and Arlington was very much a compromise. I’d like to say a good compromise. I always grew up in the city went to college, I would only go to college in a city. I went to George Washington because I wanted to be either in Washington, New York, or Boston. I graduated college and law school, both in DC. I then rented a house in the city. I had townhouse on Capitol Hill. So, I was always in the city. Then, I was afraid when I got married, I’d have to live in the suburbs which I had never done the first 30 years of my life. I was scared to death. We looked at houses in the city, they were extremely expensive. My wife had not grown up in the city, so she didn’t have the same love for it. But she was very understanding and we studied the issue and had friends who lived in Arlington. Arlington was the perfect place for us because it wasn’t in the city nor was it in a far out suburb. In Arlington, you can walk to all the stores. That’s kind of what I guess is called an urban village.

So, to me, Arlington was the perfect compromise for someone in their thirties getting married and having three kids. It wasn’t a suburb. It wasn’t a city, but it was something that worked right. And that’s why our marriage has worked so well because we always made compromises. But I do worry about people distancing themselves in big houses. I , personally, am known for going out a lot to sporting events like twice a week, to concerts about once a week and then to the movies. I like to be in groups. I mean, it scares me when people just see movies on Netflix. I always like to go to theaters. Obviously, I’m an old person, but I do think the sense of being with other people is just too important to me and to society. So it does worry me.

It’s getting off the question and going back to the last question; but even in the old days, you went three TV stations to watch or you watch a show. Then, you talk to like 10 people at school or at work the next day about that show. But now, people watch all different shows. So there’s, there’s not even that community. In something real, like houses, people are in the suburbs disconnected. But they’re also disconnected by the amount of cable or high technology communications as opposed to when the country only had three TV stations and young people watched one station and sports fans watched another and then old people watched a different one. But now, everyone’s watching their own thing and it’s hard. I try my best to make communications with people but sometimes it’s difficult. But as far as the house you know, It does worry me when people are physically isolated from each other.

Mary Bennett 24:05
Speaking on a broader sense, I guess you could almost say the American dream, a lot of times we see this whole “nationality” in the history of our country. However, some people are arguing that we’re becoming more polarized. And do you think people are being more attributed to the niche that they live in like Washington DC? Or, do you still think there is a pride in the overall America? That seems to be, almost, what fueled things like the counter cultural revolution?

Steve Bennett 24:39
Well, it’s funny. I mean, my views on that probably have changed in the last four years. I’ve always felt, like I said earlier in the interview, that different people in different cities, different locations, whether in the Midwest, the west, people are different but basically are all the same. We all have the same core value system. We may go about things differently. But, I thought we were all one community, in a sense one family, and we all had similar values. So, I thought whether you live on the west coast, the South, the East Coast or Midwest, you may have subtle differences in your personality and in your ideals and value system. But basically, we all belong to one single, you know, value system. I think in the last four, maybe the last 10 years, it’ just become more hardcore in the last four years. I now think we are almost two different societies, one based on the coasts and the other based, say in the south, and the Midwest, and there’s value systems that don’t seem to connect well before. I did think we’re all Americans. And I’m not saying we aren’t, but right now, there’s a lot of pulling apart from that.

I don’t know if that’s because of the lack of communities. Now, we don’t have the same community interaction. So people just are in their big homes, listening to whoever their favorite cable media commentator is and believing that. I’m not gonna say that that’s true or not, but it’s a cause of concern for me. I think a lot of our community values are being lost. And, at the same time, I believe the country is adopting two different value systems at the core. While in the past, we’ve been united in the same goals and hopes that we may have tried to reach them via different methods. I think lately, people have been more torn apart. Hopefully that’s only a temporary thing.

Mary Bennett 27:01
Well on that note of Hope I want to thank you. This has been Mary Bennett and Steven signing off.

Steve Bennett 27:10
Thank you

This interview was conducted in person using Audacity on my laptop. We went over the questions beforehand and then recorded. We worked in the living room. Because Coronavirus has made everyone remain in a tight location without much preparation, I think it worked well for what it was. At one moment, it gets quieter because the laptop needed to be moved, but it is brief and can easily be heard by minimally turning the volume higher.

If I could do it over, I would have an actually microphone or quality recording technology. The plan was always to record right after spring break with my intended interviewee in Harrisonburg. With the pandemic, that quickly had to be scrapped especially because my phone does not have the capacity to record. Therefore, even as I made plans to do one here, I did not have the proper equipment. In terms of flow, I think it went fine. When I was transcribing, I realized just how much humans do not use correct sentence structure, which made transcribing almost the harder part. I am happy with how the interview turned out but it is not at all how I planned it.

 

Previous Research

My initial interview was about a female priest in the Episcopal Church. While today women are welcomed to the ministry, that was not always the case. 1974 marked the first ordination of 11 women from Philadelphia, therefore, they were promptly named the “Philadelphia Eleven” (Remembering the ‘Philadelphia 11,’ 2014). However, the laws never explicitly stated that women could not be discriminated against until 1997 (Armentrout & Slocum, n.d.) and so it was not until 2010 that every diocese had ordained a woman (Tammeus, 2014). Likewise, a woman did not receive the highest position in the Episcopal community until 2006 (Masci, 2015) even though they account for ⅓ of the priesthood and currently are almost equal in ordination numbers now (Tammeus, 2014). However, there is still not female ordination found in Mormon, Southern Baptist, and Roman Catholic worship (Masci, 2015).

Armentrout, D., & Slocum, R. Ordination of Women. Episcopal Church. Retrieved 23 February 2020, from https://episcopalchurch.org/library/glossary/ordination-women. Accessed 23 Feb 2020.

Masci, D. (2015). The Divide Over Ordaining Women. Pew Research Center. Retrieved 3 March 2014, from https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/09/09/the-divide-over-ordaining-women/.

Remembering The ‘Philadelphia 11’: Where The First Female, Episcopal Priests Are 40 Years Later. Huffpost.com. (2014). Retrieved 3 March 2020, from https://www.huffpost.com/entry/philadelphia-11-female-priests_n_5614911.

 Tammeus, B. (2014). Episcopal church celebrates 40 years of women in the priesthood. NCR Online. Retrieved 3 March 2020, from https://www.ncronline.org/news/parish/episcopal-church-celebrates-40-years-women-priesthood.