Whenever our national news is utterly soul crushing, whenever my hope in our collective future is sinking fast, I know it’s high time I pay a visit to our neighbor, Jesse.
Last Monday’s news cycle featured non-stop video clips from the weekend’s Madison Square Garden rally. I knew Jesse would not only be aware of it all but also be able to offer a word or two of encouragement; the sort of hope one expects from our neighborhood’s 93-year-old Grande Dame on political and cultural matters, large and small.
As we sat in the warm and welcoming front room of her Heritage Victorian, Jesse listened to my concerns regarding the political rally, then got up and retrieved from her bookshelf a gifted copy of “Walking with the Wind,” the memoir of one of her heroes, Congressman John Lewis. She showed me the inscription on the first page: “To Jesse—Keep the Faith! — John Lewis, 4-13-2000.”
Keeping faith is not only something Jesse Emanuel advises others; it has been her motto for a lifetime distinguished by service to church and state.
Jesse lives alone these days; it has been one year since her husband of 62 years, David, passed on. Dave, with Jesse’s help and encouragement, founded the Nevada County chapter of Habitat for Humanity, then served as its unpaid executive director for the local organization’s first 10 years, his retirement project after a distinguished career as an engineer. Dave and Jesse were inspired to bring the organization to Nevada County shortly after participating in a Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Work Project in Los Angeles in 1995. Working alongside 1,500 other volunteers from 39 states, they built 21 homes along East Santa Ana Boulevard in Watts. One morning as she waited in the volunteers’ breakfast line, a kind gentleman in front turned around to say hello. “Hello, Mr. President,” replied Jesse. She left that day with a signed copy of “Always a Reckoning,” the collected poems of Jimmy Carter.
As Jesse talked me through my election anxiety, she recounted another one of her favorite retirement endeavors, and the sting of our national news began to lessen. In 2018, she and Dave made a pilgrimage to Alabama sponsored by the Unitarian Universalist Church. As a young teacher and then as a mother of three young children, she had been unable to join thousands of others in Martin Luther King’s Selma to Montgomery march for voting rights, which took place just weeks after 600 blacks led by John Lewis crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge and were beaten by clubs, tear-gassed, and kicked, all before television cameras. President Johnson was able to harness national outrage for what happened in Selma and push through Congress the Voting Rights Act just months later.
During their 2018 pilgrimage, Dave and Jesse re-traced the march over the bridge, then visited other prominent civil rights locations in Selma and Birmingham, an outing that re-enforced their shared commitment to peaceful protest, democracy, and civil rights. The pilgrimage also put to rest Jesse’s regret that she had not done enough to help all those years ago.
Now, in 2024, Jesse remains active and healthy and involved. She consults friends, neighbors, and her son before very carefully making ballot decisions for each public official, each proposition. She is active in the Peace Lutheran Church, exercises, reads the bible daily, keeps house, and stays in contact with her many, many friends.
I left Jesse’s house on Monday with her copy of the John Lewis book, which she loaned to me. As I opened it that night, a reprint of a Times essay by Congressman Lewis fell out, surely what Jesse had wanted me to read. Written shortly before his death in 2020, Lewis writes: “Ordinary people with extraordinary vision can redeem the soul of America by getting in what I call good trouble. Voting and participating in the democratic process are key. The vote is the most powerful nonviolent change agent you have in a democratic society. You must use it because it is not guaranteed. You can lose it.”
So, as we approach election day, here’s to you, Jesse Emanuel and here’s to your husband, Dave. You remind us of the old dictum that our country’s most important office holders are well-informed, active citizens who take the privilege of voting seriously.
Editor’s note: Contact timothymay49@gmail.com to suggest someone in our community for a ‘Here’s To’ article.